The next day, Burr joined up with Nickerson, Edwards and Swift Bill. The four fashioned a rude raft and started down river, but they were stopped by soldiers from Fort Maginnis, who turned them over to Deputy U.S. Marshal Samuel Fischel for delivery to White Sulphur Springs.

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But, said Stuart, “At the mouth of the Musselshell a posse met Fischel and took the prisoners from him. Nearby stood two log cabins close together. A log was placed between the cabins, the ends resting on the roofs, and the four men were hanged from the log. The cabins caught fire and were burned down and the bodies cremated.”

Paddy Rose was the sole outlaw to make a complete getaway. Separated from his companions, he made his way to Fort Benton, where he had wealthy and influential relatives who assisted him in reaching the Canadian border.

News of the Stuart vigilante raids was slow to reach the outside world, partly because of the remoteness of the region and partly because, as the editor of the Mineral Argus of Maiden, Mont., complained, the press was “handicapped severely by the disinclination of the participants toward publicity.” Significantly, the Argus editor was unapologetic in his support for Stuart’s often bloody mission. “The most speedy and safe cure” for thieves, he opined, “is to hang them as fast as captured.”

One of the first dispatches to reach the national press came out of Salt Lake City, Utah, with a July 21 dateline:

News comes from Judith City, Northern Montana, that five horse thieves were captured and hanged in the vicinity of Rocky Point a few days ago. The hanging was done by a regularly organized gang of cow boys, who set out to round up the thieves that infest that section, and they are doing their work in good shape. They secured thirty-two stolen horses from the outlaws, and then made short work of them, hanging the whole lot to the nearest tree in the region between lower Judith and Mussel’s Hell [sic]. Within the last three weeks thirteen horse thieves have been lynched and it is probable the end is not yet.

By July 26, papers from as far away as Dunkirk, N.Y., were reporting: “The people of the cattle ranches of Montana territory have for some time been greatly annoyed by horse and cattle thieves, and have hanged or shot thirteen of the offenders within three weeks, five being captured and hanged at Rocky Point on the upper Missouri river.”

On the 30th, a Helena dispatch said that seven horse thieves were hanging from trees at the mouth of the Musselshell and “some twenty of Granville Stuart’s cowboys are out after another band….They go fully prepared for all emergencies, and if they overtake the horse-thieves there will be another hanging, as the settlers and stockmen are desperate over the loss of their horses. There have been over one hundred horses recovered within the past week. Fully fifty thieves were hanged or shot in the past month.”

Reports of the ongoing raid continued to filter out throughout the month of August.

August 3: “The stock raisers and ranchers of that Territory are carrying on a war of extermination against the horse and cattle thieves. From a letter found in the pocket of a thief recently captured and hanged, full particulars were obtained of the existence of an organized gang of from seventy-five to one hundred thieves, who had long and successfully defied the legal authorities, and had operated between the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers, below Benton. The cowboys are out in force rounding up the thieves….In all, it is estimated that twenty of the gang have been killed; many more have emigrated. It is claimed that the name and history of each thief is known to the cowboys, and that the war will go on until the horse-thieves are scarce in Montana as they are in heaven.”

August 5: “A courier has just arrived from near the mouth of Mussel Shell and reports that Granville Stuart’s cowboys have a large band of horse thieves secured. The band is too large to be taken but can be held until help comes. Reinforcements left Cottonwood Sunday. A hot time is expected.”

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