The Pinkerton Detective Agency knew just how dangerous he could be. Near the bottom of a 1903 wanted poster issued by the agency, it says, ‘Officers attempting to arrest Logan are warned that he always carries firearms and will not hesitate to use them.’ Harvey Logan, alias Kid Curry or Harvey Curry, was the most violent member of the loosely knit criminal band known as the Wild Bunch. He was involved in more robberies and killings than any other outlaw of his time. The Pinkertons considered him ‘one of the most remarkable criminals of modern time.’ He was called evil, treacherous and a coldblooded murderer. His friends, though, claimed that he was a good cowboy who became a wanted man through many injustices and unfortunate circumstances.

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Harvey Alexander Logan was born in 1867 in Tama County, Iowa, just northeast of Des Moines to William A. and Eliza J. Logan, the third of six children. His siblings were James W. (born in 1860), Denver Henry ‘Hank’ (1862), Arda A. ‘Allie’ (1868), John A. (1870) and Lorango ‘Lonnie’ Dow (1872). Harvey was in his teens when his father died and the family moved to Dodson, Mo., just outside Kansas City, to live with his aunt and uncle, Lizzie and Hiram Lee. Not long after that, his mother died, too, and he and three of his brothers decided to stake their future farther west. By 1886 Harvey and all his brothers except James were homesteading a Rock Creek horse ranch just south of the Landusky mining camp in the Little Rockies of Montana. They registered the ‘4 T’ brand and, in partnership with Jim Thornhill, the ‘Cover C Y.’

Jim was actually Frank Jackson, the only surviving member of the Sam Bass outlaw gang from Texas. Twenty-year-old Jackson was already a respected, capable rancher when the Logan boys arrived in Landusky. But given his bank- and train-robbing past with Bass, he was not exactly the best influence for Harvey. Jackson’s partners in crime had died bloody, set up by a former gang member, in Round Rock, Texas, in July 1878 (see ‘Bold Train Bandit Sam Bass’ in the August 2001 Wild West). Jim eventually filed on five homesteads, all within range of Harvey’s Rock Creek horse ranch, and registered them under his ‘7 Up’ brand.

Using the ranch at Rock Creek as a base, Harvey and his brothers worked with the McNamara and Marlow Ranch in Montana Territory, running their own horses on a share basis. They would break horses for McNamara and Marlow and earn one of the horses in payment, thus building up their own herd.

Although the Logan brothers ranched peaceably for a number of years, Harvey, his brother John and his brother-in-law Lee Self had a confrontation on October 2, 1894, with a local tough named James Ross. They were arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon. Judge Dudley DuBose fixed bail at $500, which was met by Robert Coburn of the Circle C Ranch. Harvey Logan had developed a close friendship with Coburn, a friendship that was cemented when Harvey saved Bob’s life. According to Coburn, the two men were part of a roundup crew working Circle C cattle when Bob’s horse was spooked. The horse fell and pinned its rider underneath. When the crew finally freed Coburn, he was unconscious and seemed near death. Logan took it upon himself to ride 85 miles to Malta to fetch the doctor, who reached Coburn in time to save him.

The 1894 charges stated that Harvey ‘with a deadly weapon, to wit, a shot gun, in and upon James Ross did make an assault with intent then and there to inflict a bodily injury…having no considerable provocation for said assault and the circumstances of said assault showing the said Harvey Curry [had] a malignant and abandoned heart.’ In defense, Harvey and John asked for a continuance so that eyewitness Jacob Launze could appear on their behalf. As a witness, Launze would testify that ‘when Self first attacked Ross, Harvey Curry pulled him [Self] back; when he [Self] attacked Lou Simmons, John Curry then took hold of Lee Self, and pulled him away from Simmons, when he again struck at Ross. That Ross then placed his hand behind him under his suit, in the act of drawing a revolver, when Harvey Curry drew a revolver, and told him to stop; that John Curry had no weapon of any kind with him on that night, and that neither of the defendants Harvey or John Curry struck or attempted to strike Ross.’

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