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The debate still goes on today as to whether Tom Horn was Willie Nickell's killer. In 1993 the issue became so heated that descendants of Tom staged a mock trial in Cheyenne, Wyoming, hoping to have Tom pardoned of the guilty verdict of 1902 and his subsequent hanging. (sic) To this the NICKELLs in the area petitioned Wyoming Govenor Mike Sullivan pleading that Tom Horn not be pardoned. And the band plays on.....
I don't pretend to know the facts of the case, or to judge the event. I just present here the article that Denny wrote on the subject and appeared in the In Wyoming magazine Oct/Nov 1997 issue. I've tried to contact the magazine to get permission for this reprint, but they no longer exist. Denny died in 1980 and letters to his descendants have gone unanswered.
I hope you enjoy "Who were Tom Horn's Victims?" It's long, so you might want to either print it now, or save it to your hard disk and read it later. The In Wyoming article was sent to me by Roye "Nikki" (Nickell) Combs of Nashville, TN, in 1993. The photo of Kels and Mary was provided by Robert and Betty (Waters) Nickell, a 1st cousin 3 generations removed, of Kels; that of Willie & sister Julia came from a old xerox of the 1977 issue of In Wyoming. Footnotes are noted as (n) and found at the end of the article.
Another very good accounting of this historic epic, with great photos, can be seen at this Wyoming Tales Web Page.
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Kels Nickell was but six years old, on Feb 7, 1863, when a band of guerrilla outlaws-two of whom were deserters from the Confederate Army of the American Civil War-called at the 650-acre farm of his father, John DeSha Nickell on Licking River, Kentucky.
The leader, John Jackson Nickell, a second cousin of John DeSha, hailed the house from the gate at the road. Priscilla, mother of Kels and wife of John DeSha, answered. The caller, whom Mrs. Nickell immediately recognized because he had been a frequent visitor at the home prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, was invited in, as the weather was bitterly cold.
On entering, he immediately began to berate John DeSha, and accused him of threatening to kill him, which John DeSha denied, and then told John DeSha that he and his party had been sent to arrest him and take him about five miles to Bloomington, Kentucky, where he would be tried before a Confederate Court Martial, and if he didn't accompany the four guerrillas peaceably, they would show him "how scalp taking was done," in his own living room and before his family.
As the boy, Kels, wide-eyed, watched in horror in the company of his mother and brothers and sisters, John DeSha was marched out before the four armed visitors. After three shots rang out in the chill air, Priscilla and the children launched a search for John DeSha by lantern light.
Due to the bitter cold and the fact that the victim had fallen in some briars they found nothing that night but resumed the search at daylight and found the body of Kel's father some 300 yards from his door, frozen to the ground from which it had to be chopped before John DeSha Nickell could be removed for burial.
Court Martial records show that John Jackson Nickell, the second cousin of the victim, was found guilty of the murder of both John DeSha Nickell and of Logan Wilson, who was shot in his bed while recuperating from wounds received in the war. The accused, after exhausting all appeals, was hanged for the crimes on Sept 2, 1864.
Thus, born into the violence of the Civil War Era, Kels P. Nickell began a lifetime that would lead to still another tragedy of violence in his life during the hired-gun era in the Old West.
It was early on the morning of July 18, 1901, that Kels Nickell again heard shots, heralding that second great tragedy of his life, and marking the beginning of the final chapter in the story of one Tom Horn, a suspected hired gun who was convicted and hanged for the murder of 14-year-old William (Willie) Nickell, son of Kels and Mary Mahoney Nickell on his parents ranch in Laramie County, Wyoming.
In some respects, the murder of Willie was analogous to the murder of his paternal grandfather, John DeSha Nickell, in that each was shot in the back with a large-caliber rifle. The body of each was not discovered for many hours after death. That of Willie lay for some 24 hours through a Rocky-Mountain summer day and chilly night, and that of his grandfather for some 10 hours on a frigid February night.
Though these two murders occurred more than 75 and 113 years ago respectively, at points some 1,300 miles distant from each other, they constitute an authentic part of the early history of Wyoming and of the Civil War era in eastern Kentucky, and link the two violent eras together by the fact they were tragedies also in the life of a single individual, Kels Powers Nickell--the son of one victim and the father of the other.
The deaths of both were to be avenged by the hangman's noose-in the case of John DeSha Nickell, on Johnson's Island in Lake Erie, near Sandusky, Ohio, and in the case of Willie Nickell, on the morning of November 20, 1903, in the courtyard of the Laramie County Jail at Cheyenne, Wyoming.
The accused and convicted killers were John Jackson Nickell, a Civil War guerrilla, and Tom Horn, known as one of the last hired guns of the so-called "Wild and Romantic West."
Of all the true stories emanating from that "Old, Wild and Romantic West," the great Custer Battle on the Little Big Horn and the murder of Willie Nickell perhaps most galvanized public sentiment to bring an end to the law of the gun.
Kels Nickell's life was touched by both these events in the history of the West, as well as by the tragic death of his father on that cold winter day in Kentucky.
And within weeks after Willie's murder in Wyoming, more shots would echo across the rangeland from the vicinity of Kels Nickell's ranch as the drama continued in the life of this man who lost his father by violence in early childhood and whose fate would cast him into a role in the violence that ended the era of the gunman in the West. But first, he must triumph over the adversities of his childhood.
After the tragedy which had taken the life of John DeSha Nickell that cold February day, his widow Priscilla and five of her six children, including young Kels, remained on the farm for a few years before it was sold by the Morgan County, Kentucky, Circuit Court to satisfy a judgement by the court against the estate of John DeSha Nickell to fulfill a surety bond he had signed for an elected official of Morgan County, whose identity and office remain shrouded in mystery.
As there were no insurance companies writing surety bonds in the 1860's, it was common custom for an elected official required to post bond for the faithful performance of his duties to secure the signature of one or more legal residents of the county, whom the court considered financially responsible enough to pay the amount in case the official defaulted in his duties or obligations while in office. The poor and uneducated widow was unable either to hire legal counsel or prevent the judgement being issued or to raise the money to satisfy the judgement, and thus Priscilla and her five children, including James Harlan, 3; Cynthia Margaret, 5; Kels Powers, 7; Thomas Newton II, 10, and Sarah (Sally) Ann, 15, were forced to vacate the farm, still regarded as one of the best farms in the upper Licking River Valley of Kentucky.
While the boy, Kels, remained at the farm, he attended the Tarklin Public School, where he learned to read and write. Though his formal education was very limited, he continued throughout life to educate himself so that he could become successful in his endeavors.
During the period 1863 to 1875, there were no industries in south-eastern Kentucky, and the only employment available for boys and young men was hard manual labor on farms and in cutting virgin oak, pine, poplar, chestnut, and spruce timber in the Appalachian foothills, sawing it into 10, 12, and 14-foot lengths, hauling it to the banks of navigable streams and assembling it into rafts from 50 to 100 feet long, which reposed on the stream banks until high water from spring rains began to float the rafts into the main stream. Then a crew usually composed of three men, would climb aboard and steer the rafts for 50 to 150 miles downstream to where large band mills were located and the rafts could be sold. Usually the weather and water were bitterly cold, and the raftsmen suffered from both. Crewmen, after guiding the rafts at three to five miles-per-hour from daylight to dark, would stay at farmhouses along the way, where they paid 50 cents per night for meals and lodging, as they progressed downriver.
The young Kels, and many of this relatives, used this means to make a living, and saw members of their families pay the price of physical injury and hardship as a result.
There was great danger of drowning if one were thrown into the river, or of losing an arm or a leg, as Isaac Newton, and uncle of Kels, did on one occasion. As Isaac Newton was attempting to throw a two-inch seagrass rope attached to a raft around a large tree on the bank of the river to anchor it for the night, he accidentally got his leg between the large rope and the tree trunk. When the weight of the heavy raft swung around parallel to the river bank, the rope drew taught against the tree and severed the leg below the knee. When the severed leg had healed sufficiently, it was augmented by one-usually made of light poplar wood-hollowed at the top and padded with cotton and in which the unamputated portion of the leg could be inserted. The wooden leg was then anchored and supported by leather belts so that the wearer could perform daily tasks nearly as well as before the accident, except for walking and running.
After childhood in this atmosphere, Kels, who was 18 years-of-age in November, 1873, was married to Ann Brown of Greenup County, Kentucky, to whom a son, John DeSha Nickell II, was born in 1874. The marriage of Kels and Ann was dissolved by mutual agreement after the birth of their son, and a divorce was granted on Sept 8, 1877.
Following separation from Ann, and due to lack of opportunity for employment near home and to gratify an adventurous spirit possibly inherited from his Scotch-Irish ancestors, Kels decided to join the U.S. Cavalry, on the condition he could be assigned to duty in the West, which was then experiencing a tremendous population growth following the Civil War.
About the middle of August, 1875, heavy rains fell in eastern Kentucky, flooding all the lowlands and banks of the Licking River where Kels was born and raised. Knowing he would have to go to Cincinnati, on the Ohio River, to find a Cavalry recruiting office, Kels saw the unusual late-season flooding as an opportunity. He decided one of the best ways to travel about half the distance to Cincinnati was to join his brother Thomas Newton II, known along the Licking River as "River Tom," and his brother-in-law Hiram F. Cisco in floating a large raft of logs downstream to a mill at Morehead where it was sold and the proceeds split between Thomas, Hiram, and Kels.
Thomas and Hiram bade Kels goodbye and returned overland by foot to their homes. Kels found employment along the 150-mile route to Cincinnati in the tobacco fields, where he killed tobacco worms, pulled suckers from the stalks, and topped the plants to hasten ripening. For this drudgery, he received 50 cents a day and his meals, plus a place to sleep, which was usually a hay mow in a barn.
Arriving at Cincinnati in the afternoon of Sept. 1, 1875, he went to a hotel, engaged a room, and had a hot bath, his first since leaving home two weeks before. The next morning, he was accepted as a private in Company K, Fifth U.S. Cavalry.
During his duty under Gen. George Crook, Kels and his command were on patrol against hostile Indians a substantial portion of the time he was in the service from Sept. 2, 1875 to Sept. 2, 1880.
On the night of June 26, 1876, they were camped in northern Wyoming some 50 miles south of the section of the Little Big Horn River in Montana where Gen. George Armstrong Custer, with his company of some 256 officers and men engaged some 5,000 hostile Indians in the battle that resulted in the annihilation of the entire Custer command.
On being informed of the battle by courier from Major Marcus Reno and Captain Frederick Benteen, Gen. Cook designated two troopers, one of whom was Kels Powers Nickell, to proceed to the battle ground and report back to him, en route with his entire command to the scene of the battle.
Kels reached the battle ground after midnight June 27, before the dead had been buried, and reported later that the stench of dead men and horses was indescribable.
On instructions of the War Department in Washington, D.C., the dead soldiers were buried at the battle site--now a national monument--and Gen. Crook and his command returned to their base at Camp Kearney, Nebraska, from where Kels joined in other campaigns that led to the close of the Plains Indian Wars.(2)
It was after his arrival at Camp Kearney in 1875 that Kels decided that after his discharge from the service in 1880 he would make his home in Wyoming and become a cattle rancher. Thereafter, on all scouting expeditions, he looked for a suitable location with plenty of grass and water for family and livestock and irrigation purposes and on which he could file a homestead claim for 160 acres and adjoining government land which could be purchased for only $1.25 per acre.
Thus Kels located such a tract seven miles from the post office and railroad station at Iron Mountain, some 50 miles north of Cheyenne, the territorial capital of Wyoming.
On recovery, at age 13, he traveled west and then south to Santa Fe, where he learned fluent speaking Spanish, and became a horse wrangler. His skill as a wrangler led to a long association with the famous Apache Scout leader Al Seiber, and to association with Seiber's associate, Mickey Free.
Horn subsequently lived among the Apache, learned to speak the Apache tongue, and became a notorious Indian fighter against the Apache hostiles in the Apache Indian Wars. He ultimately became head Apache Scout. Like Kels, he was an Indian fighter. The parallels, however, seem to end where Horn, at the end of the wars of the West, became first, a detective, and occupation he found too tame with the Pinkerton Agency, and later with the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, which reportedly terminated him because of his tendency to solve cases, at his own discretion, without going through the formality of arrest and trial. He came late to Wyoming, in 1892, after the Johnson County War, when he started as a livestock detective. Both books and other sources have asserted his innocence, posthumously, of the murder of Willie Nickell. The fact remains, he was tried, convicted, and executed for the murder.
But it was several years before Kels established his residence in the Iron Mountain country. After his discharge in 1880, Kels moved to Camp Carlin on the outskirts of Cheyenne and opened a blacksmith and farm-machinery-repair shop. Like his father before him, Kels was an expert mechanic, and secured all the work he could possibly do, shoeing horses and repairing farm machinery, buggies, and wagons, and made far in excess of the $15 per month plus keep and clothing allowance that he was paid while in the service.
At Cheyenne, he met Mary Mahoney, the daughter of a railway construction foreman and native of Cork County, Ireland. She had emigrated with her parents to Cheyenne in 1868, and was married to Kels Dec. 27, 1881. Kels was then 26 years of age, and Mary 16. They had two children, Julie, and Kels Patrick, before they moved to the homestead ranch at Iron Mountain.
The exact date that Kels filed on the homestead and when he purchased an adjoining 480 acres to make him the owner of an entire section is unknown, but he took possession in 1885, and together with Julie and Kels Patrick, began a new life in the Iron Mountain community.
He had already begun improvement of the Iron Mountain property, and erected a six-room, peeled-log residence and out-buildings, and built a three-strand barbed wire fence around his section of land, both to contain his livestock and to keep livestock grazing on the surrounding open range from trespassing on his land.
After Kels and Mary began their lives in the Iron Mountain country, such improvements as had not already been made were finished as rapidly as possible, and Kels began his career as a cattle rancher with a small herd of cows and a breeding bull. Knowledge of livestock, which he had learned as a boy on the farm of his father, apparently served him well, and Kels successfully developed his herd until, in 1898, it numbered in excess of 1,000 head.
His cattle, as did those of other ranchers in that era, grazed on the open range in the summer. With plenty of water for irrigation and lots of hard work, he was able to produce enough feed on his fenced ranch to carry his cattle through the winter without having to buy a great deal.
This, and the normal increase in his herd, increased his profits, and Kels became respected and regarded as "well-to-do."
During this period, additional children were born, including William (Willie), who was to play a central role in the drama of the West, and Katherine, Alfred, Beatrix (Trixie), Margaret (Maggie), Ida McKinley, and Hiram Harlan.
But also during this period, a series of incidents and fateful decisions occurred whose significance to Kels and his family would become obvious only as the era of the open range and "law of the gun" drew to a close.
Kels, cast as he was into an era of strife and turmoil, was born and raised in a strongly-Protestant home and his mother earnestly hoped he would become a minister of the Campbellite or Christian Church, founded at Lexington, Kentucky, in 1843 as a result of a series of debates between the Rev. Alexander Campbell of Bethany, Virginia, and the Rev. Nathan L. Price of Paris, Kentucky, on the subject of Christian Baptism.
Priscilla and all her children became members of this church. Though Kels, to the knowledge of this writer, never became an active member of any church denomination, he adopted the golden rule as his philosophy of life and followed it literally in his social business relationships.
Scrupulously honest, he expected every other individual with whom he had business relationships to be likewise.
In all the newspaper and magazine articles written in the 1901 to 1903 period, when tragedy thrust the Nickell family into prominence, no report reflected on the honesty or character of Kels Nickell.(3)
Kels, by the same token, showed no fear of man nor beast, and about the time of the Johnson County Cattle War, which cast cattlemen against settlers in the northern regions of the state, and tempers on the rangeland flared to new heights, Kels had an encounter with John C. Coble, then a legal resident of Omaha, Nebraska. Coble, who had a large cattle spread near Bosler, west of Laramie, ranged his stock as far east as Kels' property.
Apparently some of Coble's cattle had trespassed on Nickell's land, or perhaps Coble was suspicious of Kels' prosperity. In any event, Coble, accompanied by his ranch manager, George Cross, met with Kels on July 23, 1890 at the wire gate marking the entrance to the Nickell property.
In the incident that followed, Kels stabbed Coble twice in the stomach with a pocket knife.(4)
Coble preferred charges against Nickell in Laramie County for "cutting and wounding in attempt to kill." In a preliminary hearing in Laramie County, however, the court ruled that the charges against Nickell were "not a true bill," and the case was dismissed.
Another documented incident of violence involving Kels as an aggressor occurred after the murder of Willie, when Kels was employed as a night watchman by the Union Pacific at Cheyenne. Kels in that instance requested a man attempting to enter the shops to show his identification, and when he did not, he was badly beaten by Kels. No charges were brought in the case, however.
In addition to the part of Kels' nature which led to the incident with Coble, who was, significantly, to become a friend and employer of Tom Horn, another characteristic which was to cast Kels into the center of a major conflict of the day was his readiness to accept new ideas.
Thus in 1895, Kels decided to investigate bringing sheep to the range in the Iron Mountain country.
Kels Nickell believed that sheep and cattle, which graze on different types of forage, could live successfully together--a practice that would increase the capacity of the range and which has since proved workable by many ranchers who run the two types of livestock together.
Having definitely decided to convert his ranch from cattle to sheep, Kels shipped his entire herd of cattle to Omaha, Nebraska, in June, 1898, where he sold them.
As was the custom, Kels rode with his cattle on the train to be sure they were properly fed and watered, and on this occasion took the opportunity to travel farther east for a reunion with his mother and brothers and sisters in Morgan County, Kentucky.
It was on this occasion that I first met my uncle Kels. He was a handsome and kindly man, and I grew fond of him, and he apparently of me. This relationship continued until his death in 1929 at the home of my parents, James Harlan and America Elizabeth Davis Nickell, at the town of Helechwa, Kentucky.
After visiting his relatives, Kels returned in 1898 to Omaha, where he purchases 1,000 head of ewes and several rams and shipped them to Iron Mountain, seven miles from his ranch. From there, with the assistance of his two eldest son, Kels Patrick and William, and a sheepherder and two dogs, Kels drove the herd overland to his ranch.
These sheep were the first in any number that had been introduced in that area, and their presence was resented by cattle ranchers, apparently including John Coble, with whom Kels had the earlier altercation.(5)
The resentment, if any there was, however, did not create any reported incidents for about three years, during which interval Kels and Mary again paid a visit to Kentucky and enrolled both their eldest son, Kels Patrick, and daughter Julia in a religious academy in Kentucky. For this reason, Kels Patrick was not at home when later acts of violence against the family were to occur.
In their absence during July and August 1900, Kels and Mary left Willie, 13; Katherine, 11; Alfred, 10; Beatrix, 8; Margaret, 6; and Ida, 4, at the ranch in the care of their maternal uncle, William Mahoney, and a housekeeper and cook. The sheep were left in care of a sheepherder.
In the meantime, Tom Horn, who had been suspected in the murder of Matt Rash and Isam Dart in vigilante slayings against cattle rustling suspects in the Brown Park area of northern Colorado, had come to the country. John Coble, as evidenced by the testimony during the later trial of Horn for murder and in published correspondence while Horn was in jail, became both an employer and friend of Horn.
Still, on their return from Kentucky, Kels and Mary Nickell found affairs at the ranch in good order, and despite the continuing hostility of open-range cattlemen against homesteaders and sheepmen in the West, they looked forward to a pleasant life and awaited the visit of Kels' brother James Harlan and his wife to their ranch the following summer.
Nervousness about the unsolved slayings of William Lewis and Fred Powell, who were ranchers in the Iron Mountain country in 1895, had by now largely subsided. Though some suspected Tom Horn, who still rode the range near the Nickell ranch, in the deaths, things went well and smoothly until the early part of 1901, when Willie reported that about the middle of June, he met a stranger while hunting on the range. Willie said the stranger demanded to know what he was doing there, and said he was tempted to shoot him. The identity of that person was never known. Though the incident worried Kels a great deal, he concealed his concern from the family, and only asked that any of the children report any further incidents to him immediately.
Another evidence of hostility occurred on July 10, 1901, when Kels found a note attached to the ranch gate warning him to "Take your sheep and get out, or meet the same fate as Matt Rash and Isam Dart."
This warning, however, only made Kels all the more determined to stay. He knew Dart and Rash were killed because they were suspected of stealing cattle, while Nickell's "crime" was that he had introduced sheep to the range.
Thus the only action he took relative to the anonymous note was to ask his sons Willie and Fred to report any strangers they saw on the range.
In this atmosphere of threats and tension, Willie, then 14, rode out in the early morning of July 18, 1901, astride his father's horse, to go to the railhead and meet and accompany a sheepherder to the ranch.
A damp chill filled the early morning air, and Willie also wore his father's hat and coat as he rode out on his father's horse that morning, leading some to speculate the tragedy that followed may have involved at least a partial mistaken identity.
After Willie left the house, Kels reported he heard shots from the direction of the gate where the Nickell property joined the open range. He was puzzled and mentioned the shots to companions who were helping him with some surveying, but he assumed someone was hunting.
Apprehension grew when Willie had not returned by the following breakfast time, but it wasn't until 24 hours after Willie's departure that brother Fred, who had taken some cattle to the gate, came racing up the road in near hysterics to report he had found Willie dead.
The evidence showed that as the 14-year-old Willie attempted to open the gate that previous cold July morning he was shot twice in the back with a .30-.30 cal. rifle. Fred found the gate open and the blood-soaked body of his brother as he approached the gate to release some cattle.
Kels Nickell's son, Willie, was dead, shot down by an assassin as his grandfather had been before him.
At first, Kels believed the shooting had been done by one of his neighbors, as Willie and one of the neighbor's sons had quarreled at a dance they attended shortly before Willie was shot. But later developments convinced him he was wrong, and the authorities in Laramie County and Cheyenne.
While still engrossed in the grief that surrounded the loss of his son Willie, Kels, himself, was to be the victim of the next attack, on August 4, 1901, just seventeen days later.
Again in the early morning, Kels had gone into a field about 600 yards from his home, and James Harlan Nickell and America Elizabeth Davis Nickell, brother and sister-in-law of Kels, heard shots ring out in the early-morning air. They lay still in bed in the guest room at the Nickell ranch home.
James Harlan and Elizabeth had arrived at the ranch just two days after the murder of Willie to pay the visit that had been planned while Kels and Mary were visiting in Kentucky the year before.
As Kels went out into his field, a hidden gunman had fired at him from ambush, Kels, running a zig-zag course toward his home, had been shot once in the arm, once in the hip, and once in the side.
At the sound of the shots, Kels' family and their guests, still in their night clothes, ran from the house, carried the wounded Kels inside, and dressed his wounds with kerosene before transporting him by spring wagon to Iron Mountain where a train had been summoned to take him to Cheyenne.
The wagon, with armed members of the family riding fore and aft, made the trip to Iron Mountain without further incident, and after arrival to Cheyenne, doctors assured the family that Kels would make a complete recovery.
After the shooting of Kels, public clamor for identification of the killer intensified, and the Laramie county sheriff persuaded Joseph LeFors, a Deputy United States Marshall for southeastern Wyoming, to undertake to solve the crime. LeFors, granted a leave of absence from his regular duties to work on the crime, was a master strategist. He conceived the idea of having a Montana rancher friend of his write a letter to LeFors asking for information as to where he could contact Tom Horn, as he wanted a good man to help him catch a band of thieves that had been stealing cattle and horses in that area.
This letter was forwarded to Tom Horn in care of John C. Coble, Iron Mountain Ranch Co., Bosler, Wyoming.
Horn replied to the letter, and LeFors subsequently induced him to come to Cheyenne, where LeFors, with the assistance of a sheriff's deputy and court reporter Charles Onhaus, succeeding in extracting a full confession of the crime from Horn.(6)
A complete copy of the interview, along with the records of the preliminary hearing on Jan. 24, 1902, and trial on Oct. 10 to 24, is on record in Laramie County, Wyoming.
After the jury, consisting of one butcher, one blacksmith, one hotel porter, one cowboy, and eight ranchers, found Horn guilty, he was sentenced to hang in the courtyard of the Laramie County Jail.
Horn exhausted all appeals, and after one jail escape attempt, was hanged for the murder of Willie Nickell.
Long before the hanging, however, which was delayed by numerous appeals and motions from defense attorneys until Jan. 9, 1903, the surviving members of the Nickell family left the Iron Mountain country.
While Kels was still in the hospital after being shot at his ranch on August 4, a group of masked riders attacked a band of sheep, killing a number of the animals and frightening the herder so that he quit.
Thus the constant fear of Mary, whose hair turned white overnight after the murder of Willie, and this attack, which led to the removal of the sheep from the range, led Kels to move his family to Cheyenne and put the ranch up for sale. Kels secured employment as a night watchman with the Union Pacific Railroad in Cheyenne, where he could keep in touch and be immediately available if needed in the developments with respect to the murder of Willie.
Had Kels, instead of his 14-year-old son, Willie, been the victim, it is quite likely only a cursory investigation would have been made, and the killer would have remained free to strike again where and when he felt disposed.(7)
After the prosecution and execution of Tom Horn, Kels, springing back after the dual tragedies of Willie's murder and the assault upon his own person from which he never fully recovered, continued to live at Cheyenne with Mary and their surviving children for a period of time, and then he purchased a ranch in the vicinity of Saratoga, Wyoming, on a branch of the North Platte River, where he lived for several more years. Meanwhile, a large copper mining company operated the Grand Encampment Mine and erected a large smelter and town at Encampment. Later it went bankrupt. The community lies some 25 miles south of Saratoga, at the eastern foothills of the Sierra Madre range on the Continental Divide.
Kels bought practically the entire town of Encampment, where he and Mary resided until just before he died. Kels returned home, to his native Kentucky, by motor car before his death on October 13, 1929. His body was returned to Cheyenne where services were conducted by the Shrader Funeral Home and he was buried beside his son, Willie, in the family plot at Lake View Cemetery.
The Encampment, Wyoming, Echo of Oct. 23, 1929, carried an obituary, indicative of the respect he held in the community, which said:
"Kels P. Nickell, born April 8, 1855, in Morgan County, Kentucky, died Oct. 13, 1929 at Helchawa, Kentucky. Funeral services were held at Cheyenne, Wyoming, Oct. 16, and burial made in the family plot at Lakeview Cemetery. Mr. Nickell, who has been a resident of Encampment the past 21 years, first came west in 1875...was married to Miss Mary Mahoney of Camp Carlin, Wyoming. To them nine children were born, seven of whom are living. Mr. Nickell was a man of strong convictions, which he staunchly defended in the face of all opposition, commanding the respect even of his adversaries. He is survived by his wife and eight children, two of whom are in business in Encampment. They are Kels Patrick, proprietor of the National Garage, and Mrs. C.H. (Ida) Ashley, a partner of her husband in the C&I Novelty Store. Other surviving children are: Fred of Saratoga; Harlan of Mt. Hope, West Virginia; Mrs. Frank (Julia) Cook of Evanston, Wyoming; Mrs. Lon (Katherine) Chase of Langley, Washington, and Beatrice (Trixie) of Seattle, Washington. Also John DeSha Nickell II, son of a former marriage."
Thus ended the chapter of western history in which Kels Nickell was to play his heavy role. The murder of Willie and circumstances under which it was committed have since been regarded by lawmen and writers of true western stories as the "cause c‚lŠbre" of Colorado, Nebraska, Montana, and Wyoming, and so shocked citizens and authorities at Cheyenne that an unrelenting investigation was begun to convict the murderer of the young boy and avenge his death--and to end for all time a bloody range war which had raged for almost half a century between cattle barons and the early settlers, homesteaders and sheepmen, whom they regarded as trespassers on their range.
They had long operated on the assumption that "might was right," and hired guns had been used too frequently to enforce their conception of the unwritten law of the range.
Today, in 1977, only the youngest son of Kels and Mary, who was but two years old at the time of Willie's murder and who now lives at California, Kentucky, survives. Their descendants have moved across the country in pursuit of their diverse careers. The role they played in the taming of the West is almost forgotten.
John Coble, cattleman and associate of Tom Horn and editor of Horn's autobiography, written while the suspect was held in jail, also is dead, reportedly by taking his own life shortly after Tom Horn was hanged for the killing of Willie Nickell.
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Footnotes:
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1) Dennie Trimble Nickell (1893-1980), like Kels Powers Nickell (1855-1929), is
a native of
Kentucky, and is a nephew of the subject of this autobiography. ... It is with
the hope of telling
that untold part of the story that IN WYOMING offers Dennie Nickell's biography
of his uncle,
Kels. ... as related in countless conversations of the author with Kels and
Mary Nickell at their
home in Encampment, Wyoming, in 1917 and 1929; and with Julia Nickell Cook at
her home
in Evanston in 1917, 1929 and 1954; and with Fred Nickell at his home in
Rawlins, Wyoming
in 1929 and 1954; and with my parents, James Harlan, a younger brother of Kels,
and his wife
America, were visiting at the ranch the morning he was shot." It is significent
that this
biography appears as two motion picture actors, Robert Redford and Steve
McQueen, are
reportedly preparing motion pictures of this event.
2) Amazing parallels existed between the lives of Kels Nickell and Tom Horn, the two whose paths would cross in an era of infamy in the West. Horn, born in the Civil War Era, Nov. 21, 1860, in Missouri, experienced childhood violence that differed in kind from that seen by Kels, but that also shaped his life. Horn left home, with little education and even fewer possessions, after seeing his dog shot to death before his eyes by passing travelers with whom he had fought, and after being beaten so severely by his father that he lay overnight in the haymow and spent a week in bed at home before he was able to travel well enough to leave--never to return.
3) Horn, too, had some contact with the Campbellite religion, and said that his mother, a Campbellite, regularly whipped him as a boy for any infractions against her standards of morality and behavior. Horn also asserted he was a good Christian in some of his correspondence while in jail at Cheyenne.
4) Reports, depending on the source, indicated that Kels only slashed the clothing of Coble, or that he severely slashed the cattle rancher so that medical attention was required. In any event, the incident was regarded as significant as it related to later strife in the lives of the Nickell family, though Kels was not convicted of unlawful behavior.
5) This seems further substantiated by references quoting trial testimony wherein Horn said he had been in the vicinity of the Nickell ranch the day before Willie's murder to see if any sheep had been trespassing on John Coble's range. He said he found no sign of sheep on the range.
6) On the basis of this confession, Horn was arrested the following day. The confession, along with circumstantial evidence, was used to convict Horn, even though he later denied the confession and was represented by what many people still regard as the top legal heads in the state at the time.
7) It is striking, though inconclusive, that killings and assault in the Iron Mountain country apparently ended with the confinement of Horn in jail. Various students of the case, however, speculate that the violence may have ended simply because the sheep were gone from the range, or because Nickell left, or because people simply had tired of violence as a solution to competition.
- IN WYOMING -
Casper, WY 82601
Vol.X, No.4, Oct/Nov, 1977
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