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The Kelley-Jones Gang: Scourge of the northern border

| May 27, 2018 1:00 AM

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BUTCH CASSIDY MUSEUM Butch Cassidy — who robbed an Idaho bank in 1896 — was pals with the Kelley-Jones Gang.

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Painting courtesy of ARTIST KIM E. FUJIWARA The Kelley-Jones Gang were primarily rustlers, but also robbed Montana trains carrying gold.

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Photo courtesy of REID DICKIE Old North-West Mounted Police post in the Big Muddy Valley from 1902 to 1917.

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MILART PHOTO ARCHIVES North-West Mounted Police chased outlaws in the Big Muddy, photo of these Mounties taken in 1894.

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CHARLES M. RUSSELL PAINTING Canada’s Mounted Police capturing horse rustlers painting titled “When Law Dulls the Edge of Chance.”

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Painting by W.H.D. KOERNER (1931) Armed posses had a hard time tracking down outlaws in the Big Muddy Valley because of its rugged terrain of canyons, gulches and coulees, and the U.S.- Canadian border so close.

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GOOGLE IMAGES Castle Butte, Big Muddy Valley Badlands, Saskatchewan.

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GOOGLE IMAGES Stealing cattle and horses was the Kelley-Jones Gang’s specialty, but they also robbed trains and killed people who tried to stop them.

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GEORGE C. BLAKELY PHOTO/PUBLIC DOMAIN Rustling was dangerous business in the Old West, often ending at the end of a rope — without a court trial.

Notorious Canadian outlaw Sam Kelley — also known as Charles “Red” Nelson — and another member of his gang were hidden from view as they watched Sheriff Sid Willis leave the jailhouse at noon and head for the Bank Saloon for lunch.

Then they made their move. They’d been waiting with two horses ready to spring their two buddies locked up in the Glasgow, Mont., jail.

Casually, they rode down the street toward the jail, towing two horses.

The jailbreak happened on May 25, 1895, the day after Deputy Sheriff “Hoke” Smith had left town with a heavily armed posse to hunt for Kelley.

The sheriff’s wife was stunned as she watched Kelley storm into the sheriff’s office and walk out with the two prisoners, tipping his hat as he walked past her desk and out the front door.

They’d unlocked their cell with a key made out of a tin can, shaping it from a tallow mold of the key.

As soon as he heard about it, Sheriff Willis chased them but a gunshot spooked his horse and he was bucked off.

Deputy Hoke Smith was a respected citizen when they pinned the badge on him, but that changed later when they found out that he was exchanging letters with Kelley — including one asking for a loan of some money.

They were all part of the infamous Kelley-Jones Gang (AKA Nelson-Jones Gang), led by Kelley and partner Frank Jones. They were the scourge of the Big Muddy Valley in the badlands of southern Saskatchewan and northern Montana along Big Muddy Creek.

Their hideout about 12 miles north of the U.S. border was the first station of the “Outlaw Trail,” a series of hideouts from Canada to Mexico, through Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas.

In addition to the Kelley-Jones Gang, the hideouts were well known to Old West highwaymen like Butch Cassidy and Elzy Lay — who robbed a bank in Montpellier, Idaho — the Sundance Kid, Dutch Henry and brother Coyote Pete, Kid Curry, Jack Slade, Tom Horn and many others.

Supposedly Butch Cassidy organized the trail, making sure it followed the Pony Express route — close to towns, banks, railroads and stagecoach routes.

The outlaws set up stations every 10 or 12 miles, with supplies and fresh horses. Ranchers often helped them — though some times it was while staring down the barrel of a gun.

The Kelley-Jones Gang specialized in rustling horses and cattle, along with occasionally robbing trains in Montana carrying gold. They also did some killing.

Stephen Schneider in his book “The Story of Organized Crime in Canada” describes Kelley as having red hair and bushy red eyebrows that “looked like caterpillars.” He was “a heavy set, incredibly dirty hulk of a man, who ambled rather than walked… His face was more scarred than a brave after a Blackfoot Injun war dance and his nose looked like it had bin sidetracked by an ungracious fist.”

Born in Nova Scotia and moving west at an early age, Kelley was known as “one of the wildest, most dangerous and most wanted outlaws in the Big Muddy,” and would kill in self-defense.

He was a fast draw and crack shot, with some claiming “he could use his 30-30 rifle to de-horn a steer at one hundred yards.”

In an 1896 shootout with a Glasgow deputy named Allison, Kelley shot a rifle right out of the lawman’s hands.

Far more dangerous was Kelley’s sidekick Frank Jones — a psychotic killer with a pistol grip full of notches. He had mean eyes, black hair, and a dark moustache covering a permanent sneer.

One report said he “was more tightly wound than a corset,” and that he “enjoyed the act of killing.”

In the gang, there were also Robin Hood types who’d help poor homesteaders.

The gang’s usual targets were ranchers on both sides of the border. They’d rustle horses or cattle in Montana, drive them across the border and sell them to Canadian ranchers.

They’d even steal from one side and sell to the other, then re-steal and sell back to the original owners.

Finally, the Canadians had enough and built a Royal Canadian Mounted Police post in the Big Muddy.

But the outlaws knew the valley “better then a cat knows a back alley.” Mostly barren and dry, Big Muddy is wind-carved buttes, prickly pear cactus, deep-cut sandstone ravines, and outlaw caves just one hill from the border.

The gang’s hangout was in two enlarged former wolf caves just north of the border; one of the caves for the horses. Today, they’re called the Sam Kelly Caves — no “e.” Across a nearby gully on Peake’s Butte, a lookout could spot an approaching armed posse and warn the others.

One outlaw would hold them off with gunfire while the rest escaped on horseback through a rear tunnel out of sight to the posse and race across the border into Montana where the RCMP didn’t have jurisdiction.

Ranchers knew there were outlaws around and had better be careful. Frank King wasn’t.

After some thieves stole dry goods from his house, he tracked the hoof-prints to a shack and recovered them. Then he told the Mounted Police. They warned him to be careful talking about it, and offered him protection.

King turned down the offer, believing his six-shooter would be enough.

When Kelley and Jones found out he’d reported the theft, they ambushed him, hogtied him, beat him up and took him blindfolded to their hideout. There they stripped him naked.

The gang held a mock trial and sentenced him to death. Preparing for the execution while he was still blindfolded, King could hear the ominous loading of bullets, clicking of the guns and slapping of leather. All the while, the men filled the cave with loud chatter and macabre merrymaking.

Then he heard a thick Bavarian German-accented voice tell Jones to knock it off and put his rifle down. King correctly figured that it was Dutch Henry.

The gang held him prisoner and slave, forcing him to build a corral for his own “stolen critters.”

They amused themselves by tying him to a post “like a Christmas turkey” and seeing how close they could shoot without hitting him.

After nearly two weeks, they let him go almost naked and forced to walk home across the Big Muddy.

Jones went looking for him to inflict further punishment of some kind but King escaped and made it home safely.

As the Wild West days were coming to a close, so also did Sam Kelley’s outlaw career. In 1904, he quit being a gunslinger and turned himself in to the Mounties. He was released however when they determined that there wasn’t enough evidence to try him.

He is said then to have spent the next few years living in the Big Muddy caves he knew so well, before buying a ranch in the valley about 1909.

Some four years later, he and three Montana pals loaded their horses, left the Big Muddy and headed for Debden, about 45 miles northwest of Prince Albert. There they homesteaded around a small body of water later called Kelley’s Lake.

Locals today don’t talk much about the red-headed outlaw with the bushy eyebrows, except that maybe some of his pals engaged in a little rustling occasionally, and that Kelley had an altercation with one of his friends — Louis “Big Lou” Morency — facing off for a shootout on a Debden street.

The two glared at each other and circled around for a while, but neither drew his gun, and that was the end of that.

Years later, Kelley was found hungry and confused at a bus stop in Smeaton, Saskatchewan, and was committed to a hospital in Battleford where in October 1937, he died and was buried. He was 78.

The Wild West in Canada was much the same as the Wild West in the U.S. but didn’t receive the same public attention. Most Old West outlaw lists don’t even mention Sam Kelley, but they always mention Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch and other famous gunslingers who often shared the same rugged and remote Badlands with him.

Oh, if only the walls of Sam Kelley’s caves could talk — telling us more of the Old West, stories that maybe now are gone forever …

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Contact Syd Albright at silverflix@roadrunner.com.

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The Outlaw Trail…

The Big Muddy Badlands in southern Saskatchewan and northern Montana along Big Muddy Creek is 34 miles long and two miles wide bridging the U.S. and Canada border. It was formed during the last Ice Age, that according to scientists ended 11,700 years ago. The Kelley-Jones hideout caves were the first in a string of hideouts on the Outlaw Trail mapped out by Butch Cassidy stretching to the Mexican border.

‘Good guy’ outlaw?

“Dutch Henry” Jauch, a member of the Kelley-Jones Gang wasn’t all bad — as outlaws go. He’s even been inducted into the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame. Born in Switzerland (next to Bavaria — hence the accent), he was an excellent roper and became skilled at changing brands on livestock. He had a good sense of humor and could spin a good yard. He could also make lots of money conning the U.S. Cavalry into buying his stolen horses to ride, and cattle to eat.

Border security?

Just like draft dodgers during the Vietnam War who went to Canada, many American outlaws of the Wild West did the same thing. Among the more notorious were Boone Helm of Kentucky who is said to have enjoyed eating those he killed; Ernest Cashel from the Midwest spent two years in Alberta engaging in forgery, horse stealing and murder before he was caught and hanged in 1904. And there was Bill Miner, the “Gentleman Bandit” from Kentucky who liked to rob trains, and is credited with originating the phrase “Hands up!” Stories conflict about what happened to him.