Walt Coburn was an author of western fiction who grew up on his father Robert‘s huge Circle C Ranch in southern Philips County, (then part of Chouteau County) Montana. He was 13 on July 3, 1901 when Kid Curry robbed the Great Northern Express Car at Wagner, Montana. Curry made for the Little Rockies. Here’s what Coburn said happened next:
”It was July 3, 1901, and all that teenage Walt wanted to do was to go to Malta, Montana, and prepare for the Fourth of July rodeo. Instead his brother, Bob, gave him the ridiculous job that day of taking some horses up to the top of a butte and sitting there all day, then bringing them back in the evening if nothing happened. Well something happened all right. In the middle of the afternoon Walt saw riders hurrying to him from way out on the prairie. When those riders got to Walt, they changed to the fresh horses and left Walt with the old horses before hurrying away. Walt recognized Kid Curry as one of the riders and knew they must have done something for which they needed fresh mounts immediately. Walt took the tired mounts back to the home ranch. Bob got the cook to make Walt a steak and instructed Walt to stay with him in the ranch house. Not long later a sheriff and posse from Glasgow knocked on the door stating they were chasing Kid Curry and his gang who had just robbed the Great Northern Mail train at Wagner. The sheriff asked for fresh mounts and dinner. Bob Coburn said there would be no fresh horses, but his ranch cook would cook the men dinner for a dollar a man. Outrageous, but the sheriff said yes, so Bob sent Walt out to the cook house to wake up the cook and help in preparing the dinners.
While preparing the dinners the cook said to Walt that he, too, thought the world of Kid Curry and that maybe they should slow that posse down. So they put something in the food that gave the posse diarrhea about five miles down the trail at Bear Gulch. Needless to say the posse never did catch Kid Curry and his gang.”
Coburn, Walt. Pioneer Cattleman in Montana: The Story of the Circle C Ranch Norman, University of Oklahoma Press [c1968. (Available used on Amazon)
I take Coburn’s account written 67 years later with a grain if salt. He had a 60 year career as a writer of western fiction. His father, Robert Coburn, was a man if solid reputation who served his community, fellow cattlemen and the state of Montana well. The Curry boys probably worked for the Circle C before they became outlaws, but so did everyone else in north-central Montana, My research tells me that rancher Jim Thornhill was Curry’s chief enabler in the Little Rockies. It is true, however, that a decade later, Thornhill became the Foreman for the Circle C Ranch and followed the Coburns when they moved the operation to Arizona in 1915.
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