Jim Thornhill, Kid Curry's Accomplice?

Harvey Logan, aka Kid Curry-Stories. B. Gill. June 11, 2007. fold3.com

Kid Curry’s Accomplice

One of the characters nobody remembers from the heyday of Montana’s Little Rockies goldrush days is Jim Thornhill. Thornhill was a friend and partner of the notorious outlaw, Harvey Logan, better known as Kid Curry. The two had a long history going back to the shooting of Pike Landusky in 1894. Though Thornhill was never directly connected to any of the Kid’s crimes, he was often nearby. Maybe Thornhill was the part of the reason Curry had escaped jail twice and managed to elude law enforcement during his decade on the run.

It was Thornhill, along with Curry’s brother Lonie, who accompanied Harvey to Jew Jake’s Saloon that fateful day to confront Pike Landusky. Logan was upset with Landusky over his earlier arrest and brutal treatment at Landusky’s hands. He aimed to get even by picking a fight. As the fight began, Lonie Curry and Thornhill kept the crowd back calling for a “fair fight”. When Curry’s pistol fell from his pocket to the floor Thornhill retrieved and brandished it to keep the spectators away. Eventually Curry got the best of the larger, older man.

The fight seemed over as Landusky lay bleeding on the floor. Then Pike reached for something inside his pocket. Was he fumbling for a gun or a handkerchief to staunch his wounds? Accounts vary. It was payday. There was a holiday party going on. The witnesses were probably all drunk. Seeing Landusky’s movement, Thornhill tossed Curry’s gun back to him. In an instant Pike Landusky was dead.

Pike Landusky was a popular man in the Little Rockies country: a miner, a rancher, part-time deputy and founder of his namesake town. Now he was gone. Someone must pay. Curry was already out on bail from a previous assault where he had posted a $500 bond. Feeling threatened and facing new charges, he became a man on the run.

Thornhill and young Lonie Curry were both arrested for their role in the fight. They were tried separately in Fort Benton and acquitted. Kid Curry’s life on the run would mean that no one would ever be held accountable for Landusky’s death.

Eventually, Curry teamed up with elements of Butch Cassidy’s infamous Hole-in-the-Wall Gang. Though Logan had adopted the name Curry as early as 1894, he would become “Kid” Curry through his association with his outlaw mentor, Flat-Nose George Currie. In late June, 1897, the gang tried to rob a bank in Belle Fourche, South Dakota. Among them were Flat-Nose George and the “Kid”. Part of the gang fled to Montana, where Kid Curry’s friends would surely help outlaws on the run. In September they were spotted passing through Red Lodge, Montana. They were headed North when the posse caught up with them near Lavina on the Musselshell about 100 miles from their Little Rockies destination. The trio were using the aliases of “Smith and Jones” when captured. It took a while for authorities to sort it out, but “Smith” was Kid Curry.

After being returned to South Dakota for trial they escaped. Curry made a clean break. His two accomplices were caught, tried and acquitted. They soon joined Kid Curry at Wyoming’s Hole-in-the-Wall sanctuary. There they planned more crimes.

The robbery of the Union Pacific Railway on June 2, 1899 near Wilcox, Wyoming put the noted Pinkerton Detective, Charlie Siringo, on Kid Curry’s trail. Siringo learned that Curry’s brother Lonie and cousin Bob Lee had been running a saloon in Harlem, Montana. After trying to exchange some damaged money from the Wilcox robbery, the pair had closed up shop and disappeared. Siringo was sent to Montana to pick up the trail of the Wilcox bandits. His hunch was that someone in the Little Rockies knew something about Kid Curry’s whereabouts.

In the dead of Winter in 1900, Siringo got off the train in Great Falls. He rode to Lewistown before turning North. There was only one ranch between Lewistown and the crossing of the Missouri River at Rock Point, a distance of 50 miles. He endured a brutal February blizzard and had to wait for a chinook before he finishing his journey.

Finally arriving in Landusky, he used the alias of Charles L. Carter, a drifting cowboy with a criminal past from down Texas way. With Siringo, this was pretty close to the truth. He was a cowboy and he had done some unsavory things in his time. His goal was to befriend and gain the confidence of those who might still know the outlaw Kid Curry. In particular, he wanted to find a man he called “Jim T”. It didn’t take long. As he arrived in Landusky, his horse spooked and threw him in front of a laughing crowd of miners and cowboys. As he picked himself up, he noticed that his gun had somehow been lost in the dust-up with his horse. The man who retrieved it was none other than Jim Thornhill. Siringo couldn’t believe his luck. He immediately treated Thornhill and the bemused crowd to a drink in the nearby saloon.

Over the next few months the undercover detective became close with Thornhill and learned a lot about his relationship with the Kid. Thornhill was obviously still Curry’s confidant, partner and friend. The two were partners in a horse ranch running about 500 head. Thornhill had even named his young son Harvey after the “Kid”. Since mail to Landusky was being watched, Curry and Thornhill used the Chinook Post Office to communicate by letter. Siringo also surmised that Jim Thornhill was an alias. The Pinkertons were pretty sure Thornhill was actually an outlaw named “Dad” Jackson who had run with the Sam Bass Gang. (In this, the Pinkertons got it wrong. Thornhill was too young to have been an active outlaw in Jackson’s heyday.)

Another odd contact that Siringo made was with Pike Landusky’s daughter, Eliza. In the kind of bizarre coupling that can only happen in a remote mining camp, Eliza Landusky was now the common-law wife of Lonie Curry. Yes, the same Lonie Curry that had held off bystanders as her own father was being beaten and killed. Lonie had followed his brother into a life of crime and had recently been killed while hiding out in his old hometown of Dodson Missouri. Siringo’s employer, the Pinkerton Agency, had played a prominent role in tracking Lonie and his cousin, Bob Lee, down. Thornhill spoke bitterly about the Pinkertons for the killing of Lonie Curry and the arrest of Bob Lee. The Pinkertons had traced Lee to Cripple Creek, Colorado when he asked the postmaster for a registered letter sent from Montana. Siringo probably had to struggle to maintain a straight face when he heard this. In all likelihood it was the undercover detective who tipped his employer off to the location of Bob Lee and maybe even Lonie Curry.

After his capture Bob Lee, aka. Bob Curry, was facing trial in Cheyenne Wyoming for the Wilcox train robbery. Lee’s high-priced Kansas City attorney came to Montana for help in building his case for Lee’s defense. The counselor met quietly with Eliza and Thornhill as he tried to build a case to defend Lee. Siringo listened in and reported what he heard to the Pinkerton Agency.

Thornhill never gave Siringo any definitive information on Kid Curry’s whereabouts. He did mention in general terms that the Kid was somewhere to the south planning another train robbery. Mad at the Union Pacific Railway and the Pinkerton’s for what had happened to Lonie Curry and Bob Lee, the “Kid” was going to hit them again, and hard.

Siringo spent nearly six months on his undercover mission in the Little Rockies. Finally determining that he had learned all he would ever learn, he resolved to take the search elsewhere. The Pinkertons had heard Curry was in Mexico. After recovering from a runaway wagon accident while running an errand for James Thornhill, Siringo boarded a train for the East. If he had assumed Kid Curry would never return to the Little Rockies, he would have been wrong, dead wrong.

Kid Curry did return to Montana at least once, maybe two or more times. On July 3, 1901, Curry and two accomplices held up a Great Northern train near Wagner, about 60 miles from the Little Rockies. They tried three times to blow the safe nearly destroying the Express Car in the process. They netted about $40,000, mostly in unsigned Montana Bank Notes. During the robbery, two passengers were wounded and another passenger, the Valley County Sheriff, was held at bay by gunfire. The bandits made a clean getaway on fast horses. Sheriff Griffith was quick to organize a posse in pursuit and they tracked the gang to the Little Rockies. There the trail ran cold and the locals had little in the way of information to offer.

Griffith thought the Curry gang might be holed up in in some remote gulch the Little Rockies, but lacked enough men for a thorough search. The Sheriff was also watching a “person of interest”, one Jim Thornhill. Griffith told the press that Thornhill, who normally ran a herd of breed mares, now had a number of saddle horses. Thornhill was also seen with another man watching the posse through field glasses. As the search continued, the Great Northern telegraphed the Sheriff not to recruit any posse members from the area between Malta and the Little Rockies. Curry had too many friends there. Perhaps they learned this from Siringo’s reports from the year before. Curry had been on the lam for over 6 years, and was said to have a hideout in the area. There is a place on the Missouri River, just South of Jim Thornhill’s Ranch on Rock Creek, called Hideout Coulee. Perhaps a nearby friend kept the hideout stocked with food and supplies for outlaws such as Kid Curry.

The Curry gang most likely made their escape by having relays of fresh horses along the way. You don’t leave horses picketed out on the Montana prairie without someone attending to them. Curry’s ranching partner, Jim Thornhill, was the most logical person to supply fresh mounts. (Over 60 years later Western fiction writer Walt Coburn would claim that it was he, under the direction of his older brother Bob, who held the relay horses that facilitated the escape of the Curry gang. The Coburns and Jim Thornhill were friends.) Griffith’s posse was unable to exchange their tired mounts for fresh horses. Anyway, the trail was getting cold. Word had it that Curry and his gang had escaped across the Missouri near Fort Peck.

While the posse was combing the Little Rockies for the Curry Gang they used Jim Winters’ ranch as their base. Winters was the mortal enemy of the Curry boys. In 1896 he had killed Johnnie Curry in a shootout. One story says Johnnie had taken up with an ex-wife of the former owner of the Winters Ranch. Though recently divorced, this woman thought she had some claim to the ranch. That woman would be Mrs. Dan Tressler. By 1900 she would be Jim Thornhill's live-in girlfriend, Lucy. Another account says that there was a dispute between Johnnie Curry and Winters over a piece of improved property on the Winters ranch. This dispute was carried on by the new owner of the late Johnnie Curry's ranch, a man named Black. It was finally resolved in favor of the Winters-Gill ranch after the death of Winters. Anyway, the one-armed Johnnie Curry tried to shoot Winters and missed. Grabbing a shotgun from beside the doorway Winters let Curry have both barrels.

Sheriff Griffith finally concluded that Curry and his cohorts were out of his reach. The Sheriff was also out of his jurisdiction. Griffith and most of his men were from Valley County. In those days the crime scene and the Little Rockies were both in Choteau County. (In 1915 the area became part of the newly-established Phillips County.) Moreover, as the Great Northern had already told him, the little Rockies was no place to recruit a posse to hunt down one of their own. Worn out and having no good leads, Sheriff Griffith disbanded the posse and returned to Glasgow. The robbers would not be sighted again until they tried to spend the loot months later in places far to the east.

Speculation is that Curry learned of the departure of the posse from a friend in the Little Rockies. Perhaps that friend was Jim Thornhill. Curry also may have had good reasons to return. Some say he could have stashed the take from the Wagner robbery in the Little Rockies. Some say he had a romance going with none other than Julia Landusky. (Julia had just married Grant McGahn in May, but the marriage wouldn't last.) Apparently, Curry was also motivated by revenge against the man who had killed his brother Johnnie. The life of rancher Jim Winters was in mortal danger.

On July 25, 1901, Jim Winters was ambushed as he stepped out of his cabin near the Little Rockies. Three assassins were seen fleeing from the hog pen. They were pursued by friends of the murdered rancher, but never caught. In 1907 Winters’ partner, a man named Abraham Gill, sold everything he owned and was preparing to leave the Little Rockies. Before he could close out his affairs Gill mysteriously disappeared, never to be heard from again. His relatives were so terrified, they refused to come to Montana to claim his effects. Though there is no evidence to suggest that Jim Thornhill was involved in either case, he probably knew who was. One local history says Thornhill had arranged an alibi by staying at someone else’s place during the Winters murder.

Kid Curry was apprehended by authorities near Knoxville Tennessee in mid-December, 1901. He had a gotten into a fight in a pool hall and wounded the two Knoxville police officers who responded. He was captured by citizens two days later. While jailed Kid Curry tried his best to avoid being identified. He insisted he was William Wilson. He refused to sit still for photographs. Witnesses were summoned from the Great Northern Railway. Arriving on the same train as the witnesses were Montana friends of the “Kid”, a man and a woman. The Great Northern witnesses identified Kid Curry as the leader of the Wagner train robbery. Siringo, who was then infiltrating the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang in Wyoming, heard that Jim Thornhill was one of the Montana friends now in Knoxville. The Montanans secured the services of some top-notch attorneys, to include former Tennessee Congressman John C. Houk, to defend Curry. This crack legal team managed to delay the proceedings for a year and a half before Curry was finally tried, convicted and sentenced. Meanwhile Curry languished in the Knox County jail which would prove far less secure than the federal prison he was bound for. While Curry was awaiting trial, someone had tried to smuggle several saws hidden in a box of tobacco and extra-long pipes to him.

Newspaper sketch of Kid Curry in Knoxville Jail

After being sentenced to 20 years in Federal Prison, Curry managed a desperate escape from the Knoxville jail. He took the wire binding from a broom, garroted the guard and tied him to the cell. He then used a stick to pull a box containing two guns to within reach. Now armed, he summoned the other guard and took the keys. Sheriff Fox came out of his quarters just in time to see Curry escaping on the Sheriff’s favorite horse. One local paper joked that. “Sheriff Fox says he couldn’t capture Logan because he had just returned from a funeral and was unarmed. Possibly he did not make the attempt because he did not want to attend another funeral on the same day.” Although it appears that Curry escaped on his own, Siringo heard that someone had paid off the Sheriff. The federal authorities were so outraged they sued Fox for dereliction of duty. Fox settled out of court and left law enforcement behind. One story holds that an old outlaw friend, Sam Adkins, rendezvoused with Curry after his escape. Together the pair made for the North Carolina mountains where they hid out for a time. If Curry got any help from his Montana friends, it was probably through the mails while he was in North Carolina. A story soon circulated in Montana that, "a well to do stockman from Chouteau (County) is said to have given as a reason for not meeting a note of several thousand dollars when due, that his spare money was necessary to help Logan (Curry) in his trial." Could that stockman have been Jim Thornhill?

In 1903, there was one credible report that Kid Curry had been seen near Harlem, Montana. There were also dozens of rumors of Curry sightings in Montana. When someone tried to extort the Northern Pacific railway by blowing up trains and bridges, thought turned to Curry as a suspect. He was never found and later turned up dead by his own hand after a botched train robbery near Parachute, Colorado in 1904.

Apart from Siringo’s book, there is little mention of Jim Thornhill in contemporary accounts. He remained in the Little Rockies for a number of years. Newspapers occasionally cited him for community activities like serving as an election judge or as a member of the Good Roads Committee. There is still no direct evidence to prove that Thornhill helped Kid Curry in his career of outlawry. Looking at the record as a whole, however, it can be supposed that Thornhill was aiding Curry during his entire time on the run.

By 1903 Jim Thornhill began showing some signs of new prosperity. In May of ’03 an old friend named Snyder died in Great Falls. Thornhill split the cost of Snyder’s funeral with cowboy artist Charley Russell. Years earlier the trio had cowboyed together in Central Montana. He made an honest woman out of Lucy Sanderson by marrying her in Landusky on March 29, 1904. Shortly afterward he bought an English Shire stallion in Fort Benton for the princely sum of $725. (Over $20,000 in today’s dollars.) In November of 1906 he sold his horse herd to a Canadian buyer. It was said to be the largest horse sale of the year in Montana. Then he went into the cattle business.

In 1912 Charlie Siringo published his book, “A Cowboy Detective.” Though he changed the names of many of his characters, it was pretty obvious to everyone in Montana that “Jim T.” was none other than Jim Thornhill. One wonders of the oaths that were sworn when Thornhill found out his good friend “Charles Carter” was in reality a Pinkerton detective. Lonie Curry and Bob Lee had both been tracked down by the Pinkertons. Had his careless talk with the undercover detective revealed too much about them?

It was time for Jim Thornhill to disappear from the pages of Montana history. The final reference to him was made in a newspaper article about the death of a former Montana cattle baron Robert Coburn in 1918. It seems that Thornhill was working as Foreman for the Coburn outfit when the whole operation moved to Arizona about 1915. (Kid Curry is also said to have worked for Coburn outfit in the early ‘90’s. After Coburn’s death, Thornhill appears to have entered the cattle business near Globe, Arizona. He was granted two Arizona brands in 1921. He died in 1936 and was buried at Globe. Lucy joined him the very next year. In 2011, someone posted on Jim’s findagrave.com memorial, “Thanks for being a loyal friend to the Logan’s.”

REFERENCES:

A Cowboy Detective: A True story Of Twenty-Two Years With A World Famous Detective Agency. Charles A. Siringo, W.B. Conkey Company. 1912.

In the Land of Chinook: The Story of Blaine County. Alva J. Noyes. State Publishing Co., Helena, Mont. 1917.

Coburn, Walt. Pioneer Cattlemen of Montana: “The Story of the Circle C Ranch”. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press [c1968.

The River Press. (Fort Benton, Mont.) September 4, 1895.

The River Press. (Fort Benton, Mont.) February 5, 1896.

Black Hills Union. (Rapid City, South Dakota) July 2, 1897.

The River Press. (Fort Benton, Mont.) September 29, 1897.

The River Press, (Fort Benton, Mont.) January 17,

1900.

The Fergus County Argus. (Lewistown, Mont.) January 17, 1900.

The River Press, (Fort Benton, Mont.) March 21, 1900.

The River Press. (Fort Benton, Mont.) July 17, 1901.

The Kalispell Bee. (Kalispell, Mont.) July 31, 1901.

The River Press. (Fort Benton, Mont.). December 25, 1901

The River Press. (Fort Benton, Mont.). January 15, 1902.

The Bolivar Bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.). October 3, 1902.

The Kalispell Bee. (Kalispell, Mont.) May 5, 1903.

The Federal Reorter, Logan v. United States, June 2, 1903.

The Comet. (Johnson City, Tenn.). July 2, 1903.

The Columbia Herald. (Columbia, Tenn.). July 3, 1903.

Fergus County Argus. (Lewistown, MT.) Aug 26, 1903.

The River Press. (Fort Benton, Mont.) May 4, 1904.

The River Press. (Fort Benton, Mont.) November 7, 1906.

The Mineral Independent, (Superior, Mont.) Oct 31, 1918.

Arizona Republican. (Phoenix, Ariz.) February 21, 1921.

“Pike Peaked, Kid Curry vs Pike Landusky” Bob Boze Bell, True West, June 2, 2006.

https://worldhistory.us/american-history/this-wild-wild-west/wild-bunch-kid-currys-escape-the-missing-months.php

Findagrave.com, Memorial #8558407

Harvey Logan, aka Kid Curry-Stories. B. Gill. June 11, 2007. fold3.com