Week 31: July/August
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7/30 of…1877
Day Five of the “Thirsting Time“: Capt. Nolan and 13 men reach Double Lakes. Help will arrive the next day. Eventually the dead will all be accounted for: twenty-five horses, four mules; four soldiers and one buffalo hunter. Most survivors had been without water in the barren desert for more than eighty hours. This incredible story: of courage, deceit and survival, replete with dissension and desertion in the ranks and the Eastern papers in a tizzy over the whole event; “The Staked Plains Horror” is almost over. {001}
1884
James Miller+2 takes his first victim, brother-in-law John Coop. Coop was shot in the head while sleeping on his porch after a disagreement with the teenage Miller whose life sentence was voided by a technicality; Plum Creek, TX. {001}
1885
Bat Masterson orders a pair of .45 cal. single action revolvers from Colt on the stationery of Cary and Wright’s Opera House Saloon, “…the barrel length should be the same length that the ejacting [sic] rod is, its finish should be nickel, and the grips, gutta percha.” {001}
1971
Midnight: the closing of the Chicago Union Stockyards after a run of 106 years. (see: Photo Gallery – People and Places Photos – Where did all the little dogies git along to?) {001}
7/31 of… 1860
Denver, CO, A group of rowdies from the Criterion move to take action against Rocky Mountain News Editor W.N. Byers for his editorial against gambler Charley Harrison (see: Wk. 30, 07/25/1860). Assaulting Byers at his office, they coerce him to accompany them back to the Criterion where he is rescued by Harrison, armed and sent back to his office. Byers and others barricade themselves
in his office and soon George Steele rides by on a horse and fires
