Newspaper article, July, 1975
Big Timber Pioneer
A Gothic Western Story
That Really Happened
With a little bit of editing, Ed Brannin’s day log would make an exciting movie script: The murder of Henry Hughson is the kind of story that’s been told countless times in western novels, films, and television shows.
The difference, of course, is that this story really happened.
It was in September, 1924, that Brannin, then sheriff of Sweet Grass County, started out on a search that would not come to an end for nine months.
Except for the winter, when the effort was called off because of bad weather, Brannin faithfully recorded each day’s findings (or lack of it, as was most often the case).
The well-worn, small notebook, with its penciled-in comments, now belongs to his son, Jim, who lives in Big Timber.
THE MURDER of Henry Hughson has to be among the most exciting chapters in the history of the Sweet Grass County Sheriff’s office. It has all the classic elements: prospectors, riches, high back country, a blood splattered cabin … and a missing body.
The story unfolds in early October, when harry Kauffman, area forest ranger, reported to the Sheriff’s office that he suspected Hughson was missing. The ranger had passed near the cabin and the prospector’s horses were all hobbled and appeared to not have been cared for in several days.
According to the Oct. 9, 1924, Pioneer, "On a recent trip to Livington, Hughson told the rangers that he was threatened over mining rights, but little attention was paid to his statement."
Hughson was "in his 60’s" that September when he was last seen alive by Jess Clemons, a neighbor in the upper Boulder Valley. His primary income was from work at the Northern Pacific yards, Livingston.
Even though The Pioneer stated that "Hughson’s name will appear on the commissioner, socialist ticket."; it seems hard to believe that such a man ever really cared for much except his prospecting.
When the snows of winter gave way under the summer sun, he found his way back home, high up the Boulder, where he dug, scraped, and cursed – and hop0ed of striking it rich.
NO ONE seems to remember much of anything about him. He wasn’t married, and there’s no mention of a family "back east" somewhere. But for many years he had been a familiar figure up around Independence where he owned a mining claim.
According to some, he feuded from time to time with another old prospector, Frank Lewis.
Lewis’ history also is obscure. He worked claims in the same general area as Hughson and the two of them were evidently textbook examples of old prospectors who fought, for real or imaginary reasons, over mining rights. Undoubtedly there was a certain amount of jealousy involved – the fear each held that the other might "see the color" first.
But one thing is clear: They were both loners, responding to the beat of the drummer that other men had given up years before – or only dreamed of in occasional moments of fantasy.
THE DRAMA begins then with the first entry in Ed Brannin’s log: "October 3, 1924. I went up to the Boulder to make investigations about Henry Hughson’s disappearance at the old mining camp at Independence."
The early snows had begun to set in, and Brannin knew he was racing against the weather.
October 6, he and his party entered the missing man’s cabin, where they discovered the scene described above. It was clear from so much evidence, that foul play was involved and that the old man had probably been shot and killed.
An inventory of the things remaining in the cabin was taken and Brannin came back to town on the 8th.
The next day, he started back up with Oscar Fallang, a former Sweet Grass County Sheriff.
On the 14th, Brannin, Fallang and Harry Hall went to Lewis’ cabin. Presumably he was not at home; the men entered, where they found "…several things that belong to Hughson. (The items were identified by Harry hall, another prospector.) We located a single barrel shot gun, 16 gauge No. 4051, Kennedy Arm Co., St. Paul, a broom, a stew kettle, rubber boots, pair of shoes, one-half set of harness, a chain, one brown saddle blanket with three dark brown stains on the two ends and corners with grey hairs. Also found one part of blanket with blood stains, small piece of rope with blood stains, piece of tarp with large blood spot and one left sleeve with blood stains on elbow."
Activity centered the next few days on making measurements at the Hughson cabin, waiting for more help and watching the sky.
On the 17th: "Fallang, Lamp and I got our horses and pack outfit and started to look for Lewis. We went to the head of Slough Creek and found his trail up the creek toward the head of Rainbow Creek, where we captured him. I arrested him. Took him to his cabin so he could put his grub away so it would not be destroyed or "spoiled."
READING between the lines of the Sheriff’s log, one gets the feeling that Brannin was sure Lewis had murdered Hughson. But until he could produce a body, murder charges could not be filed. Instead, he was charged with theft. The sheriff brought Lewis down to Big Timber and jailed him.
Oct. 22, he returned to the scene, and the search resumed. Brannin picked up a trail from Hughson’s cabin where something had been dragged for about 100 yards downhill.
He and his party followed the drag line carefully and discovered, after a day, first one blood stained shoe; then further on, its mate, also blood stained.
"October 25 – Clemons, Hall and I went up to the Hughson cabin and with a tape line, we measured the distance along the drag from the house to the first shoe. I was about 524 feet; and from the first shoe to the next, down the hill, about 885 feet. Then the drag started up the hill in an easterly direction and I followed it about 200 feet farther till the snow was so deep that I could not follow the drag any farther."
Snow set in, almost on a daily basis, and the search continued in old mine shafts, but nothing was found.
Finally, on October 30, they loaded up the evidence on a wagon and came down for the winter.
BRANNIN returned to the mountains May 24, 1925, but on the 29th wrote: "Decided there was too much snow, so held off for a few days."
He and Fallang came back on June 14, but still the snow was deep – "five feet level". Many days were spent in one of the various cabins, out of the storms, both snow and rain.
The drag line had seemed to head in the direction of Blue Lake, located about on and one-half miles from Hughson’s cabin. There seemed to be good reason, at least to part of the searchers, that the body might have been dragged there and dumped.
But it wasn’t until June 27, that the ice on the lake was reported as "breaking up some".
Brannin and Fallang spent their idle time inside making a "bar" to cut the ice with and grappling hooks to drag the lake.
They also built a crude boat out of old boards they found in the mine shafts, so they could search the lake, when the weather did break.
Bands of sheep, brought by the herders of Svend Mauland, the Rostads and Carl Bue came through. The snow changed to rain; and the wind blew.
On the 5th, they received a report from an area resident of something dead-smelling in the No. 1 Independence tunnel. Their momentary hopes of discovery were dashed – it was only a piece of spoiled moose meat.
"JULY 9, - Clemons, Fallang, Glendenning (this man and his wife were with the group for a while in July) and I started for the lake and on the way, and on the trail where Hughson had been dragged, Oscar picked up a Hughson’s glasses. They were found a few feet from where we lost the drag trail in last October."
The ice in the lake began to slowly break up and melt, but the wind was so strong most days, that the party couldn’t stay out very long. It was the 21st of July before any real dragging was done.
Meanwhile, in Big Timber, Frank Lewis, had escaped from jail. He had been allowed to perform certain custodial tasks, and as he left the building to empty ashes July 18, 1925, he disappeared.
BRANNIN had a theory that the murderer had temporarily hidden the body on land, would wait until the lake had frozen over and take it out, dig a hole in the ice, and drop it in. But the trail on land was still hidden deep in snow; so the search of the lake was continued.
At one point, searchers found near the edge of the lake, a seven-foot stick; and then found the stump from which it had been cut. Had the body been pushed into the water with it? Was is a piece of evidence to make then THINK it had? Or was it nothing?
They spent the next several days, waiting for the ice to break up and the wind to die, tracking and retracking the drag line they’d found; but always the snow was too deep. Countless times, they looked for other signs from Lewis’ and Hughson’s cabins. No luck.
"July 30 – Oscar, Clemons and I went over the lake and run a level to see how much water we could drain from the lake. We found it could be drained about six feet. The measurement at the deepest was 25 feet, six inches. It would require a cut of six feet deep and 200 feet long to lower the water six feet."
Fortunately, the men were spared the work of digging. On July 31, again retracking the original drag line, enough snow had melted to reveal a spot of "new digging. We shoveled about two feet of snow and dug about three feet of ground and we found Hughson’s body, wrapped in a tarp or canvas."
Sheriff Brannin’s log continues: "I went down and phoned Harry Kauffman to notify Horace Davis, the County Attorney. In the afternoon, we went to a mining shaft to make a coffin for Hughson. Oscar and I made the coffin, while Jess Clemons finished digging the grave. Oscar and I packed the coffin up the hill to where the body was and Jess and I went to the lake to pick up our tools and equipment."
According to The Pioneer of Aug. 6, 1925, the body had been found within 12 feet of the trial the Sheriff had picked up the earlier fall.
The body had been hidden in an old tunnel or "sump". "Exhuming it was not easy, as dirt and fair sized boulders had been placed upon it, then from a cliff above, boulders had been rolled down as a final covering," Brannin’s diary notes.
THE TRAIL to the lake was a decoy, as was the pole they found near its shore. And close to the body, two picks belonging to Frank Lewis were found, partially hidden. "A board had been run out from the mouth of the tunnel over the grave and dirt had been wheeled out and dumped onto the grave. Some ore had also been dumped into a bin. Evidently the intention was, when weather broke in the spring, to resume mining operations and day by day, add to the pile of dirt and debris on top of the grave."
On August 1, Drs. Claiborn and Baskett, F. R. Hickman, Horace Davis and Undertaker Ernest Patterson arrived at the scene.
Mrs. Adeline Baskett, widow of the late Dr. L. W. Baskett, remembers that the doctor not only had his hands full with the examination of a fast-decomposing body (frozen when found, the August sun was taking its toll), but also had to administer aid to the county attorney, who turned sick at the sight.
Cause of death was pronounced as a bullet through the heart.
After the examination, the remains were placed in the hand-made coffin (Brannin and Fallang had used old timbers from a nearby mine shaft to make the box), and buried on the hill.
FRANK LEWIS was never found. A search for him continued with fury most of the summer of 1925. The rumors of seeing him here or there ran rampant. But, he got away. Jim Brannin remembers that he had received mail from a sister in South America But whether he escaped there, or back east, or south or north; or if he took for the mountains and died alone, no one knows, or ever will.
FROM THE Pioneer, Aug. 6, 1925: "Henry Hughson, murdered in his lonely cabin, is sleeping the sleep of eternity in the soil of one of his many mining claims, which he dreamed, as every old prospector dreams, would one day make him a millionaire. Rough boards gathered from old mills and flumes scattered over many hillsides around his claim, form his casket; and on a stone at the head of the grae the following had been crudely carved:
HENRY HUGHSON
DIED SEPTEMBER, 1924
Day Log of Sheriff Ed Brannin – 1924
"OCTOBER 6, 1924 - Clemons, Hall and I started up the hill, towards the Hughson cabin and about half way up the hill we met Frank Lewis coming down the road horseback. We met him near the Cowles boarding house. I had a conversation with him. I asked him if he had seen anything of Henry Hughson. He said, "No." He then turned his horse around and started up the hill, towards his cabin. Clemons, Hall and I went on up the hill, to the Hughson cabin, and took off the storm door and found that the door was not locked, so we went in, and started to investigate, and found blood over the floor and cupboard and table and chair, and fragments of glass scattered over the floor, and we discovered that his bed and saddles and pack outfit and boots and shoes and nearly all his grub was taken. A broom and shot gun and cooking utensils were all gone, too. We then went out on the hillside to search for the body of the dead man. We went up to his tunnel and found his mining tools were still there where he left them on the 12th of September, when Clemons was working with him. We went back down the hill to the Nindel cabin for the night."
picture: Ed Brannin in his younger days