The men around were most of them employés of Kelly’s, to which fact alone is doubtless due his escape from lynching at the time. He was arrested and imprisoned at Fort Steele, but soon escaped from there and disappeared. Kelly’s home was in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and thitherward he wended his way. In Omaha he was arrested, but contrived to get out of jail, whether by the use of money is not known. In Council Bluffs the programme was repeated, and the fellow after that was allowed to go free for over two years.
In 1870 Maxwell’s father decided to make a last effort to have his son’s murder avenged, and he placed the matter before Mr. N. K. Boswell, of the Rocky Mountain Detective Association of Laramie City, to whom he related the facts, saving he was poor and able to pay but little, and appealing to Mr. Boswell’s humanity. Mr. Boswell undertook the case, and never did a detective work more assiduously, or with more skill, or display greater tenacity of purpose or more downright courage than did Boswell on this case. The story would, indeed, be told except for the detective’s work; but as it is, it is just beginning.
Mr. Boswell soon learned the place of residence of his man, and going to Council Bluffs, there ascertained that Kelly was still contracting, and that at that time he was engaged near Red Oak, on the line of the Burlington and Missouri road, which was then being built in that section.
In looking over the ground, Mr. Boswell found that his man was engaged three miles from Red Oak, but that to get a train it would be necessary to drive forty miles, to the junction of the Missouri Pacific railroad, through a thinly inhabited region. Mr. Boswell, however, arranged his programme perfectly in advance, ascertained the time at which trains passed the junction, and secured the services of a faithful man, the sheriff of the county in which Kelly was at work, and together they drove out to the point where Kelly was supposed to be engaged.
Mr. Boswell had never seen Kelly, but he carried such a complete description of him that he knew he would recognize him at first glance. Fortunately the officers came upon the fugitive alone. As they drove along by the side of a railroad cut, they recognized him standing on the other side of the cut. After observing the movements of the officers for a few minutes, Kelly apparently decided in his own mind that they could bode no good to him, and started to walk away from them. When they cried to him to stop he only walked the faster, and soon he started to run, evidently intending to reach a wagon and span of horses standing half a mile away across the prairie. The officers then left their horses standing and crossed the cut, finding Kelly at a dead run by the time they came up on his side of the track. They again shouted to him to stop, and as he did not obey the command, Boswell had his man send a shot after the fugitive. With this he ran the faster.
Boswell again warned Kelly that if he did not stop he would shoot him dead; but the fellow paid no heed, and only continued his run. He was fast gaining upon the officers, and was evidently determined not to surrender. Boswell decided to make a grand effort to bring his man down. The fellow was running rapidly and the distance was great. Boswell is ordinarily a dead shot, but at this time the great distance, and the fact that he had only his pistol, were odds against him. He, however, stopped, and deliberately squatting, placed his pistol on his knee. Almost simultaneously with the report of the pistol Kelly stopped, threw up his hands and exclaimed:
“My God, stop! You have wounded me. I will surrender!”
Going up they found Kelly lying upon the ground with a bullet hole through his body, entering at the small of the back and passing out near the navel. Seriously wounded as one would have supposed the fellow to be, shot as he was, he scarcely bled at all, and he did not appear to be materially disabled. The officers compelled him to go back with them. One of them stepped the distance as they returned, and found that Boswell had shot two hundred and twenty yards when he struck Kelly. They found their man desperate, but apparently helpless. He swore with violent rage when first taken, and asserted that he had been murdered in cold blood, saying that he would not have been taken at all if his captors had not taken a miserable advantage of him.
The officers were soon permitted to see for themselves how difficult, if not impossible, it would have been for them to secure their man had they come upon him at a less fortunate time than they did. The firing of the pistols had attracted the attention of Kelly’s work hands, who were engaged near the scene of the shooting, and the officers had not gotten Kelly to the carriage, when the laborers began to swarm around them. There were no fewer than sixty of them, led by a brother of Kelly, who came marching towards them, armed with sticks and stones, and swearing that Kelly could not be taken away.