That moment never came. The irons were hardly laid down when Mr. Ragsdale Gates found the muzzle of Billy Wise’s big pistol thrust half way up into his ear. All was over with him. The officer had played with him as a cat with a mouse. He promised if the officer would allow him to live, he would make no further effort to get away while in the custody of Mr. Wise. The promise was kept, and Gates was soon landed in Denver.
Mr. Wise took Gates from Denver to St. Louis, where he met a sheriff from Friar’s Point, turned the prisoner over to him, received his reward, and returned home after receiving a warm compliment for both himself and the Rocky Mountain Detective Association, from the officer.
Gates being taken back to Mississippi was confined for nearly a year awaiting trial. He escaped from jail again on the 25th of June, 1880, and was still at last accounts at liberty. It is safe to say, however, that he will keep away from Colorado in his wanderings.
TAKEN BY SURPRISE.
CHAPTER LIX.
ED. M’GRAND, A TEXAS DESPERADO, SHOOTS AN INOFFENSIVE BOY NAMED JOHN WRIGHT, ON THE NORTH PLATTE—THE MURDERER GETS AWAY AND IS THOUGHT TO HAVE DISAPPEARED FOR GOOD—ACCIDENTALLY COME UPON BY DETECTIVE CARR, AT CHEYENNE—A LITTLE STRATEGY AND A BIG CAPTURE.
Some time in the spring of 1878, Ed. McGrand, the murderer, and the subject of this sketch, came up over the trail from Texas as a herder or employé of Bosler Brothers, of Sidney, Neb. (who for several years had the contract of supplying several Indian agencies, from Red Cloud agency, near Sidney, to the agencies up the Missouri river, with beef cattle). They were driving a herd of cattle to some of the Indian agencies on the upper Missouri, and McGrand had just returned from the trip and was at or around Bosler Brothers’ range, near Sidney bridge, across the North Platte river, about fifty miles north of Sidney.
One D. J. McCann also had a cattle range near there, and it seems McGrand had some ill-feeling or prejudice toward McCann, Bruce Powers, and the outfit in general, over some trivial matter.