As it was now ascertained that the thieves had gone north, Superintendent Cook notified Assistant Superintendent Carr, at Cheyenne, to be on the lookout, and on the 14th of the month Gen. Cook received information from him that two men, answering the description of the two who had hired the horses and buggy, had remained all night in the vicinity of a ranch near La Porte, Larimer county. The men represented to the owner of the ranch that they belonged to a cattle outfit, and that the cattle were down in the bottoms near at hand, while the wagon containing the camping outfit was far to the rear. They were obliged to be with their cattle, they said, and would like to borrow a couple of buffalo robes until morning. The kind-hearted ranchman acceded to their request, and never again beheld his robes, nor in the morning could he find any signs or traces of cattle.
On the 22d of the same month, a gentleman named Leech, while riding from Laramie City to Cheyenne, on horseback, met two men mounted on bay mares, with folded buffalo robes as saddles, at the crossing of the Union Pacific railroad, four miles east of Sherman station. They stopped him, asked him what time it was, and where he lived, and as they had a hard look about them, he assured them he lived about two hundred yards from there, on the other side of a little butte, though the truth of the matter was, there wasn’t a house within four miles of the spot. When Mr. Leech reached Cheyenne he met Detective Carr, and mentioned this meeting near Sherman, and when the officer gave a description of the missing horses and thieves, Mr. Leech recognized it immediately.
Carr then went diligently to work, and after a while ascertained that on the 23d two men, riding bay mares, with no saddles, but buffalo robes in lieu thereof, had come to the ranch of Nick Janise, near Sidney bridge, on the North Platte. This information was forwarded to Gen. Cook, and Mr. Leech, having come down to Denver on business, was interviewed at his hotel by Detective Joe Arnold, as a representative of Chief Cook, who had, as did also Gen. Cook, shrewd suspicions that the murderers of Hayward and the horse thieves were the same parties. He showed Mr. Leech a description of the men who had engaged Mr. Hayward to drive them to the cattle ranch, and that gentleman immediately recognized them, being especially sure because of the white bone-handled knife and the revolvers carried by the suspicious-looking strangers.
The result of this interview was that Detective W. W. Ayres, of the Rocky Mountain Association, was sent in pursuit of the men, starting from Denver on the 4th of October. By this time the Hayward murder had become state talk, as the mystery was still unsolved and as the cold-blooded nature of the affair had also become generally known. Currency was also given to the fact that he had left an intelligent wife and two bright daughters just budding into womanhood, to watch and wait for the return of the husband and father who would never return.
There remained hardly any trace of doubt that Mr. Hayward had been murdered by the two men with whom he had started out. This suspicion was greatly strengthened by learning the late history of the two men who had gone with him, which history has been given in the beginning of this story.
Mrs. Hayward was for a while almost frantic with grief at the loss of her husband, but she soon rallied with the genuine pluck which is the characteristic of most western women, and determined to do what she might to avenge his death. She offered a reward of $200 for the capture of the murderers. This offer was followed by one from Jefferson county, agreeing to pay $500 for their capture, and soon Gov. Pitkin proclaimed a reward on the part of the state of $1,000 for their apprehension, making $1,700 the aggregate sum offered for the fugitives.
As related above, Gen. Cook had already formed the theory, though he kept it to himself, that the two men who had stolen the horses were the Hayward murderers, and he decided to have them followed to “the jumping-off place” if necessary, or get them. He had already formed a pretty definite theory as to the destination of the two men. He had learned, among numerous other facts which he had gathered together, that Seminole was a half-breed Sioux Indian, and that he belonged at Pine Ridge agency, Dakota, where he had a family, going there by the name of J. S. Leuischammesse. As has already been seen, the men who stole the horses had turned their attention in that direction, and thitherward Cook directed Mr. Ayres, never informing him, however, that he had any suspicion that they were guilty of any crime greater than that of horse stealing, wisely concluding that if Seminole’s fellow Indians knew that he was charged with murder and likely to be hanged, they would not permit the detective to bring him away, and believing that the best way of keeping this fact from them was to impart it to no one. On the other hand, they would perhaps even assist the detective in getting him for horse stealing.
Mr. Ayres had a long and arduous journey before him, as he could look forward to at least a thousand miles of stage-coaching and horseback riding in the north, with winter coming on, and with many hardships to endure in a land of savages. But he started out undaunted by the prospect, and the result shows how faithfully he worked and how successfully he wrought.
While he is making his way across the almost pathless plains of Wyoming and Dakota, it is necessary to stop for a moment to relate to the reader the fact of the discovery of the body of Mr. Hayward. It was found on the 7th of October, three days after Ayres had left the city, and almost a month after Mr. Hayward had left home, in an old culvert on the Golden road, five miles from Denver. The body bore no testimony as to the manner or cause of death. It was greatly decayed, but still was not beyond identification, and the coroner’s jury brought in the verdict that death was caused in all probability by dislocation of the neck at the hand of a party or parties unknown. No wound or mark of violence could be found anywhere on the body, and the theories were that either the murderers had broken his neck with some dull instrument or else had poisoned him.