Shortly after Captain Dunn experienced this narrow escape from death Hugh Knox, afterwards Judge Knox, of Henderson, “incurring the displeasure of the Masons, was badly beaten by them. Others fared no better.” One day the Masons stole a negro woman and her two children belonging to Knox and took them to “their then quarters at the mouth of Highland Creek.” Knox raised a party, including Captain Dunn, and managed to regain the three negroes. Dunn’s participation in this rescue aroused the Masons against him to an even greater degree. One day Thomas Mason, the oldest son of Samuel Mason, came to Red Banks with his rifle and threatened to kill Dunn. Mrs. Dunn, hearing of the threat, begged Thomas Durbin, Dunn’s cousin, who had just arrived with a flatboat going down the river, to try to pacify young Mason and take the gun from him. Durbin being a stranger, it was thought he would succeed. But Durbin had little more than begun talking to Thomas Mason and made known the object of his interview, when Mason, without any comment, shot him dead, and fled.
Mrs. Anthony in the same letter to Draper writes: “Late in December, 1797, early on a cold morning, Captain Dunn, accompanied by Thomas Smith, started on horseback for Knob Lick, carrying out corn meal and intending to bring back salt. As they were coming near the ford on Canoe Creek, three miles below Henderson, Captain Dunn remarked that many a time, in former years, he dreaded the crossing of that creek on account of the Masons, as it was so well fitted to waylay the unwary, but now that the Masons had gone so far below [to Cave-in-Rock] he no longer apprehended danger from them. The words were scarcely uttered—they were about midway the small stream—when the crack of a rifle told too plainly that villainy yet lurked there. Captain Dunn fell from his horse into the partly frozen stream. Thomas Smith got but a glimpse of the person who did the deed; he could not, in the confusion of the moment, define his features. The wretch darted off and Smith conveyed Dunn home, where he died in a few hours. When asked if he knew the person who shot him he answered that ‘it was that bad man.’ This allusion was probably to Henry Havard, a young man who was a friend and supposed accomplice of the Masons.” Thus ended the life of the first constable of Red Banks, and with this killing the work of the Masons in Henderson County ended. And with his departure from there, Mason’s life went from bad to worse.[22]
About the time Mason and his gang left Henderson County there appeared in Red Banks and on Diamond Island a man named May. Mrs. Anthony calls him Isaac May, some refer to the same man as Samuel May, but he is best known as James May. He later played a very important part in Mason’s history. Writing of this outlaw’s early career, Mrs. Anthony says: “May loitered about Henderson and had a lame sister with him—at least she passed as such and thereby excited some remarks. At length May stole some horses and he and his sister made off and were pursued and overtaken at Vincennes. May was brought back to Henderson, and the very first night after they got him there he managed to break away and make his escape, which he effected by making an extraordinary leap. He joined Mason’s gang....” He joined Mason in the South and there performed another extraordinary act of which, as is shown later, Mrs. Anthony has more or less to say.
During the greater part of 1797 the Masons were established at Cave-in-Rock. Their headquarters while in and near Henderson seems to have been changed from time to time. For a while they had a camp at the mouth of Highland Creek, as stated by Mrs. Anthony, but most of their time previous to 1797 was spent not far from what now is the town of Hitesville, in Union County, Kentucky. A small stream, tributary to Highland Creek, on or near which the Masons lived, still bears the name of Mason’s Creek. About twenty miles south of this old camp is “Harpe’s Head,” where two years later the head of Big Harpe was placed on the end of a pole. About ten miles northeast of the Mason Creek country is Diamond Island, where many early pioneers going down the Ohio in flatboats became the victims of the Masons.
Fortesque Cuming stopped at Diamond Island May 16, 1808, about ten years after Mason had left it. Commenting on the place, Cuming says, in his Tour to the Western Country: “Nothing can be more beautifully situated than this fine island.... It is owned by a Mr. Alvis, a Scotchman, of great property in South Carolina, who bought it about two years ago [1806] of one Wells, the original locator. Alvis has a negro quarter, and near one hundred and fifty acres of land cleared on the Kentucky shore opposite the Island. This used to be the principal haunt of banditti, from twenty to thirty in number, amongst which the names of Harper [sic] five Masons, and Corkendale [Kuykendall] were most conspicuous. They attacked and plundered the passing boats, and frequently murdered the crews and passengers. At length the government of Kentucky sent a detachment of militia against them. They were surprised, and Harper, one of the Masons, and three or four more were shot, one in the arms of his wife, who escaped unhurt though her husband received eleven balls. The rest dispersed and again recruiting, became, under Mason, the father, the terror of the road through the wilderness between Nashville in Tennessee and the Mississippi Territory.”
Cuming’s account is fairly accurate, but if by “Harper” he refers to Big Harpe or Little Harpe, he is mistaken. The “detachment of militia” that ran out this band of Diamond Island outlaws could more properly be called a “regiment” of local regulators, for there is nothing on record to show that any state militia was ever sent to the island. In pioneer days regulators, as a rule, relied upon their own “military strength” and exercised it without formal orders from “official headquarters.”
Diamond Island is about fourteen miles below Henderson. It is some three miles long and a half-mile wide, and more or less diamond shaped. In Mason’s day it was covered with gigantic trees and luxurious vines and presented so wonderful a scene that it attracted early travelers who passed it. In pioneer days it was, according to comments written by many travelers, the most beautiful island in the Ohio. Zadok Cramer in The Navigator, published in 1806, says it is a “large and noble looking island.” J. Addison Richards in his Romance of American Landscape refers to it as “the crown-jewel in this cluster of the Ohio brilliants.” Thomas Ashe, whose trip down the Ohio was “performed in 1806,” goes so far as to say it is “by far the finest in the river, and perhaps the most beautiful in the world!” About a generation after Mason and other outlaws abandoned it as a trap for victims, Edmund Flagg visited the Island and found that “it is said to be haunted.” In 1917 it was, according to one man’s idea, “sure ha’nted.” This once luxuriant forest island is now a cornfield, celebrated for its wonderfully fertile soil and for its “Diamond Island Canned Corn.” All that is left of its former splendor is its size. Its heavy fringe of cottonwood and willow still attracts attention and helps repicture the Island as it was in the olden days. The gnarled roots along the bank and the driftwood piled here and there on the beach seem to hold dumb the secrets of Mason and his men and the tragedies enacted there more than a century ago.
Robbery and its booty were uppermost in Mason’s mind and were the object of his every act. Nevertheless, in selecting Cave-in-Rock, seventy miles down the Ohio River, as his next headquarters he chanced to choose a place, judging from the present appearance of the landscape, that was far more picturesque than Diamond Island. All the primeval beauty of the Island has long ago disappeared, and some of the wild charm of Cave-in-Rock and its surroundings has vanished with the original forest. Flatboat pirates have come and gone; the Ohio still flows on as majestically and as mysteriously as ever, but all its flood of waters will never wash away the legends of tragedies connected with the two places.
Mason made Cave-in-Rock his headquarters during the greater part of 1797. River pirates were numerous in the old flatboat days—especially before 1811 when the first steamboat was run from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. Travelers were warned by those who had made trips down the river and knew the usual methods followed by river pirates; but with all their intended precautions and in spite of all the instructions received many of the inexperienced became easy prey for the robbers. The Cave had often been used by travelers as a temporary stopping place and had become a well known shelter. But the fact that it had also served as a temporary abode for outlaws seems not to have been widely circulated before this time. Mason recognized in it a hiding place that offered him the shelter of a good house and also one that was very convenient and reasonably safe. Besides, it was peculiarly fitted for his purpose, for its partially concealed entrance commanded a wide view both up and down the river.
He also recognized the necessity of enticing his intended victims into the Cave in an innocent manner or by some unusual method. Mason’s reputation as an outlaw was beginning to spread. He overcame the obstacle of publicity by changing his name to “Wilson.” In order to lull any suspicion he concluded to convert the Cave into an inn and he and his family therefore fitted it up for the purpose of accommodating guests. On the river bank where it could be seen by those going down the stream he raised a large sign: “Wilson’s Liquor Vault and House for Entertainment.” And thus it came about that Cave-in-the-Rock was transformed into Cave-Inn-Rock and finally to Cave-in-Rock.