In 1892 the richest men in Wyoming chartered a private train, hired 25 gunmen out of Texas, and invaded their own state with a written list of 70 people they intended to kill. Not one of them ever went to prison. The Wyoming Stock Growers Association was the big cattle outfits, and in that era it effectively was the state government. Its members ran things from the Cheyenne Club, and their herds grazed public land they did not own but treated as theirs. Two things broke it open. The winter of 1886 and 1887 killed enormous numbers of cattle and ruined a lot of the big operations, and the cowboys those outfits laid off started filing homestead claims of their own, fencing ground that sometimes sat across water the big herds used. The other thing was the maverick law. Unbranded calves running loose on the public range were assigned to the Association. So a small rancher who put his brand on a stray was, by definition, a cattle thief. The law made the crime. In 1889 two homesteaders on the Sweetwater, Ella Watson and Jim Averell, were taken out and hanged by a group of cattlemen. The newspapers, which the barons had considerable influence over, turned Ella into "Cattle Kate," a prostitute who took stolen cattle as payment. Historians who went back through the actual records found something much simpler: a woman with a legally filed homestead claim sitting on ground a cattleman wanted. Six men were arrested. Before the grand jury met, the witnesses died or disappeared. Nobody was ever tried. That established the pattern. A range detective named Frank Canton ran killings for the Association. In November 1891 his men tried to shoot a small rancher named Nate Champion in his bed, and Champion grabbed a pistol and drove them off. The two men who could identify the attackers, John Tisdale and Orley Jones, were both murdered within weeks. Then one of the attackers came up for trial, and Champion was going to testify. So on April 5, 1892, about fifty men boarded a private train in Cheyenne. Twenty five of them were Texas gunmen hired at five dollars a day plus a fifty dollar bonus for every man they killed. They brought a staggering amount of ammunition and a list of 70 names that included the sheriff of Johnson County, his deputy, the county commissioners, and a newspaper editor. They cut telegraph wire behind them as they went. On April 9 they surrounded the KC Ranch, where Nate Champion and Nick Ray were staying. Ray was shot down going out the door. Champion, by himself, held off fifty men for most of a day. And while he did it, he wrote. He had a tally book in his pocket and he kept notes as it happened. "Boys, I feel pretty lonesome just now. I wish there was someone here with me so we could watch all sides at once." "There is bullets coming like hail." "The house is all fired. Goodbye, boys, if I never see you again." He came out of the burning cabin shooting and was hit 28 times. They pinned a note to his body that said Cattle Thieves Beware. They also tore out the pages of his book that named some of them. What survived got printed in newspapers all over the country, and Nate Champion became a national folk hero within days of being killed. Holding them for one day is also what wrecked the whole invasion. Word got to Buffalo. Sheriff Red Angus raised a posse of ordinary Johnson County residents that grew into the hundreds, and they cornered the entire invading force at the TA Ranch. The siege ran three days. The settlers built a rolling wooden breastwork they called the go-devil, planning to push it up against the ranch house with dynamite behind it. Before they could use it, the acting governor got word out to Wyoming's two senators, who woke President Benjamin Harrison in the middle of the night. Harrison ordered troops out of Fort McKinney. So the United States Cavalry rode into Johnson County and took the invaders into custody, which in practice meant the US Army rescued the hired killers from the citizens they had come to kill. The case was moved to Cheyenne. Johnson County was made responsible for the cost of prosecuting, and the county ran out of money. Key witnesses were paid off and sent out of the state. Lawyers went through more than a thousand potential jurors and a jury could not be seated. In January 1893 every charge was dismissed. Before the Texas gunmen left Wyoming, the cattlemen threw them a farewell party at the Cheyenne Club and settled up. Seven hundred and fifty dollars apiece, and a commemorative ring.