Johnson County Wars in Wyoming.
The Wiki link leaves out many details.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banditti_of_the_Plains
I summed up the high points but more than this even happened.
The text is free to read online and read like a novel. I couldn’t put it down.
Full text.
https://archive.org/stream/banditsoftheplai000007mbp/banditsoftheplai000007mbp_djvu.txt
Late 1890’s The western cattle heards were in full swing. Everyone was making money, big money, some legally, some not so legally....
The full story may be tough to really figure out the motivation to what actually happened. But... if you just follow the money......
European investors dumped big money into western banks who were invested in the cattle. Heards were fat, payrolls were fat, local elections were bought and paid for by the profits. Then ranchers, local elected officials and company men got greedy and wanted heards of their own... so during the mild springs during calving season, ranch hands and local bankers started to skim profits by stealing from the company heards, cattle, they would steal cattle and start their own heards and write off the losses on the investments of the big companies. This was extremely successful as even with the skimming, the big companies still making money.
Then a hard winter hit that killed off lots of cattle. And profits took a nosedive... it was so bad that the investors in Europe sent over their own auditors to count the heards third party. When the head counts came up short, the local company men and ranch hands were not about to admit to the skimming, they hatched a plan to blame the missing cattle on a scapegoat.... the western private family/sheep hearders. The ranch hands and company men hated the settlers because they put up fence on the open prairie to delineate private property too keep the sheep from wandering off, the cattle men would use open range style grazing by pushing heards far north and slowly bring them south into late summer and fall as it got colder. But this doesn’t work with settlers and their fences. The criminals look at getting two birds with one stone, they are going to tell the investors that it’s the sheep hearders who are stealing the cows.
So, the local big bank owners and company men double down on blaming the losses on the settlers so they decided it’s time to run them off to avoid taking blame for the theft and to get rid of the fences.
The bankers and local southern Wyoming elected officials, literally ask around for local people to form a posse and go run off ranchers from their own land by any means possible, even if it means murder. Well, the locals wanted nothing to do with the illegal posse so the agitators were forced to go out of state to find outlaws that would do the bidding of the bankers and cattlemen. Train cars of the outlaws and equipment would show up in Cheyenne and the local population knew what they were there for and went to the mayor and governor to ask why they were letting known outlaws form this posse to go illegally harass and run off settlers, but their pleas fell on def ears because of the money ties to government, and come to find out ties to government all the way to the whitehouse.
The militarizatized posse is finally formed and heads north to start the harassment, they are even smart enough to send a fast rider the day before to cut telegraph wires so the settlers can not warn others of the impending doom headed their way.
I’ll sum up the rest...
Posse gets to the first ranch and have two locals holed up inside the cabin as the posse taunt and threaten them. Eventually killing them, A father and son randomly happen upon the armed posse and they narrowly escaped capture by pulling out a rifle and promise to defend themselves before the posse breaks off the chase and return to the siege of the cabin.
The father and son make it Buffalo Wyoming and alarm the people of the posse and intentions headed their way, the county sheriffs and a local shop keeper throws open his doors and outfits another counter posse with guns,ammo and supplies to go round up and arrest the cattleman’s posse. The new defense posse heads south to meet the outlaws.
The northern posse surrounds the outlaws at the ranch and set up a perimeter and try to negotiate their surrender to the sheriff, a single outlaw escapes to head south and tell the company men and bankers that they are surrounded. Bankers pull strings and get the military from fort Laramie to go take the outlaws in custody from the sheriffs posse, the sheriffs posse tells the military to pound sand. But they loose out without any injuries and the outlaws are literally rescued by the military and taken to Cheyenne where they are “under arrest” but walk the streets at night and patron local bars all at the expense of the northern Johnson county which eventually bankrupts the northern county and the local Laramie county releases the outlaws.....
It tied people from the governor to the whitehouse.
The book that covers all of this was written by a local newspaper guy who used to work for the bankers/ranchers but grew sympathetic to the settlers.
The first printing of the book was rounded up and burned in the street after his office and printing press was smashed. The second edition was about to suffer the same fate, but an unknown individual took a wagonload south 45 miles to Greeley Co.
Decades later the book would be stolen, defaced or destroyed from bookstores and libraries, including the extremely rare second edition copy at the Library Of Congress in Washington DC.
