Lest We Forget

Lest We Forget
“Diamondfield” Jack Davis, Hired Gunman of the Cattlemen of South Central Idaho

by Wallace A. Hale[i]

[I am the son] of Solomon E. Hale, one of the early sheepmen of Cassia County and sheep scab inspector for the State of Idaho and half owner in the Warm Springs dipping and shearing Corrello. Where sheep by the tens of thousands were sheared and made to swim through a hundred foot vat filled with a mixture of hot lime and sulpher [sic] before leaving for summer range. Little is known of the trouble in the Birch Creek Canyon. My Father rode to Vipont Mine with me one day and he pointed out the line at Walters Creek where the cattlemen had set a line for sheep not to cross going into Junction Valley. He told me one Fall he and his brother-in-law, Hyrum L. Hunter crossed this line and were herding their sheep well down in Junction Valley, when five men rode up to Father and ask him if he wanted to die or go back. Father told them he guessed he’d sooner go back. They rode to Hyrum L. Hunter and gave him the same choice. It seemed they didn’t move fast enough to suit them for the next day while Uncle was out with his sheep he seen men ride up to his camp with a team of mules which they hitched to his camp and went as hard as mules could run back down to Fish Creek. Father said [“Y]ou should have seen the camp with nothing put away for moving, dishes, pans, lamp and grub all over the floor – sure a mess.[”] Well some filing on homestead land and a two mile limit law passed, pretty well put an end to trouble on Birch Creek, but it soon shifted to West Hills, the head of Goose Creek and Shoshone Basin. The sheep gradually pushing the cattlemen back and tromping out the grass, the stocky shade brush gradually taking place of the lush grass. Until the cattlemen established a line known as dead man ridge south of head of Goose Creek and hired a man by the name of Jack Davis, who later became known as Diamondfield Jack, to ride that ridge and see that no sheep crossed. As soon as the sheepmen crossed that line fireworks started. There was quite a bit of excitement at our house when we heard he had Sol Hale and Bill Tolman as marked men he was to kill. In an argument he watched his chance and shot Tolman. He helped him to a place and hollered to other sheepmen to come and get him. He finely [sic] got well, but he soon had a night battle with Loren Wilson and Brother Joseph and several other sheep herders were threatened and turned back.

On February 4, 1896, my Uncle Davis Hunter called at the camp of John Wilson and Dan Cummings on his way to Oakley. After a short visit he left and about 12 days later Ted Severe noticed the sheep of Wilson and Cummings scattered around, and on going to their camp found they had been murdered. Noel Carlson brought the word to Oakley and then it was relayed to Albion to Harvey Perkins, Sheriff of Cassia County. So he and Dr. Story went to the camp and Dr. Story performed an autopsy on the badly decomposed bodies. Then they were brought to the old rock school house in Oakley where they were prepared for burial.

And how I remember as a boy the knolling of the old school bell. When they arrived in the middle of the night the school house was only ½ block from our house. I was a lover of dogs and how I pitied the two dogs tied to the wagon for 12 days without food or water. How they must have looked for a sour dough biscuit to be thrown to them, or why they weren’t asked to round up the sheep. And then Uncle Davis telling of them nearly eating up 2 sets of harnesses, and how when they were untied, they could hardly stand up.

Well papers were soon got out for the arrest of Diamondfield Jack. Through luck he was located in a prison in Arizona. Sheriff O. P. Anderson and E. R. Dayley left to bring him back to Albion, where on April 8, 1897 one of the bitterest legal dramas in the history of Idaho, if not the whole west, was started. Judge C.O. Stockslager presiding; John G. Rogers, Wm. E. Borah, and O. W. Powers for the prosecution; and James H. Hawley and J. Perky and Wm. Puckett for the defense. Well it struck again at our home when Father was drawn on the Jury, but he was soon dismissed. After the trial had gone for 7 days the Jury returned a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree, and on the 4th of June 1897 the judge passed sentence that Diamondfield Jack was to be hanged by the neck until dead.

Davis from his prison cell watched a gallows being built where he was to be hung. It never happened, but the legal battle lasted some 6 years. On December 18, 1905, Davis walked out a free man. While I sit here in the Oakley Village Office I am within ten feet of the Old Jail Cell that held Diamondfield Jack so long.

[i] Source: Wallace A. Hale’s Book of Remembrance