Walt Punteney - A Lesser Light of the Hole in the Wall Gang
He was a man of the West. A cowboy, ranch foreman, top rider and roper with the Buffalo Bill Show, husband, father, homesteader, saloon owner and… outlaw.
This member of the Wild Bunch was a true pioneer of Hot Springs County, Wyoming.
The Pioneers of Outlaw Country.
Cowboys, Lawmen and Outlaws… to the businessmen and women who all helped shape Thermopolis and Hot Springs County, Wyoming.
Here are their stories.
Walt Punteney, Lesser Light of the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang
Walter Punteney, rancher and outlaw, was well-known in Hot Springs County – especially to those that needed a remote place to hide from the law. He was a short, bowlegged cowboy with a quick smile. His gray eyes twinkled with good humor and he was a good, faithful friend.
Walt was known for his skill with the horse, an expertise that served him well when he first arrived in Wyoming as a teenager. It also gained him a spot in the notorious Hole-in-the-Wall gang after being accused by his former employer of cattle rustling. To understand what led to Wat the Watcher’s life of crime, we need to understand how he got there.
Walter Punteney was born into a well-to-do family on May 1, 1870 in rural Kansas. His ancestry can be traced back to France where the Punteney family was forced to flee from religious persecution. They were millionaires – until the French government seized their bank accounts. The family eventually settled in America where they began to build back their fortune and were fiercely protective of their new homeland and freedoms they found here.
This was evident when John Punteney, the first Punteney born in America and Walt’s grandfather, fought for his country as a Virginia Minute man during the Revolutionary War. He was the father to nine children and raised them on farms he homesteaded.
Walt’s father, Eli, was the youngest son of the nine Punteney children. In 1856, as a young business owner, Eli injured his right hand in a sawmill accident and became permanently crippled. However, he did not let this quell his ambitions or his strong anti-slavery sentiments.
At this time in history, Kansas was in the center of the slave debate and to counter the pro-slavery border “ruffians”, abolitionists flocked to Kansas to counter their votes. Too crippled to join the growing fight as a soldier, Eli joined the moral fight against slavery by homesteading 160 acres in Kansas and fighting with his vote to make Kansas a free state. During the Civil War itself, he served as a quartermaster in the militia.
Walt’s father was college-educated and filled their spacious two-story family home with a library and the papers of the day. A successful farmer and stockman with a large estate, Eli was also an active member of his community as an Eastern Star Mason and member of the local school board.
With his wife, Alvarada, at his side, Eli raised his large family among the horses and cattle, instilling in their twelve surviving children the value of hard work and a good education.
Walt was the seventh child of thirteen and the first to leave home. In 1888, the teenager arrived in the Wyoming Territory, two years before Wyoming was granted statehood. He was already an expert horseman and knew cattle thanks to his rural childhood.
Walt Punteney did not begin as an outlaw when he first arrived in this remote territory as an 18-year-old. Much like his future friend, Butch Cassidy, who was four years his junior, Walt began as a law-abiding cowhand. He enjoyed his time in the saddle and even spent time trick roping and shooting for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.
His younger brother, Veazy, or Vede as he was known, joined Walter in Wyoming and the two kept in contact with their family back in Kansas as they worked the range as stockmen.
By 1892, Punteney was a trusty employee on the large Embar Ranch on Owl Creek and was responsible for the breaking and handling of their horses. That spring, twenty-five of these horses were stolen by thieves and driven from the county.
According to the Fremont Clipper newspaper, three cowboys, Virgil Rice, Jacob Price and Walt Punteney “faced the hardships brought on by a winter trip and went in pursuit; the trip was as difficult as could be imagined and one the hardships of which could only be appreciated by frontiersmen who have followed a trail through snow and mud. The trail of the horse thieves was snowed under no less than three times but still these men pushed on.”
Despite the storms that hindered the cowboys and hid the trail, the horses were successfully tracked back to Alliance, Nebraska to the John Nutcher farm.
Joe Nutcher had worked with Punteney and the others on the Embar Ranch the previous year and claimed his innocence of the crime.
According to witness Tom Welch who had talked with Joe Nutcher at the Pardee Ranch in February, Nutcher claimed his brother Billy had traded for the horses with Lem Ritchie of the Padlock Ranch. Joe insisted that Billy “told me he had bought the horses and that he would guarantee them and would give me a bill of sale of all the horses I had there, all the horses he sold to me.”
With the help of the local sheriff, the Embar cowboys captured Joe Nutcher and Ed Nye. Nutcher admitted to having the horses but again claimed to have a bill of sale. Despite his pleas of innocence, the two were taken to Wyoming to face charges. Joe was subsequently sentenced to four years in the penitentiary for buying the stolen horses from his brother and Nye was sent to jail. As for Billy Nutcher, who actually stole the horses, he avoided the Embar posse and arrest by going to Ravenna, Nebraska, to the home of his in-laws.
For their part in recovering this herd of stolen horses for the Embar Company, Judge Jay Torrey, the president of the ranch, awarded Punteney and his comrades richly.
In a public presentation at Torrey, Wyoming, the “Judge” presented the three Embar employees with new saddles and outfits with silver tips of the finest quality for their dedication in capturing the thieves. He gave a heartfelt speech about the morals of the genuine cowboy.
“These saddles and equipment will always bear testimony to the fact that you are engaged in an honorable calling; are men of integrity; hate wrong doing and possess all the other elements which go to make up sturdy manhood. The fact that you are associated, and have been for years, with our company, will tend to reflect credit upon it and afford that protection from the depredations of thieves which is begotten of the knowledge that our company is represented by faithful, honest men.”
For his efforts in capturing the horse thieves, Walt Punteney was promoted to the Assistant Cattle Foreman overseeing more than 12,000 cattle. During these years of working the stock for other men, he and his brother Vede moved in the upper circle of Hot Springs County, rubbing elbows with the prominent and respected men of the time.
Three years later, in 1895, Punteney was given an opportunity of a lifetime through these friendships. Bill George, of Orin Junction, was at the Embar the day Putney asked for and was given his wages due him from Judge Torrey. As Walt took his leave, the Judge expressed a regret at his loss from his employ.
Walt and another Embar man, Fletcher Kirkendall, had pooled their money together to obtain a five-year lease of the old Padlock ranch. Their lease included all the farming implements and one hundred head of choice young brood cows. Besides the income from the hay grain and produce from the ranch, they were to be given one-half interest in the one hundred cows and all their increase at the end of the five-year contract. All the taxes were also to be paid by the Padlock company.
But their good fortune wasn’t too last.
In the winter of 1896, Kirkendall was arrested for branding maverick calves of their former Embar employer and killing some steers belonging to J. L. McCoy of Denver. According to the Wyoming Derrick newspaper, Kirkendall weakened in the hands of the officers and made a full and complete confession.
Punteney was also arrested and accused by his once friend, Judge Jay Torrey, of helping to steal the Embar calves and horses. This was the same ranch that had helped send Butch Cassidy to the penitentiary in 1894, two years prior, for being in possession of a stolen horse – reportedly sold to him by none other than Billy Nutcher.
While being held in the local jail in Thermopolis, Punteney made a daring escape.
It was 31 degrees below zero on November 28th and the accused man disappeared into the night in only his underclothes. Outside a fearful blizzard had been raging and it was assumed that Putney had frozen to death on his way to the outhouse. A witness claimed that they saw the body of Putney in a snow drift near the jail and a search party was sent to verify the report.
Despite the storm, Walt survived and made his way to the Hole-in-the-Wall. To this day, there are those in the Punteney family that believe that it was his younger brother Vede that had helped with the escape and supplied Walt with warm clothing and a fast horse.
Regardless who his accomplice was, Punteney escaped his jailers and, with the alias of Jones, he officially began a new career as an outlaw, specializing in calf branding of other men’s cattle, especially of the CY cattle in Natrona County.
There is debate of when exactly Punteney’s criminal career really began for the Pinkerton agents believed that Walt was part of an infamous gang even during the years he worked for Torrey as an ‘honest’ cowboy chasing down horse thieves.
In 1892, four years before Walt’s escape, the leader at the Hole-in-the-Wall was Nathan Champion and he was known as the King of the Rustlers to the Pinkerton agents who chased him.
His riders were expert and colorful, and to distinguish them from the horsemen of the smaller rustling bands which had sprung up in that wild section, they wore a bright red sash about their middle. This earned them the name of the Red Sash gang with Champion as their leader.
Among Champion’s followers were men that became Walt Punteney’s known associates. They were the Missouri-bred Logan brothers, Harvey, Johnny, and Lonny; Flat-Nose George Curry, an expert horse thief and cattle rustler; and Tom O’Day, sometimes called Peep O’Day who became one of Punteney’s closest friends.
According to the Pinkerton records, another member of the Red Sash gang was Walter Punteney who was known as Wat the Watcher, so called because of his frequent use as a lookout in bank robberies.
Champion, a well-known friend of many in Thermopolis, had bought the K.C. Ranch in Powder Springs and the Pinkertons claimed it was his headquarters for his rustling operations. This ranch was located thirty miles east of Hole in the Wall. According to the Pinkerton reports, Champion’s band controlled the northern section of Wyoming which would have included the countryside surrounding the Embar Ranch.
In those days, it was all too easy to earn the title of ‘rustler’. In 1884, the Wyoming Stock Growers Association had pushed through legislation called the Maverick Law. It stated that mavericks could only be sold at auction to stock grower association members. Cattle belonging to outfits with brands of so-called rustlers and stray brands for which there are no known owners would be confiscated and auctioned as mavericks.
This legislation even went as far as blacklisted any cowboys or ranchers who had the nerve to run their own cattle, barring them from the WSGA roundup. If a non-member cowboy branded a single maverick, he was labeled a rustler.
The Red Sash gang defied the Wyoming Board of Live Stock Commissioners and the Wyoming legislature by fixing their own roundup date—a month earlier than the date the commissioners had set. In this way, they were able to round up all the unbranded mavericks before the wealthy members of the association could.
In retaliation, the ‘cattle kings’ hired assassins who drifted into Cheyenne and other Wyoming towns and bushwhacking became prevalent. Stories of dead men found in gullies “with their arms tied behind their backs” were commonplace. But Hole in the Wall still remained impregnable. Posses refused to go near that barren valley, with its watchers on the rims silhouetted against the sky.
The end of Walt’s friend, Nate Champion, came with the infamous Johnson County Raid by the invaders, hired by the cattle barons who controlled the Wyoming government and believed themselves above the law. They attacked the ranch that Champion was at and ultimately killed the small-time rancher they claimed was a rustler.
Champion’s last testament was scrawled with a stub of a pencil as he ran from window to window pumping lead and administering to his dying friend, Nick Rae. It is a moving document and addressed to his “boys” which would have included Walt Punteney.
There is no order to the boys to seek vengeance - so the question remains, who was really the outlaw? The cowboys branding unmarked cows, which included their own cattle, or the cattle kings who controlled the legislation?
Regardless of when Walter Punteney first became awry of the law, when he escaped from the jail in Thermopolis on that stormy November night, he had officially become branded by the newspapers of the day as an outlaw.
Years later, Punteney admitted that he was indeed part of this outlaw element and it had grown beyond mere rustling of mavericks. “It happened a few years back,” he told Tim McCoy, a young curious cowboy and budding historian. “See, there was a time Tom, a couple of other fellows and I robbed a bank.”
One summer day, Punteney was standing on the dirt streets outside Happy Jack’s Saloon in Thermopolis, talking quietly with a few friends. Soon after, they mounted their horses and rode out of town together. Their destination was Dickerson, North Dakota to rob a bank. It was June 1897, mere months since Walt’s escape from jail.
The other men were Harvey “Curry” Logan, Tom “Peep” O’Day and Willie Roberts. Somewhere along the way, they changed course and headed to Belle Fourche, South Dakota instead.
They camped about twenty miles from town and Logan scouted out the bank and saloon. He decided it would be a simple heist to rob the saloon where a massive steel safe harbored the house’s share of the considerable gambling revenues.
They rode into Belle Fourche, tying their extra horses in a grove of timber just outside of town. Upon arrival, their look-out, Tom O’Day, tied his horse outside the saloon while Walt and the others entered the bank.
According to Punteney, O’Day went inside the saloon which they had all agreed would be the easiest target to rob. He was leaning against the walnut bar, sipping from a shot of whiskey keeping a look-out when the sounds of the bank robbery erupted in the streets.
Punteney, a sack of silver coins thrown over his shoulder, saw O’Day run out of the saloon, cursing. Punteney jumped on his horse, fleeing with Logan and Roberts from the angry mob that had gathered and was shooting at them.
As the outlaws fled the town, O’Day thought quickly and tried to deceive the mob into thinking he was just a law-abiding citizen witnessing a robbery.
Punteney heard his friend shout, “I’ll get ‘em, I’ll get ‘em!”
However, just as O’Day mounted, his horse reared and bucked him off. O’Day jumped up and grabbed a mule instead. Trotting past the bank, he was heard to yell, “I’ll pursue the varmits, boys, I’ll get ‘em!”
As O’Day passed the bank, futilely kicking the mule to try and pick up some speed, somebody shouted, “He’s one of them!” Before Tom O’Day knew what was happening, a shell from a Winchester buried itself in his shoulder and he flew out of the saddle and lay on the ground, dazed. Stories vary how he was exactly captured with one of the more popular accounts saying that he fled to the alley and was captured in the saloon outhouse where he was reportedly hiding.
In the meantime, Walt Punteney was trying to make his own escape. Several miles outside town, the posse closed in. A rifle shot caught him just below the right shoulder, knocking him to a muddy ditch, where he lay motionless.
“It was the sack,” Punteney said when relating the story, “Damn! When that shell hit, it crashed into that sack of silver. The impact was terrific, and I’m sure it saved my life because the posse rode by, thinking I was deader ‘n hell.”
Punteney was eventually caught and arrested for the robbery. However, he had two of the best lawyers in the region, Temple and McLaughlin, defending both him and O’Day thanks to the intervention of their mutual friend, Butch Cassidy.
Witnesses Bob McCoy and Mike Brown, riding in from Wyoming, claimed that the men had been at Brown’s ranch just outside of Thermopolis at the time of the robbery. The juror acquitted both O’Day and Punteney and they returned to Hot Springs County as free men.
As for the silver sack, years later a grinning Punteney told McCoy, “Well, the sack was pretty well torn, as you can imagine. And some of the silver was scattered all over that ditch and across the trail. It was a mess. Now, I ain’t making no confessions, understand? But you must agree, that I’ve got myself a right nice little homestead.”
In 1899, the Pinkertons, who constantly kept check on their outlaws, noted in Denver File 1728, “Putney has settled down in Lost Cabin and seems to have reformed.”
After a series of assassinations of their members, the Hole-in-the-Wall gang did split up and began to go their separate ways. Punteney stayed in the Hot Springs County area. He made good on his homestead that the silver from the Belle Fourche robbery helped buy and it was known to be a place of safety for those in need.
In 1904, he was accused in the Basin newspaper of harboring horse thieves. Twice there were shoot outs between the sheriff and outlaws that occurred at the Punteney Ranch. The Natrona County Sheriffs kept as close an eye as possible on Walt’s remote ranch, knowing that wanted men often worked for Punteney.
By 1910, at age 40, he had been married just three years and had two small daughters with his wife, Alice. By the early summer of 1912, they had a third daughter but misfortune struck the family. The Punteneys’ lost their ranch on Bridger Creek to delinquent taxes.
In the spring of 1915, Walt had reversed his fortunes and built a new home for his family. They moved from the Lost Cabin area to the Camp Stool Ranch near Crow Heart Butte, west of Riverton.
Punteney lived out the rest of his life as a business man. At Lenore, he ran the Crow Creek Stock Company and pursued several successful ventures. After his divorce from Alice and his subsequent remarriage, Punteney moved on to Pinedale in the mid-1920’s. There, he built a saloon which eventually became the popular Cowboy Bar.
Walt Punteney lived out the rest of his life in Pinedale, visiting his former friends from time to time in his old haunts in Hot Springs County to reminisce about the not-too-long ago past.
He died in 1950, a Wyoming Cowboy to the end.
Thank you for listening to Pioneers of Outlaw Country. I am your host, Jackie Dorothy
Be sure to subscribe to “Pioneers of Outlaw Country” so you don’t miss a single episode of this historic series. The stories of our pioneers were brought to you by Hot Springs County Pioneer Association.
This podcast was supported in part by a grant from the Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund, a program of the Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources.
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