Mary Hayes Picard, Angel of Mercy
She was the daughter of a cavalry soldier. A teacher, caregiver, rancher, homesteader, wife, mother and to some, an angle of mercy – even when the person in need was also a wanted outlaw.
This courageous homesteader 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.
Mary Hayes Picard, Angel of Mercy
The gun shots echoed through out the hills. The lawmen were hunkered down in a gulch with their rifles, defending their position. From the top of a red sandstone hill, the outlaw shot back with a stolen six shooter. Suddenly, Deputy Sheriff Beard’s shot found its mark.
It was late summer 1903 in the Big Horn Basin of Wyoming, an area that was frequented by nomadic Indian tribes, sheep herders, cowboys, outlaws and the lawmen that pursued them.
Mary Hayes Picard and her sister-in-law, Lottie Weber Hayes, were home alone at the remote 2B ranch owned by the Picard family. The children were suffering from whooping cough and the men were gone. The women tended their sick charges as they went about their never-ending chores. The ranch had once been part of Jim Bridger’s trail and continued to be used as a stagecoach stop with its large barn and corrals.
The modest ranch home was a simple cabin, chinked to keep out the wind and windows lining the walls to bring in the light. Nestled in the red hills and wild grass of the region, the women rarely had any visitors.
Mary’s seven-year-old son, Raymond, heard the knock on the door and saw a man peek his head in the cabin. It was late summer and the boy was surprised to see the man wearing a warm cap. The stranger urgently told the family that a man they knew as Ed Howard had been shot and needed help.
Oblivious of the true identity of Harvey Logan, the cold-blooded murderer and leader of the Wild Bunch, the sisters-in-law did not hesitate to help.
Who was Mary, this ranch wife closely acquainted with the Hole-in-the-Wall gang?
Mary Hayes Picard was a pioneer who had been born into the role of caregiver and came from a sturdy stock of homesteaders.
Her parents were both Irish immigrants who had come, individually, to America, the land of hope. Anna Egan had arrived in San Francisco in 1852 when she was just 20 years old. By 1860, her future husband, John Heath Hayes, also claimed San Francisco as his home. One year later, he was caught up in the War Between the States.
The Civil War began in 1861 and was felt even this remote outpost of America. John enlisted in the Army at Fort Point in California and his assignment took him to Camp Ruby, Nevada as a bugler for Company I. 9th Infantry. Their orders were to protect the Overland Route from Indian attacks and the silver mines from the Confederates.
Camp Ruby was classified by the Army as the “Worst Post in the West” but something about the area obviously appealed to John. After mustering out of the Army in 1865, John remained in Ruby Valley, Nevada as a rancher. He married Anna in San Francisco and took his new bride back to his homestead. Their daughter, Mary, was born in 1867 and 35-year-old Anna settled into the domestic life.
In 1869, the same year that their son, Vincent, was born, Fort Ruby was closed. The “Worst Post in the West” was returned to the Nevada desert and John’s old regiment was transferred to Camp Halleck.
The Hayes family followed and, with a toddler and infant, homesteaded another ranch outside Camp Halleck. John secured the VH brand in 1873, in honor of his son since JH was taken, and ran cattle.
Mary spent her formative years surrounded by the elite of the area and her parents stressed the importance of education. The Hayes family hosted the officers and their wives for parties and small gatherings, secure in the knowledge that these same officers had to buy all their supplies from the local ranches.
The Army called this post one of the most expensive in the west and planned to close it, despite the protests of the Hayes and their neighbors who depended on it for their livelihood. Before Fort Halleck was permanently closed, 40-year-old John Hayes died. It was June 1876 and his daughter Mary was just 9 years old.
The Hayes ranch was delinquent on taxes and his widow had to buy back the family home. As the Widow Hayes, she continued to host parties for the local officers and ladies. Her income came from selling her goods to Fort Halleck and she continued to use the VH brand which was now in her name.
In 1878, Anne married Nathan Phillips, a rancher who dabbled in the local silver mines and other enterprising ventures. Young Mary was sent to a convent in Ogden, Utah for her education and by the time she was 16, she was earning her keep as a schoolteacher.
Fort Halleck was abandoned in 1886 and the same year, Nathan convinced Anna to sell the family ranch and move to Wyoming. Her husband had gold fever!
Nathan had heard of the gold in Atlantic City and was ready to make his fortune in Wyoming. Twenty years before, prospectors had discovered gold near Rock Creek. The mineral-rich quartz vein was several feet thick and thousands of feet long and two years prior, a new hydraulic mining operation had been built that was employing hundreds of men. A fortune was being spent on a sawmill, ditches miles in length, flumes, and gold recovery equipment.
Twenty-year-old Mary moved with the couple to Lander, riding in a buggy with her mother on the rough stagecoach route. Her brother, 17-year-old Vincent, was already off on his own, riding the range as a cowboy. Eventually, he, too, ended up in Wyoming.
Their stepfather’s high hopes of striking it rich were dashed when he discovered that the mines at South Pass were not producing the promised gold. Nathan Phillips had missed the gold rush.
The Picard family paints Nathan as a scoundrel and tells the story that he had another get-rich scheme. Not only was he chasing gold, but he had come to Wyoming to cheat the local Indian Agent by selling hay that he had watered down.
Angry and despondent that all his plans were for naught, he ended up in a fist fight with his stepson. Nathan Phillips ultimately abandoned his stepfamily in the town of Lander and returned to Elko, Nevada. He faded from their lives, dying sometime before 1900. As a final insult, the family had to pay for his burial.
The Wyoming Cattle Boom was just coming to a close when Mary arrived in Wyoming with her family. That first winter in Lander was cold and bitter. Snow came early and stayed late. For the once prosperous cattle industry, that year was known as their “death knell on the range”.
The Laramie Daily Boomerang of Feb. 10, 1887, reported, "The snow on the Lost Soldier division of the Lander and Rawlins stage route is four feet deep, and frozen so hard that the stages drive over it like a turnpike."
Lander was not as wealthy as it had been just a year prior. Unemployed cowboys, including her own brother, searched for jobs. Many turned to rustling and robbery to survive. The Maverick Law, passed in 1884, created more outlaws since it made it illegal for anyone but members of the exclusive Wyoming Cattle Association to take unbranded calves called Mavericks for themselves.
To take care of her mother, Mary turned to teaching. Her first teaching position was for Father Roberts at Fort Washakie, teaching the Shoshone children at his Indian mission school.
Her younger brother continued to ride the range. On one of his adventures, Vince met a Frenchman with a heavy accent and the two became nearly inseparable friends. David Picard had run away from his home in Quebec Canada when he was only 13 years old. His path had eventually led him to a cowboy life in the Big Horn Basin. Soon, Mary and Dave were good friends as well, but her priority was her mother.
For eight years, Mary continued to teach in various schools in the area - Lyons Valley, the Owl Creeks near Thermopolis and in the county seat of Lander. Meanwhile, Dave pursued his dream of owning his own place and staked out a homestead on Bridger Creek. When his fellow ranchers were threatened during the Johnson County Wars in 1892, Vince and Dave were both ready to defend their lands from the Invaders, men hired by wealthy cattle barons to chase the smaller ranchers off their lands. By the time the friends got to Buffalo, however, the war was over.
On April 17th, 1894, Mary’s mother, affectionately known as Maggie by the family, passed away. Five months later, Mary married David Picard and moved to the 2B Ranch in the isolated Bridger Creek area. She was surrounded by rolling hills, wide open skies and the hard grass of the plains.
She returned to Lander the following winter to give birth to the first of eight children, Raymond David on February 11, 1896. Following his birth, David took his wife and new son to the home ranch on Bridger Creek by wagon. The trip took three days and Raymond was baptized at St. Stephen’s Mission enroute.
During these early years, the outlaws roamed the countryside but never stole from the family. Members of the Hole-in-the-Wall gang would stop by and help with the ranch work in exchange for a meal or pay. Anybody that showed up at the ranch hungry, was fed along with their horses. Outlaw Tom O’Day especially was a good friend to the family, a cowhand that worked the horses well.
Their friendships with the outlaws extended beyond mere Western hospitality. David Picard was one of the Wyoming ranchers who had an agreement with Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch. He would make sure that fresh horses were always in the family corral. Some mornings, according to his son Raymond, he would find different horses in the corral than the ones from the night before. It was never discussed and just part of life on the frontier.
Although it wasn’t well known at the time, the Hole-in-the-Wall gang spent a lot of time planning a robbery and part of that planning was having fresh horses. Butch Cassidy painstakingly laid out an escape route in advance, bolstered by relay teams of fresh horses that would be always available at certain corrals such as the one at the 2B Ranch
Although Dave and Mary worked hard, they also played hard. On occasion, they would load all their kids up in the buckboard and travel for miles to a distant neighbor’s house or a community school. All the neighbors would bring food and they would stay for a day or two.
One of these gatherings became famous and an incident from the dance was included in the book by Owen Wister, The Virginian. The Picards attended a gala in Lost Cabin where a practical joke was pulled on a few of the parents. All the children were sleeping in another room while the adults were dancing until daylight. The prankster wrapped the children with blankets and mixed them up. One dance-weary mother had gotten all the way home before she realized that she had the wrong child!
Despite the occasional social outing, life was a struggle, the chores never-ending - especially with a growing family. Mary made do without many luxuries of life such as store-bought soap or refrigeration. In 1899, her baby daughter, Francis Louise, had died and was the first to be buried in the family plot.
The grieving mother needed help. When a freighter came by one day, he offered the services of his teenage daughter and Mary gratefully hired Lottie Weber.
Lottie fit right into the family. One day, while the younger woman was boiling water for laundry, young Raymond was running around, kicking sand in the fire. Lottie responded by picking him up and plopping him into one of the empty big pots. The young boy yelled for help and learned his lesson not to cross Lottie.
In 1900, 19-year-old Lottie married Vincent and Mary now had a sister to share in the ranching life. Vincent and Lottie’s ranch was not far from the Picards and they raised their families together as siblings, more than just mere cousins.
That was why it was not a strange thing that the two women were home alone with the children when an injured outlaw showed up on their homestead in late summer 1903.
Even though Mary knew him as Ed Howard, the outlaw’s real name was Harvey Logan and his alias was “Kid Curry”, leader of the Hole-in-the-Wall gang. In 1901, while Mary was toiling away on the ranch, eking out a living from the harsh soil, Logan robbed the Great Northern train in Montana, stealing at least $40,000 worth of unsigned bank bills. He was arrested for the theft in Knoxville, Tennessee and by July 3rd, 1903, the Kid had escaped from jail.
He headed back home to Wyoming.
Kid Curry was next seen near Kaycee on foot with W. H. Howland, a rancher from Buffalo. The men stole two horses, saddles, chaps and a six-shooter from the McDonald Ranch and headed about forty miles southwest to a place of refuge - the Walt Punteney ranch on Bridger Creek, a close neighbor of the Picards. Walt had been a member of the Hole-in-the-Wall gang but was now “peacefully” raising cattle.
Deputy Sheriff Leonard Beard and Alva Young trailed the thieves up the Red Valley to Punteney’s ranch. Once there, they saw two men riding over a hill to the west.
The officers followed the men on horseback, and while they were riding down into a gulch, they saw a man coming back on foot over the top of a hill. It was Kid Curry, ready to dissuade the men from following using his stolen six-shooter.
The officers dismounted and got into a small ravine. A gunbattle between Logan and the officers ensued, the gunshots echoing off the hills. Suddenly, Logan was hit. His partner immediately came out of hiding with the two horses and helped Logan on his horse. Desperately, they made their escape. The sheriff tried to follow them through the maze of hills but lost their tracks.
The outlaws rode up Bridger Creek to the 2B ranch on Lysite Mountain. Mary and Lottie didn’t hesitate to dress his wounds. They treated the gunshot with kerosene, the remedy for all cures in the Wild West. The man needed shelter so the women put him in the potato cellar with his partner standing guard.
When their husbands returned home, they were shocked to learn of what had transpired. They immediately moved the injured Kid Curry to the Picard’s Lake Creek winter camp on the opposite side of Lysite Mountain, twenty-five miles from Thermopolis. Logan was put in a cellar away from the cabin, while his partner again stood guard.
Two men, who some say were David and Vince themselves, rode to Thermopolis to fetch a doctor. They were wearing masks and heavily armed when they called at Dr. Julius A. Schuelke’s office. They blindfolded the doctor and took him by buggy to their camp. Dr. Schuelke was taken into a room where blankets were hung up around a bed so he could not recognize where he was. According to Dr. Schuelke, the man had been shot through the groin with a soft-nosed rifle bullet. The doctor dressed the wound and was taken back home just as the sun was rising.
He was given a generous fee and was told to remember nothing that had transpired that night. A few nights later, he was once again fetched in the same manner to treat the wound which had become infected. The patient was delirious.
The physician told the men that, in his opinion, death would result within a few days. The physician was then blindfolded and returned to Thermopolis as before and he was again given a large amount of money for his troubles.
Logan was removed from this place by friends and taken to an island out in the Big Horn River where Picard and Hayes kept their milk cows. Supplies were taken to him twice a day when the cows were milked. Curry was not moved again, and he stayed on the island until he recovered.
The doctor received no more calls to tend the wounded man. It is said by some that Kid Curry did not die but went away. He declared that he would never again steal a horse or a cow, that he was through with the train robbing business, and that he intended to settle down and live a quiet, peaceful life.
Picard and Haye’s family oral histories say that, despite the newspaper accounts to the contrary, Harvey Logan survived and did not die from that gun wound or another reported gun fight in Parachute, Colorado. In the 1930’s, he was seen around the area by the now grown Picard and Hayes children. He told them to thank their parents for saving his life during the outlaw years of Hot Springs County.
Meanwhile Dave Picard and his partner Vince Hayes were later arrested by Sheriff Webb, Deputy Sheriff O’Brien, and Joe LeFors on what the two men said were trumped up charges. Once more, Mary and Lottie were left to tend to ranch business by themselves.
The arrest and court proceedings made the front page throughout Wyoming. The ranchers had been accused of giving a Hole-in-the-Wall gang member, Tom O’Day, a false alibi for a rustling charge. He was, the men had claimed, their cowhand who had worked for the 2B on the day he was accused of stealing a horse elsewhere.
David and Vince were convinced that they had been arrested in revenge for giving aid to Kid Curry. The officers’ attempt to get even did not materialize when Picard and Hayes were ultimately found not guilty of bearing false witness. Tom O’Day, however, was found guilty and sent to prison.
After saving the outlaws, the family prospered. By 1906, Dave moved his family out of the roughhewed cabin into a larger home overlooking the large barn and stable. Four years earlier, Mary had lost a second baby daughter, Bertha. This grief combined with the harsh winters at 2B had gotten unbearable, causing her to spiral into a deep depression. Dave agreed to move her off the ranch to a warmer climate.
For the next few years, the family lived in Pasadena, California during the long winters in their own house with servants. Mary’s two youngest sons, Armand “Duke” and David Rene, were born there when she was in her early 40’s.
Mary had her own buggy and mingled with the cream of society. Duke’s pony was even brought from Wyoming one year so that the young boy could ride it in the Rose Bowl parade. Stories of their time in Cali include the Filipino cook who used to chase the kids out of the kitchen with a knife.
But their prosperity was not to last. In 1918, the Spanish Flu swept through Wyoming and Marion, Mary’s oldest daughter, newly married and in the prime of her life, died. It was the saddest season of Mary’s life. She could see her daughter’s grave on the barren hill from the old 2B cabin and felt so alone. Her oldest son, Raymond, was off fighting in the Great War over-seas and life on the ranch never felt so bleak.
Then one spring they came home from California and discovered that they had no cattle left on their ranch. It had been a tough winter and their cows – and livelihood - had all perished. The Picards went into bankruptcy and lost the 2B ranch.
Mary and Dave were not ones to give up. They homesteaded on Bad Water, trading their red hills and green meadows for grease wood and rabbit brush on a piece of land that others had given up on. Throughout the 1920’s, they herded sheep for other people rather than running their own cattle. It was a hard way to make a living but they maintained their pride as they worked the land.
Dave and Mary eventually moved to the neighboring town of Worland to live with one of their daughters. Their lives had not always been easy as they forged a living for their family in this wild land. Yet, they succeeded for today many of their descendants remain tied to Hot Springs County, a testimony to the Picard’s perseverance.
Years later, their children successfully bought back portions of the original homestead that had been bought with their parent’s sweat and tears. It is their personal legacy and tribute to Dave and Mary Picard.
In 1941, 74-year-old Mary Hayes Picard died in Worland. This woman who had been the caregiver for so many in her lifetime, exited this world surrounded by the love of family.
She was a courageous pioneer of Hot Springs County and an Angel of Mercy to those in need.
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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