Albert Slick Nard: Lawman & Outlaw
He was a man of the West. A cowboy, husband, father, outlaw, hired assassin, lawman and lone wolf.
This Deputy Sheriff and Horse Rustler 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.
Albert Slick Nard, Lawman & Outlaw
With four other Wyoming lawmen, Deputy Albert “Slick” Nard snuck into the camp under the cover of darkness to confront his former partner, the notorious horse thief, Jack Bliss. As the first rays of sunshine lit up the sky, Jack, unaware of the danger lurking outside, emerged from the cabin into the cool, crisp morning. His companion, “Kid” Collier had already strolled away to take care of their horses, a bucket of oats in his hands. They were just over the border of Utah from Evanston, Wyoming and thought they were safe along the Bear River.
Suddenly a voice called out, “Put yer hands up!”
Deputy Slick and the other lawmen leveled their Winchesters. Bliss dived back into the cabin as shots rang out. The Kid was too far away from cover and his hands flew up in surrender, unaware he was about to used as a human shield.
War had been declared.
It was the Spring of 1892 in the Wild West. Stockmen and law enforcement had announced boldly to the press that they were in a War of Extermination against horse rustlers across Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. In their campaign to defeat the thieves, the vigilantes hired outlaw informants and the local lawmen deputized the very horse rustlers they fought against. Sometime in December 1891, “Slick” turned on his former companions, including Butch Cassidy, in exchange for his freedom.
Who was this Albert “Slick” Nard, the horse rustler turned deputized sheriff?
Albert Nard was a cowboy of Dutch heritage who arrived in Wyoming around 1884 when he was in his early 20’s. Throughout the years, he was known by many names in the press: Albert Nord. Sam Bernard. Al Slicknard.
Nard had a brother, Samuel, who was jailed in 1901 for murder. He broke out of jail in Huntsville, Texas in 1889 and fled to Wyoming. But that is a whole other story.
The New York Times claimed that “Slick,” as he was most commonly called, graduated from a Texas penitentiary before his arrival in Wyoming. Whether or not he was an ex-con or was just mistaken for his brother, Sam, it is generally agreed that Slick Nard had come up the trail from Texas just as a severe drought seized the Lone Star State.
Thanks to several new laws, government land in drought-free Wyoming was available for free or at extremely low cost. Homesteaders could file claims and have property of their own after three to five years of making improvements - even if it were as little as planting a tree.
In 1884, the same year Nard arrived, more people filed for land claims in Wyoming than in the previous 14 years combined. The free-range era for cattlemen was coming to an end and the stockmen were not willing to lose all that land without a fight. The first rumblings of war against these intruding homesteaders were beginning to brew.
On the trail from Texas, Slick would have been one of about a dozen men with a trail boss leading them along a mile wide swath of land. The typical Texas herd consisted of about 2,000 head of cattle and often these herds would grow as they passed along the countryside, adding “strays” to their herd. Ranchers along the trail complained about these cowboys "incorporating" their stock but the practice continued. Tempers began to flair.
Cowboy William Owens explained the process, “"Our orders were to pick up two strays for every one we lost in a stampede and put the iron on the animals.” The cowboys were paid one dollar for every ‘extra’ cow they were able to hold in their herd.
Life on the trail was hard and the pay poor. This bonus encouraged the boys to “have eye trouble.” They would ignore the fact that the “mavericks” were actually older calves running with branded cattle.
The cowboys lived out in the open, beneath the wide-open sky, without tents, tarps or slickers. There were three or four horses per cowhand, and these were often broken-backed nags. On the trail there was no way of preserving beef. Except for the occasional "slow elk," a cow belonging to another outfit, the menu was limited to items which could be preserved. Beans, biscuits and coffee were a constant staple in the cowboy diet. A trail delicacy, "S.O.B. stew," was made of tallow, tongue, liver, brains, marrow gut, and anything else the cook could make edible.
After coming up this well-traveled trail from Texas, Slick most likely remained working for various ranch outfits as a cow hand and laborer. He would have continued picking up stray mavericks, a practice that had just been made illegal in 1884 by the Wyoming Stock Growers Association and the Wyoming Legislature.
In 1886, the drought from Texas hit Wyoming and the Cattle Boom ended in a bust. The weather turned crispy dry in the summer and iron cold in the winter. There were too many cows and not enough grass on the range. Wyoming historian T.A. Larson estimated that by time the drought hit, there were 1.5 million cattle in Wyoming. 15 to 25 percent of these herds were lost.
“For years,” said Rancher John Clay, “you could wander amid the dead brushwood that borders our streams. In the struggle for existence the cattle had peeled off the bark as if legions of beavers had been at work.”
Despite these hardships, many of the pioneers, farmers and ranchers hung on to their livelihoods in Wyoming. Unemployed cowboys ranged the land, looking for work. They hunted down stray cattle to build up their own small herds, to feed themselves or to line their pocket with money from less than scrupulous butchers that did not see the brands. Horses were also a prime target for these increasingly desperate men.
On June 24, 1888, Slick married Angene Hollywood, a sixteen-year-old from the cow town of Hyattville. Originally known as Paint Rock, the ranching community had been established just a few years prior in Johnson County and Jennie lived there on the family homestead.
The young woman was the sixth child of eleven siblings with an Irish father and Scottish mother with strong work ethics. Her parents had immigrated twenty years before to America and Jennie was their first child born in their new homeland.
By 1880, the Hollywood family had moved west. When Jennie was 13 years old, they settled near the ancient petroglyphs of Medicine Lodge in the rugged Wyoming wilderness. The region was remote and a haven for ranchers… and outlaws.
Located in the foothills of the Big Horn Mountains, the new town of Hyattville featured one store, a new post office and about a dozen houses. Slick, however, did not settle down into a domestic life on a homestead with his wife and young family. He found other means to provide for his family that were not as legal as his in-laws might have liked.
By 1890, Nard and his close friend Jack Bliss were part of the same loose-knit band of horse thieves that roamed around the Big Horn Basin. Although branded as outlaws, the men were not considered part of the infamous Wild Bunch.
The Worland Grit claimed that “Nard hung out in the Hole in the Wall country but generally played a lone hand. He had earned a right to be called “Slick” through his cattle and horse rustling. For a time, he rode with the Curry gang of train robbers and was supposed to have been an actor in several of the big looting deals that gang was responsible for.”
Slick’s friend, Jack Bliss, was spoken about in the press as a desperate outlaw who had ousted peaceful settlers from their ranches, stole their horses – and sometimes their daughters. In 1889, Bliss had been accused of being involved in the murder of Nelson Bump, an Idaho rancher. He was a member of Teton Jackson’s gang of horse thieves and, after the murder charge, moved his operation to the Big Horn Basin.
The press called Bliss the King of Rustlers and stated that “he was a remarkable large and powerful man, bold and courageous as a wild beast.” He was the most wanted outlaw by the Montana and Wyoming stockmen-turned-vigilantes who had declared War on the Horse Rustlers by 1891. Further down on this list were Butch Cassidy and Al Hainer.
One of the most out-spoken leaders of the vigilantes was Rancher John Chapman who had a personal vendetta against Bliss. Chapman owned the Two Dot ranch near the Montana line on Pat O’Hara creek, north of present-day Cody, Wyoming. He claimed that Bliss has stolen four hundred of his finest horses and offered a $500 reward for his capture and that of other horse thieves.
In October 1891, when Otto Franc of Pitchfork Ranch filed a theft complaint against Cassidy and Hainer for Grey Bull Cattle Company, Chapman volunteered to track down the bandits. He was unsuccessful and returned home in late December empty handed. However, he had made a valuable contact in the person of Slick Nard, a horse thief at Lost Cabin.
It is not known exactly when and where Chapman “met” Slick, but Chapman gave the outlaw an ultimatum. Help put the gang out of business or enjoy a long stretch of prison in Laramie. Slick accepted the “offer” and became an informant.
Thanks to Slick, Chapman now had intelligence on the rustlers, including the last known whereabouts of Butch Cassidy. On March 1st, 1892, John Chapman arrived in Billings and boldly told the press that he was there to “prepare for the spring campaign!” against the outlaws.
Two months before, in January 1892, Sheriff John Ward of Uinta County, Wyoming had spotted Jack Bliss near the Utah border. The rustler disappeared before he could be arrested. In March, shortly after Chapman’s declaration of war, Sheriff Ward discovered that Jack was staying at the Marx Hotel in Evanston, registered under the name John Walker.
Ward fired off a telegram to Sheriff Charles Stough in Fremont County. It was well-known that a $500 reward was being offered by Chapman and Stough immediately formed a posse to board the train for Evanston. This posse included his new Deputy Sheriff, Slick Nard. Slick’s wife Jennie and children were now living in Lander as he joined the opposite side of the law.
The other men in the posse were Edmore LeClaire, a half-Shoshone scout who had fought in the Indian Wars and Marion Franklin Olive, who lived not far from Stough’s ranch on the Sweetwater. Sheriff Ward and his deputy Robert Calverley joined the posse.
The lawmen followed the Bear River north for twenty-five miles to a cabin just across the Utah border. Slick and the other deputized lawmen arrived at three that morning and hid until dawn.
Bliss’s fellow horse thief, James Ervin “Kid” Collier, appeared first with a bucket of oats. The posse held their fire as the Kid strolled toward the picketed horses to tend to his chores.
Next, Bliss came out of the cabin into the crisp morning. The lawmen leveled their Winchesters and ordered Bliss to put his hands up.
Startled, Bliss dove back into the cabin as shots rang out. With nowhere to run, the Kid immediately gave himself up. Sheriff Ward grabbed the outlaw as a human shield and moved toward the cabin with his six-shooters on the shoulders of Kid Collier.
Bliss surrendered. It was reported that the lawmen recovered 62 head of stolen horses in the corral.
This was the first battle of the War against Horse Rustlers and it had ended in success. After the shootout, the Salt Lake Tribune noted, “There are a few more of the gang yet to be captured.”
Leaving the cache of stolen horses at the nearby town of Randolph, Sheriffs Stough and Ward took their prisoners to the Evanston jail. In the meantime, Deputy Calverley headed towards the Jackson Hole area to arrest the next horse rustlers on the list – Butch Cassidy and Al Hainer. After a shoot-out, they too were arrested, in part thanks to the intelligence provided by their former ally, Slick Nard. Butch and Cassidy joined Bliss in the Evanston jail.
In April, Bliss and “Kid” Collier were taken to Lander to face charges of horse theft and murder. The jail did not hold Jack Bliss for long. He escaped on May 16th by knocking down and disarming Deputy John Houghton. Collier was captured that evening but Bliss remained free.
Bliss followed the Badwater up to the Lost Cabin country and it was there that he stole – or was loaned - Manuel Armenta’s famous racehorse, Red Bird. Armenta was a suspected horse thief that, like Nard, had been deputized. Armenta joined the posse to supposedly capture Bliss, his former associate, and rescue his prized horse.
Thank you for joining us for Part I of Albert “Slick” Nard, Lawman & Outlaw. Join us next time as Deputy Nard joins in the chase after his former friend, Jack Bliss…. And slides back into the outlaw life himself!
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. This is a production of Legend Rock Media.
