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
Part II –– Lawman to Outlaw
It is 1892 and the Horse Rustler Wars have been declared in Wyoming. Albert “Slick” Nard had been recruited from the ranks of horse thief to that of Deputy Sheriff. His former best friend and fellow outlaw, Jack Bliss, has just escaped from the Lander Jail and stolen the racehorse, Red Bird. This famous horse belonged to another horse thief turned deputized lawman, Manuel Armenta.
Red Bird carried Bliss 90 miles north along the east bank of the Big Horn River, past Hyattville. At the cow town of Alamo, Bliss reached the ferry landing just ahead of the posse.
Armenta and Deputy Sherman Long dismounted at twenty-five yards and fired. Bliss shot back and ran to the willows for cover. Hearing the gunshots, the ferryman, Jack Shaffer, rowed across the river. Bliss was able to steal the ferry in the confusion, stranding the men on the other side of the bank. He then stole Shaffer’s horse and Winchester and escaped. Armenta recovered Red Bird who, unharmed from her adventure, continued to win races across Wyoming.
Sheriff Stough led another posse to recapture the ‘notorious’ outlaw. Once again, Slick Nard was employed to track down his former friend. The press reported that during the pursuit “there were a couple of scrimmages without result. Once the posse fired on Bliss at thirty paces but missed the outlaw and the rustler escaped to the sage brush.”
The trail eventually took them to a mining camp above the town of Arland, near present-day Meeteetse. Bliss was barricaded in a stone fortress twenty-three miles from the mining camp and supplied himself with food by pillaging miners’ cabins.
Deputies Slick Nard and David Shuck arrived at the hideout first and according to the men, they had to act fast. They said they first discovered Jack Bliss’s horse, and afterward perceived smoke coming up from behind a large rock.
Slick Nard made a hasty survey of the situation. On one side was timber, and on the other was a rocky bluff. Nard stationed himself near the bluff and Shuck was in position to cut off escape into the timber should Bliss attempt to run.
After waiting a short time Bliss came out from his place of concealment. When about eighty yards from his fire, at which place he left his gun, he stopped a moment when he was called on to surrender, which he refused to do and at the same time starting on a run for his gun.
There was no time to lose and the boys opened on him, firing five shots which took effect and the desperado fell forward on his face when he made a little more than half the distance to his gun.
At first Nard said. he was suspicious that Bliss might not be dead but on approaching the prostate form of his former friend, he found him cold in death. Nard and Shuck took charge of the camp, ate supper and slept soundly all night.
The next morning, they notified Deputy Sheriff Irey and Detective Benbrook, who after viewing the body, wrapped it in the blankets composing his bed and left the remains amid the eternal snows of the Rockies within ten miles of the top of the main range.”
The killing made national headlines and was sensationalized… “Died with his boots on!” “The ‘King of Rustlers’ Killed by a Deputy Sheriff” “End of a Notorious Desperado in Wyoming”
The shooting death of Jack Bliss came as a shock to Wyoming locals, however. The press noted that, “This astonished many people, as Nard and Bliss had been friends, chums and boon companions for years, and why Nard should have a desire to kill his best friend caused considerable comment.”
According to locals who knew him, Nard took the scalp and ears as proof of his kill to Chapman, expecting the $500 reward which was not paid out. Instead, Sheriff Stough paid the two men a smaller amount.
Slick continued to work as a Deputy for Sheriff Stough and in September 1891, made headlines again. Constable Byron Smith had been murdered in July and Slick was ordered to track down the two young men, A. C. Moore and Ed Winkley, who had committed the crime.
The Cheyenne Daily Leader reported that Deputies Slick Nard, James Edward and John B. Houghton “had killed Winkley on the head of Green River in Unita county on the morning of September 23rd. Moore is in hiding in the mountains and the other deputies are still on his trail.
Winkley who had been in the habit of coming to the cabin of a trapper named Wagontuer, was ordered to throw up his hands when he came up from the cabin. Instead of complying, he grabbed his revolver when Nard and Edwards fired and dropped him. The body was taken to Justice Motts and an inquest held after which the body was buried.”
By November, rumors were swirling that Nard had been killed by Moore but he showed up alive in Lander. His good behavior wasn’t to last however. The next month, Slick was arrested for stealing sheep with his partners Dick Dirk and Ed Nye.
Nard was released before the trial and was back to work as a Deputy for Sheriff Stough. The next year, Slick sued John Chapman for $2,000 for services rendered between March and May 1892. He claimed that he found out where Jack Bliss, George Spencer and Mike Barnett were and had informed Chapman. Spencer and Barnett were both killed in Jackson Hole in April 1892 during the horse thief war. Nard had provided the information that led Wyoming and Montana lawmen to these rustlers.
Meanwhile, rumors of mistaken identities began to fly. Sheriff Angus of Johnson County claimed that the notorious desperado Jack Bliss was still alive and under cover in Idaho. He also said that it was Billy Nutcher, another horse rustler, who had been Slick’s partner during the shootout, not David Shucker. Angus said that Nutcher had confessed to him that the dead man was not Jack Bliss.
The War Against the Horse Rustlers continued. The Carbon County Journal reported in November 1892, “It is now evident that these thieves are being systematically hunted down. Stockmen have come to the conclusion that there is no other way to break up the bands of range pirates. The vigilantes are traveling two or three together and simply hunt down marked men. There are no less than fifty men in the northern country who must leave or be killed.”
In November 1894, after the vigilantes finally ended their War on Rustlers, Stough stepped down as Sheriff of Fremont County. The new Sheriff, Democrat Orson Grimmett, did not rehire Nard as a lawman. Leaving Jennie and his family in Lander, Slick wandered up to the Hot Springs in Johnson County and the new town of Thermopolis.
He was hired as a laborer by Mike McGrath, a local businessman, and spent his time working, playing with the McGrath children and hanging out in the local saloons. He had a reputation as a heavy boaster and often related his killings to anyone who would listen.
Slick Nard happened to be at the springs one day when a sheep shearer by the name of William Jack Ewing was there. Nard saw Ewing take a roll of money from his pockets and overheard him telling someone that he was leaving town the following day.
That evening, Slick Nard asked Mrs. Minnie McGrath for a lunch. He wished, he said, to hunt some horses and would be gone all day. Unsuspecting, Mrs. McGrath fixed up a big lunch. In the morning Nard cut an unusually large pile of wood and did all the chores before setting out.
After Ewing had gone but a few miles, a masked man raised up out of a dry gulch at the side of the road and said, “Hold ‘em up.”
The sudden sight of the outlaw frightened the team and they sprang forward and turned sharply to the left. The outlaw’s gun cracked just as Ewing was turned sideways and the bullet struck Ewing in the right arm one inch below the elbow. The bullet broke the arm and tore a great hole in it, passed across Ewing’s front tearing a great gash across his stomach which exposed his entrails, and then entered his left arm. The left arm was broken, too, so Ewing could not control the team.
The frightened team turned around and charged back up the road in the direction from which they had come. Ewing glanced over his shoulder and saw that the outlaw seemed to be having trouble with his gun. He was jerking on the lever that extracts the shell. No sooner had Ewing turned back than the gun cracked again and he felt a bullet graze his neck.
By this time, the team was sending up a cloud of dust and Ewing realized he was still alive and had a chance to get away. So he began to shout at the team to urge them on.
This shooting occurred about forty miles down the Big Horn River from the present town of Thermopolis on the south side of the river. There was a big flat that stretched for a distance of nearly nine miles and the road across this flat was very good. Had it not been for the good road, the team would have turned the buggy over. As it was, they ran until they were exhausted.
The team finally walked up in front of Henry Sheard’s saloon, the road going right by the business. Ewing was taken to a small cabin and Edward Farlow doctored him up. The pioneer from Lander just happened to be in town with medicine and bandages because he was caring for his own brother. Zeke Farlow, an Embar cowboy, had been accidently shot in the leg by an over-exuberant cowboy celebrating a day off.
One of the Hole-in-the-Wall gang members, Dusty Jim, volunteered to go get Dr. Schuelke from Lander and rode his horse hard to help the young stranger.
Ewing identified Slick Nard as the would-be killer and circumstantial evidence pointed directly to him. Slick had borrowed Henry Sheard’s rifle which had a firing pin made out of the end of a nail. The saloon owner also loaded his own shells and made unique two-ring bullets. The bullet cut out of Ewing’s arm matched.
The evidence continued to pile up. Slick’s horse had a broken hoof which matched the one at the scene. Mrs. McGrath identified the paper abandoned at the scene as the one she had wrapped his lunch in. Slick had no alibi and was out of town when the murder was attempted.
Slick returned to the Hot Springs making his capture an easy affair. Sheard and another man were deputized to arrest him and walked up to either end of his tent at Rocky Row, the illegal camping settlement at the springs. They told him to put his hands up and took him in without a fight.
Since there was no jail in town and the Hole-in-the-Wall gang were loitering around, intimidating the townsfolk, the choice was made to chain Slick to a log. Farlow and Sheard knocked the chinking out between the logs in a small cabin and looped a chain around the exposed log. The other end was placed around Slick’s ankle. He protested against the treatment and begged for his freedom. When none was given, he cussed out his jailers and called them every name he could think of.
Slick’s trial was set for three days hence and held out in the open air, in front of Sheard’s saloon. The locals were nervous because the entire time, members of the Hole-in-the-Wall gang such as Jakey Snyder and Bob McCoy, were present, talking quietly among themselves as they watched the proceedings. Some even remained mounted on their horses and made quiet jokes.
Ed Farlow, who was in charge of the proceedings, kept an eye on them. He stated that although he was well acquainted with and on easy and friendly terms with all these outlaws, he didn’t trust them. Any moment, they could free Nard.
That night, the town folk snuck Slick Nard out of Thermopolis and in the morning, the gang were shocked to find the prisoner gone. They demanded to know where the outlaw was.
When they were told what had happened, Hole-in-the-Wall gang member Mike Brown responded with heat, “If you had said the word, we would have helped you hang him. We may rob a bank, or hold up a stage or railroad pay car now and then, but we are not killing working men for their money. We are not that damn low yet.”
In Buffalo, the county seat for the area at the time, Slick Nard was tried before Judge Metz and found guilty. The judge, in sentencing him, said, “The legislature of this state has been too lenient for offences of this kind; they have fixed the extreme penalty at fourteen years. I will sentence you to fourteen years imprisonment and, you scoundrel, I am sorry I cannot give you more.”
The same day as Slick was sentenced, his wife Jennie was granted a divorce. The 21-year-old was through with being the wife of an outlaw. She moved her family back to Hyattville and eventually remarried to a rancher without known ties to rustling.
Furthering Slick’s bad humor, Butch Cassidy, who Slick had turned on, was serving time at the Laramie penitentiary when the disgraced deputy arrived to begin his own sentence.
At first, Slick Nard was listed as “Bad” and his conduct while in jail as “Not very good”. All long-term inmates were expected to work in the broom factory and he refused. Within two years however, Slick found salvation. He repented of his evil ways, hoping to make amends for his previous deviltry.
Now a model prisoner, Slick Nard earned time off for good behavior. He was released from prison in 1907, having served eleven years of his fourteen-year sentence, and left Wyoming for Goldfield, Nevada. He described himself as a laborer doing odd jobs up until his death on April 15th, 1913 in Nevada.
However, that is not the end of his story. Like so many of the pioneers and outlaws of the era, he was seen “alive” by witnesses years later.
On August 30th, 1917, the newspaper declared that locals were convinced that Slick Nard was still alive.
The Worland Grit reported, “Was M. Hoyt, the cowboy entertainer, in town last week “Slick” Nard one-time famous bad man of the Basin country? A number of the old timers who looked the wild west man over closely, say that he is one and the same. Mrs. Jennie Boland, who knew Nard well in the early days, talked to him and says it was “Slick” all right, with his hair dyed. John Burns, head of the Indian police, also knew Nard on sight. Mr. Burns was at Bonanza, the first oil camp in the Basin, nearly thirty years ago when the bad man was hanging out in that country. He was well acquainted with Nard at that time and met him again in Lander last week and talked over old times with him.”
After that last sighting, Slick walked off the pages of history, never to be heard from again. He was a lawman and outlaw who finally found his peace.
Thank you for listening to Pioneers of Outlaw Country. I am your host, Jackie Dorothy with special thanks to author and historian, Mike Bell.
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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