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6. Kid Curry Loses Another Brother
- University of North Texas Press
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49 CHAPTER 6 Kid Curry Loses Another Brother A bout the time Kid Cur ry left the hideaway in the Missouri Breaks and headed for Wyoming, younger brother John Cur ry became involved in a water rights dispute and took up with another man’ s wife, not necessarily in that order. Little Rockies pioneer Charles W. Duvall wrote that the four Cur ry brothers had each homesteaded their o wn piece of land. “The Cur ry ranches extended from the east boundar y of the Tressler ranch down Rock Creek which swung south, just east of the Tressler homestead. As 160 acres was all one could homestead at that time these four homesteads were only about a mile and a half long.The home which the Curry’s built and where they all lived was built near a large spring which came out of the north bank of Rock Creek and the homestead joining Dan Tressler. The Curry home was in plain sight from the Dan Tressler home.”1 Tressler was building up his ranch, and he and his pretty y oung wife Lucy seemed to be doing well. Then a romance developed between John Curry and Lucy Tressler. When confronted by her husband Dan, she was forced to leave.2 According to Dad Marsh, Cur ry wasn’t the first man with whom Lucy had been intimate.3 With marriage in mind, she moved in with Curry on a ranch on the Missouri River. Tressler remained on his ranch while he decided what to do. Becoming fed up with the situation, he sold his spread to Jim Winters in 1895, and mo ved to the Harlem area with his children.4 In the winter of 1895/1896 Winters’ step-brother Abraham Ditmars Gill moved from the East Coast to become a par tner. Gill’s father, Dr. Charles Gill of Ne w York City, had adopted Winters after his father was killed in action in the Civil War.5 It wasn’t long before Luc y Tressler, backed by John Curry, decided that her husband had no right to sell the ranch, and she w anted ownership or at least half the profi ts from the sale. It w as more advantageous 50 Chapter 6 to Curry if he could succeed in getting Luc y title to the ranch, because it had good water and graze and was adjacent to the Curry ranch.6 They both claimed water rights to the land and Curry let it be known that Winters either had to pay up or leave the property. Lonie Curry reinforced his brother’s actions at every opportunity. Understandably, Winters believed he had bought the ranch lawfully and he refused their demands.7 During the time of this dispute Winters did not ha ve the backing of Abe Gill, since his step-brother had gone back east for naval-reserve training.8 The Currys’ repeated threats were punctuated not long after by an attack on a visitor to the ranch. He had borrowed a horse fromWinters and was riding down a road, when a sniper’s bullet passed through the crown of his hat. “They’re out to get me,” said Winters. “If they want me, they know where I am.”9 Winters was a stubbor n as well as fearless man and he wasn’t about to surrender his rights. He covered the windows of his ranch house at night and kept a loaded double-barreled shotgun just inside the door. It was well known that Winters was good with a gun.10 Finally, on Januar y 31, 1896, John Cur ry gave Winters ten days to vacate the property or he would run him off. A witness to the threat, who had also been inside the house at the time of the later shooting, was W. W. “Wash” Lampkin, a cowboy who had often worked for the Circle C outfit over the past several years. A second witness on the property at the time of the shooting was Edward Pierson, who had come to Montana with a herd of Texas cattle in 1893, and spent the winter with Jim Winters. He had been standing inside the barn entrance when Curry rode up.11 For some unknown reason Curry did not wait the specified ten days, but rode up to the ranch house the very next day. At about ten o’clock in the morning on February 1, Winters saw Curry “coming riding one horse...