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Young Tom was beaten, kidnapped and.shot, then tied with wire

and chained Inside a deserted dugout-but he lived to point out
his black-hearted torturer to his avenging lndlan friends .•.
Author's Photos.

to posterity a list of names of the Wyoming cattle syndicate
members who had engaged the killers to do their bloody work.
Until Tom was eight years old he lived in a neat little log
cabin behind a general store which his father, Jim Averill, had
established on the Old Oregon Trail near Independence Rock,
in Carbon County, Wyoming. He played in the lush bottom-
lands of the Sweetwater River and thought that life was won-
derful on the green prairie where his parents had each home-
steaded 160 acres.
His mother,- Ella Averill, the daughter of Missouri pioneers,
had the pluck of the best pioneer women. She labored beside
her husband to improve their home year by year.
They raised vegetables, cows and horses. The haphazard
business at their store developed more and more as numerous
homesteaders moved into the region. It looked to the A verills
as though their hard work had put them on the road to suc-
cess, and all their neighbors within a radius of fifty miles re-
spected them for their fortitude.
But the range had previously been open to the roaming
cattle of the big outfits. Now, as each homesteader fenced his
160 acres to meet the government's requirements, he was mark-
ed as an enemy.
There was no doubt that enough homeste.aders and enough
fences would wreck the business of the cattle barons. There-
fore these men ruthlessly undertook to discourage the settlers.
There was only one way of preventing new pioneers from
staking claim to this land: frightening the homesteaders al-
ready here into leaving. and making it clear to others that the
dangers were too great to surmount.
It was not difficult to hire men without scruples who would,
for a price, carry out a campaign of threat. Nevertheless, the Annie Oakley-Tom Vernon's guardian when he was 15.
threats did not intimidate the hardy settlers, who felt that the
final chips were down, and grimly waited to be dealt the last
hand. to be respected by the big cattle barons.
Then it was that the organized cattlemen resorted to tangible Whenever Tom heard about fences tom down and cattle
harm, creating horrible examples of what awaited settlers who driven off to places where they were never seen again, he felt
dared to enter the region. both defiant and vengeful. Constantly he heard about whole
Tom was not too young to sense the grip of fear as various wheatfields or barleyfields that were burned in the night. Barns
settlers stopped at the general store, which was also a post and dwelling places were repeatedly left in ashes. In order to
office, to make purchases and confide their troubles to Jim and save their lives the settlers had to flee.
Ella Averill. He listened with the same dramatic suspense that Gradually, Tom was consumed with fear and furious anger
a boy of today watches a TV story about cowboys beating at the same time. One of the reasons for this complex of emo-
' rustlers to the draw. It was exciting, but it seemed far away tions was .his helplessness to do anything to c9rrect the injus-
from reality, and Tom did not take it too seriously for a long tice. Even the grown-ups failed in all their efforts to forestall
time. the arson and murder of the hired guns.
Finally, however, even a boy of eight could not ignore the Jim and Ella Averill steadfastly refused to run when they
evil undertones, especially when threats were acted upon. were threatened, and Tom looked upon them with wonder at
bringing murder and ruin. When one after another of the home- their courage. ·
steaders had been threatened with death if he did not move Jim Averill was a short, thick-set man who relied upon his
westward, and later had been found dead in a gulley, nobody own integrity and who, even when recognizing the danger
could consider such a string of disasters as isolated incidents. which hovered over the whole region, believed he could win
The homesteaders soon realized that a systematic cafllpaign · out against the cattle barons. His wife stood shoulder-to~shoul-
was directed against them and none of them was exempted der beside him and practically stiffened his spine by her own
from the attacks of their powerful opponents. courage. Tom's fear almost evaporated when he saw his par-
ents refusing to join settlers who left in their last wagons. He
The crime of the settlers was in their making use of a part admired the way they stood by their rights, ready to face what-
of the range which the cattlemen were determined to keep for ever battles they had to fight in order to protect their home-
themselves. · stead.
Regardless of government approval of their claims, regard- Jim Averill was a well-read man, and one of the reasons that
less of the hardships by which they had paid for their 160 acres the cattle barons first marked him as a danger to their plans
apiece. their rights as landowners on the prairie were never was that he had read and digested the laws which defined the
GOLDEN WEST 11