Beloved Enemy

In a natural fortress of boulders and timber, near Clark's Fork Canyon 30 miles northwest of Cody, Wyo., Earl Durand, 26, the huge, hairy "true woodsman" who broke jail in Cody last fortnight and shot down two pursuing peace officers (TIME, March 27), lay waiting and watching one day last week. They had sentenced him to six months in jail for shooting a bull elk out of season, threatened him with ten years more for killing a beef cow. Now they wanted him for double murder. A posse of peace officers under Sheriff Frank Blackburn was down below, coming up to get him. Well, they never would. Not for nothing had he sat through two showings of the movie Jesse James. This was his country, the Beartooth Mountains. Here he could live indefinitely with only his rifle and knife, eating his game raw by preference, hiding out in caves. They would never take him back; at least, not alive.

He had left a letter to Sheriff Blackburn with a return address, "Undertaker's Office, Powell, Wyo." Excerpt:

". . . Tell King and Kennedy [the game wardens who arrested him] to always carry a pistol. If I ever meet them I will give them a chance for an even draw--something I won't give you. . . .

"Of course I know I am done for and when you kill me I suggest you have my head mounted and hang it up in the courthouse for the sake of law and order.

"Your beloved enemy,

"Earl Durand."

Said the killer's father, respected Rancher Walter W. Durand of Powell, Wyo.: "The boy seems to have gone insane and started killing men he has known throughout his lifetime. The great outdoors was my son's god. I think when he was sent to jail he went nearly crazy thinking about having to give up his outdoor life. . . . God help my boy!"

Earl Durand watched the posse come up the canyon and cautiously encircle his hideout. After a time, two riflemen (Orville Linabary, 42; Arthur Argento, 46) started across a clearing directly toward him. They had their nerve with them. He let them come within 50 paces, then quickly gave them each a bullet in the belly. None of the other possemen dared show himself, not even to get the dead. The canyon fell silent. Day died.

In the night Earl Durand stole down to the corpses, smashed their rifles, took rubber-soled boots from one, bootlaces from the other. He made a false trail up the precipice behind his boulders, then doubled back. Next day when the posse closed in on his fortress, he was not there. While they tried to trail him with bloodhounds on the mountain, while militia dragged up a howitzer, Earl Durand held up a car down on the valley road.

At about 1:30 p. m. Earl Durand strode into the First National Bank at Powell. He had a six-shooter on his hip, a .30-.30 rifle in his hands, pockets bulging with cartridges. Bank President Bob Nelson, his three employes and five customers reached for the ceiling. Durand grabbed $3,000 in cash, then started shooting crazily through the bank's windows and walls. "They'll plug me anyway," he told his frightened captives. When he had fired 40 or 50 shots he bound Nelson, Cashier Maurice Knutson and Teller John Gawthrop together by the wrists with rawhide. "Come on, boys," he said, "we're going out."

Pushing the three in front of him, he stepped into the street. No one was on the sidewalks but bullets began whanging at him from all around, shattering the bank's front windows, splintering the woodwork. Durand began shooting at random. Gawthrop slumped to the pavement, mortally hit.

Across the street in a filling station, Otis Gillette, the proprietor, loaded his rifle and thrust it into the hands of Tipton Cox, 17, a high-school boy who had scuttled in for shelter. Cox, like all the boys in town, knew and admired Earl. Unlike Earl he had never shot a big rifle, but he lay on the floor, took aim. As Durand spied him and raised a smoking rifle, Cox fired. Earl Durand crumpled with a grunt, hit in the chest. He crawled back into the bank, put his revolver to his own temple, pulled the trigger. Bank President Nelson pumped one more bullet into the shaggy, dead head just to make sure.

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