July 2020
Original Grand Coulee Outlaw, Texas Jack. Pt 1.
Once long before anyone even decided to put a dam at the Columbia River there was a small community in the south end of the Grand Coulee. At first, sparse pioneers with cattle roamed the land approximately where Electric City is now located. Just a few miles away, in Rattlesnake Canyon lived the last of the outlaws, and the most notorious of the Grand Coulee area, Texas Jack.
When he spoke he spoke with a Texan accent, but he didn’t have much need for people and kept to himself mostly, in his dug out cave in what we now call Crescent Lake. Of course, at the time there was no lake, instead that were springs in the canyon wall and a stream flowing down the middle. For generations this area was used as a winter camp for the indigenous people, now it was the home of Texas Jack. He lived the life of a recluse, barely talking to any of the newly arrived settlers, who all viewed him with suspicion. Some felt he was treated wrongly and shunned because he was uneducated, and dirty, but when cattle started to disappear all fingers pointed to one man, Texas Jack in Rattlesnake Canyon. To be continued…
August 2020
Original Grand Coulee Outlaw Texas Jack. Pt 2.
The area around where Grand Coulee sits today was sparsely populated around the turn of the 20th Century, and the few settlers and ranchers all knew each other. They also knew Texas Jack, he was a loner that lived down in the bottom of Rattlesnake Canyon, in a cave. One day, Texas Jack returned home with a young half-breed woman. He never called her by name in public and referred to her as ‘Woman” as if that was her name. She dressed rugged and in men’s clothes. Some people in the community took pity on them as they seemed uneducated and unwashed. However, whenever something went missing from a shed or barn fingers would point at Texas Jack. “One day we’ll catch him red handed and he’ll hang from a tree.” All the men exclaimed when a cow or some other livestock went missing. Texas Jack and Woman were allowed to roam freely in the lawless Grand Coulee and were seen more as a nuisance than a real threat. Until the day Oscar Osborne’s prize and pet work horse Tommy went missing. To be concluded…
Sept 2020
Texas Jack, The conclusion
Oscar Osborne had a pure black well-trained cattle horse he named Tommy. One hundred years ago Oscar ran the largest, arguably oldest cattle ranches in the Grand Coulee, selling beef to far away places like Seattle and Spokane. His beef was featured at the Davenport Hotel in Spokane where a huge portrait of him herding cattle around the horn of Steamboat Rock hung. Word is that Texas Jack had stolen and attempted to sell his trained stallion Tommy, and the horse was nowhere to be found. Oscar gathered up a posse and waited for Texas Jack to return to his dug-out cave in Rattlesnake Canyon. As soon as the outlaw returned he was greeted with a passel of rifles pointed directly at him. Oscar and the boys lead him to a nearby pine tree and threw a rope up around a studry branch, tying a noose to the end. The noose was then placed around Texas Jack’s neck, but when it was time to shoo the horse out from under him no one could do it. Instead, they ran him off and he traveled north into Canada where he met a similar fate with a less forgiving outcome.
John M. Kemble, Them Dam Writers online 2020
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