In early January, 1867, Jack McDowell of Kansas City stepped into the W. K. Pollard Livery at Council Grove in need of transportation to Junction City. Pollard had been in Council Grove since 1857. He had seen hundreds of travelers passing along the trail, most of them in a rush to move on.

McDowell had spent his time in town mostly bullying and blustering over his need to get to Junction City. He was traveling with a woman of questionable character and had decided it was time to leave town.

When McDowell could not obtain transportation by other means he hired a team of horses and a buggy from liveryman, W. K. Pollard. McDowell surely looked risky, but then anyone on the trail in those days was capable of a dubious past. Doing business on the frontier carried its risks.

Claiming he would return in four days, Pollard leased a buggy and team of horses to McDowell. Four days passed without a sign of McDowell. Five days, six days; Pollard waited as long as he dared. The seventh day, Jan. 15, 1867, Pollard traveled to Junction City only to discover that McDowell had set out for Omaha, Neb.

Powell telegraphed a wire to the Omaha City marshal who quickly discovered that McDowell had sold the team. McDowell was arrested before he could leave Omaha. According to the Omaha Herald, when McDowell was arrested the marshal seized $225.50 believed to be part of the proceeds from the sale. G.

F. G. Hunt, Esq., a correspondent quoted in many Kansas newspapers, related that Pollard “procured a requisition” from the governor of Kansas and traveled to Omaha to get his man. McDowell was surrendered to Pollard, who brought him back to Council Grove. The pair arrived on Feb. 1.

On the way McDowell told Pollard that he did not want to travel by way of Lawrence. He claimed that he had been in Quantrill’s raid and feared being recognized.

At Council Grove Justice Stevenson immediately interviewed the prisoner and bound him over under an $1,800 bond. He was secured in a log house with four guards to keep him in place.

Being a man of the frontier, McDowell expressed his indignation at his incarceration in a most crude and insulting manner. While under guard he boasted that during the war he had killed 150 Union men. Some he claimed that he had hung “just to see them kick: and others he shot, “just to see them jump:’ He had “marked” the men who assisted in his prosecution as well as the guards who were holding him against his will. McDowell swore that if it took “99 years” he would return to Council Grove and with a rope tied to his saddle horn and looped around their necks he would drag his persecutors through the streets. He would have his revenge!

Writing to the Leavenworth Daily Bulletin, a witness signed as “CITIZEN; noted that “These boasts ... had the effect of impressing somebody that he was a useless encumbrance to the earth:’

At about midnight, Saturday, Feb. 2, an estimated 10 to 15 masked men burst into the house with revolvers cocked. Having been taken by surprise the guards relinquished the prisoner who was taken to the bridge over the Neosho River. McDowell’s last words were not recorded before the last breath of life was extinguished with a hangman’s rope. The next morning, Feb. 3, 1867, a coroner’s jury was summoned to investigate the lynching. Not surprisingly, “the names of those who performed the summary execution [could not] be learned:’

After the hanging a letter from an unknown Kansas City acquaintance was published in several papers refuting some of the claims about the desperado. He had in fact joined the rebels riding as a bushwhacker. When he was captured by federal troops he revealed the location of Cole Younger’s camp to gain his own release. Nine of Younger’s men were killed.

“Since that time McDowell kept pretty clear of the rebels:’ He had a miserable reputation at Kansas City as a horse thief and a suspected murderer, but he evidently told of the raid on Lawrence and other exaggerated exploits to intimidate his captors.

In the end McDowell overplayed his hand. As F. G. Hunt suggested, “doubtless, had the prisoner behaved himself in a decent manner he might have escaped his terrible fate:’ But for such men decency was “a bridge too far: that defied understanding. Unfortunately for Jack McDowell that bridge ultimately led him to the end of his rope on The Way West.

“The Cowboy,” Jim Gray is author of the book Desperate Seed: Ellsworth Kansas on the Violent Frontier, Ellsworth, KS. Contact Kansas Cowboy, 220 21st Road, Geneseo, Kan. Phone: (785) 531-2058 or kansascowboy@kans.com.