He and Hugh Bean, "the gentleman gambler," Dan Sullivan, Frank Anderson, and some half a dozen others were disarmed, marched to the old Sidney jail, and locked in.

Sometime in the night a number of men, some of whom still reside in the new and better Sidney, got their heads together. In the morning McDonald was found near the court house hung to a pole, and the other gambler prisoners, had all "vamoosed" for healthier climates. One of the scattered clan recently died in Pocatello, Idaho, and what became of the others is of little consequence.

The deputy sheriff very likely owed his life to the activities of Mrs.' Thoelecke, although he may have proven the quicker had he been permitted to return to the store, and McDonald been the victim of a gun fight instead of at the hands of vigilantes. Had he chosen his fate, that would probably have been the alternative. The staging of the affair in a jewelry

store, instead of the usual haunts,, indicated a yellow start, and the hope to catch his proposed victim unprepared.

This was the last hanging by vigilantes in the Panhandle, but occasionally the cow-punchers, to give travelers on the Union Pacific a thrill, would pull off a stunt by hanging a dummy to a pole near the railroad, and shoot it full of holes, as a train pulled into town.

In the middle eighties, Charley Trognitz was sheriff of Cheyenne county, and he had a bill disallowed by the commissioners, which he himself considered was an error upon their part. The board then consisted of A. Frame, J. W. Harper and Joe Atkins.