Grand Teton National Park (Wyo.); Jackson Hole (Wyo.)
Late that summer when haying time was at hand in Teton Basin, Wolff was
surprised to see a man approaching his cabin on foot. “Seeing any man,
and especially one afoot, was a rare sight in those days,” commented
Wolff. It proved to be the miner, Tonnar, and he asked to be given work.
Curious as to what was up between Tonnar and his partners, Wolff quizzed
him but received only the rather unsatisfactory statement that Tonnar
had left the 3 miners while they were making plans to raft the Snake in
order to fetch a supply of meat for the camp.
With hay ready for cutting, Wolff was glad to hire Tonnar for work in
the fields. For a month the two men slept together, and during this time
Wolff noticed that Tonnar invariably wore his gun or had it within
reach, but while he suspected that all was not right he made no further
investigation. Wolff retained a mental picture of Tonnar as being a
small, dark-complexioned man of rather untrustworthy appearance and
manner.
Once Tonnar instructed Wolff to investigate a certain hiding place in
the cabin, and he would find some valuables which he asked him to take
care of. Wolff did so and claims that he found a silver watch and a
purse containing $28.
Then one day late in August a sheriff and posse came to the cabin and
asked Wolff if he could furnish information concerning the whereabouts
of the miner, Jack Tonnar (at the time Tonnar was absent, working in the
fields.) Briefly the posse explained that Tonnar’s 3 partners had been
found dead, that Tonnar was believed guilty of their murder, and that
the posse was commissioned to take him. Horrified to think that for a
month he had sheltered and slept with such a desperate character, Wolff
could only reply, “My God! Grab him while you can!” Tonnar was found on
a haystack and captured before he could bring his gun into play.
From the posse Wolff learned that a party boating from Yellowstone Park
down the Lewis and Snake Rivers, under the leadership of one Frye
(Free), had stopped at the workings of the miners but had found them
unoccupied. Just below the encampment, at the foot of a bluff where the
Snake had cut into a gravel bank, they had come upon 3 bodies lying in
the edge of the water, weighted down with stones. They had reported the
gruesome find, and the arrest of Tonnar on Wolff’s place resulted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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