“His story, as told then, is as follows: “George A. Wellman, who, since the absence of F. H. Labertaux, was in charge of the Hoe outfit, came from Gillette to the Hoe ranch on Powder River, Monday evening, the 9th of May, paid off the men at work there, and Tuesday morning, he (Hathaway) started with Wellman to go to Buffalo. Each was riding a horse, and Wellman was leading a pack horse, packed with Hathaway’s bedding. When about 15 or 16 miles southeast from the Crazy Woman stage crossing, and about 10 o’clock in the morning, as they were riding side by side along the Nine Mile divide, two shots were fired in quick succession, so quick that one man could not have fired them, and George Wellman fell from his horse. “Hathaway’s horse pitched him off; he mounted again and followed Wellman’s horse and the pack-horse about 300 yards to the right, stopped, unsaddled both Wellman’s horse and the pack-horse, turned them loose and rode as fast as he could to Buffalo to notify the sheriff.” Hathaway changed his story somewhat as he told it to different people, and in the evening he was arrested on suspicion of being a party to the crime. The body was sent for and an inquest held, but no certain key to the mystery was found. The case has been in the United States court because of the fact of Wellman being a deputy United States Marshal, but the public is today as ignorant as it was on the morning of the murder as to the identity of the men who fired the fatal shot. Wellman was a popular cowboy with all the people and not known to have an enemy in the country. The Masons of Buffalo buried him with due honors, and general sorrow prevailed throughout the county. He was married at Martha, Wisconsin, April 21st, 1892, and had just returned from that interesting ceremony when he was stricken down. The belief is general in the northern counties that Wellman died at the hands of the invaders and not by act of the so-called rustlers. As explained in another chapter, they believe he was selected as a victim in the hope of fastening a crime upon the settlers of Johnson County for the purpose of exciting sympathy for the captured white caps.