He has been called an outlaw and king of
the cattle thieves. Four men tried to
murder him and Ross Gilbertson last fall,
and finally, at a tremendous expense
and at the hands of fifty men,
the brave but quiet Champion
lost his life. There is reason to
believe forever that. Nate Champion was
not the only man shot on the fatal day.
In his memorandum, jotted down during
the fight, he says, “they are all around
the house, and yet his body was found in
the mouth of a gulch 125 yards from the
house and within a few feet of a camp
fire and the place where several men had
been concealed all day. Did Champion
know that little bunch of men were there
when he ran into them? At any rate he
died in their very midst and other blood
than that from his veins was found
there. But was he an outlaw ? He had
never been indicted in his life. He had
been here ten years and for the last three
years had cattle of his own, having
bought some of Allison and some of John
Long. The cattle of Champion and
Gilbertson together now number about
200. They have never sold any.
THE BLACKBALLED .MEN.
One gets an idea from reading certain
papers that the blackballed men called
rustlers are a hard lot of defiant outlaws.
