Texas Jack, the conclusion

Oscar Osborne had a pure-black, well-trained cattle horse he named Tommy. One hundred years ago Oscar ran the largest, arguably oldest, cattle ranches in the Grand Coulee, selling beef to far away places like Seattle and Spokane. His beef was featured at the Davenport Hotel in Spokane, where a huge portrait of him herding cattle around the horn of Steamboat Rock hung.

Word is that Texas Jack had stolen and attempted to sell his trained stallion Tommy, and the horse was nowhere to be found. Oscar gathered up a posse and waited for Texas Jack to return to his dug-out cave in Rattlesnake Canyon.

As soon as the outlaw returned, he was greeted with a passel of rifles pointed directly at him. Oscar and the boys led him to a nearby pine tree and threw a rope up around a sturdy branch, tying a noose to the end. The noose was then placed around Texas Jack’s neck, but when it was time to shoo the horse out from under him, no one could do it. Instead, they ran him off and he traveled north into Canada, where he met a similar fate with a less forgiving outcome.

John M. Kemble, Them Dam Writers online 2020