The tales of the exploits of Butch and Sundance, Billy the Kid and Jesse James filled his head. Harry Sharpley dreamed of those days, but reality was a much harsher master. Sharpley was a runaway teenage boy, working between Lost Cabin, Moneta and Rongis on sheep ranches in the early days of the 20th century.
Skinny, small and suffering from a speech impediment that had him stuttering when stressed, he was an unlikely bandit.
He was well liked by the older sheepmen who nicknamed him “Whiplash”, an obvious reference to his thin, whiplike physique. He took another nickname to less gracious companions, “The Stuttering Kid.” Though his proper name was Sharpley, he went by Harry Sharp once he arrived in Fremont County.
“I believe this boy was the hardest worker and yet the most brilliant bandit of my entire acquaintance. It is this singular combination of spectacular industry and quiet lawlessness that wins for him the crowning distinction of our notice. He could hold down the hardest job and hold up the largest crowd of anyone on my calling list.” – Percy H. Shallenberger Casper Daily Tribune
Sharpley arrived at Lost Cabin around 1903 and found work with J.B. Oakie. Oakie hired the boy to pasture, shear, dip and ship sheep and do odd jobs around his stores in Lost Cabin, Arminto and Moneta. Sharpley loved the work but as a hardworking young man, looked for other outlets. He left Lost Cabin and fell ill while working near Cheyenne.
It was in the capital city that Sharpley had his first known criminal act.
At Lost Cabin, Sharpley didn’t drink much at the saloon, gamble or spend his money on the loose women that frequented there. Instead, he saved his money and purchased a pair of pistols, that people of the late 1800s and early 1900s referred to as semi-automatics.
The semi-automatic handguns we know didn’t arrive until 1898 with the German Lugar, and arguably the best ever produced, John Browning’s 1911 Colt, wasn’t invented until 1911. Harry’s handguns were double-action revolvers, regarded as semi-automatics during the time since they could be fired by simply pulling the trigger and not having to pull the hammer back manually between shots.
Sharpley practiced with his two pistols constantly, with both his right and left hands. He became an expert marksman with both hands. Friends routinely watched Sharpley toss empty tomato cans into the air out of the door of his sheep wagon, hitting them once or twice before they hit the ground.
While in Cheyenne Sharpley was confined to the camp hospital at Ft. D.A. Russell, later renamed as Francis E. Warren Air Force Base. His doctors advised bedrest but Sharpley was persistent and desperately wanted to go back to Moneta.
The young man finally convinced the doctors to release him and went to the train station in Cheyenne, but he didn’t have enough money for a ticket to Moneta.
Sharpley found the money. He left the station, walked a few blocks on the darkened streets of Cheyenne and held up a random stranger, taking just enough of the man’s money to purchase his ticket.
In his absence, Moneta had grown. The arrival of the Chicago North Western railroad in 1906 changed the community from just a few tents with one primitive log cabin to a rapidly growing small town.
Moneta became a thriving sheep center. It had a couple of stores, a hotel, a restaurant and two bars, but not much shade. Sharpley was surprised to see a two-story hotel where a wall tent stood just a few years before.
Though still weak from his illness, Sharpley took a job from the hotel owner. There were no trees in Moneta, just a vast expanse of sagebrush. The hotel owner thought a row of 20 large cottonwoods would be a nice addition to the town. The soil was damp enough to support cottonwood trees about six feet below the surface and young Sharpley took the job of digging 20 huge holes in a row near the hotel.
“Weak as he was, Sharpley took this job. The piles of dirt he threw out of those 20 holes made several tourists think they had reached the Rocky Mountains. It is my opinion that if he had lived the manufacturers of steam shovels would have been unable to stand the competition.” – Percy Shallenberger
Sharpley had a mortal fear of punishment. As a boy on his father’s Missouri farm, he was beaten constantly for the slightest misdeed. When he was 13, he ran away from his father after another beating and the old man shot the boy in the back with a 12-gauge shotgun loaded with number eight shot.
“If you ever run away from me again, I’ll fill your backside with something besides birdshot,” his father said.
That was enough, Sharpley ran away from home and never returned.
Fear of punishment didn’t stop young Sharpley from stepping outside the law. He took a break from work in Fremont County to venture west on horseback to Kemmerer in November 1907.
Sharpley dreamed up the perfect crime in his mind, robbing saloons late at night in small towns.
His first holdup came on December 3 when he walked into the Glencoe Saloon at 3 am. With his face covered, and holding both pistols, he demanded the bartender to empty the till. Just as he received the cash, an old man who had been asleep in a darkened area of the bar jumped up and headed for a side door. Sharpley told him to stop, but the man kept running. Sharpley fired a shot above the man’s head but he made it out of the door.
With Harry’s accuracy he could have killed the man, but only fired a warning shot.
Sharpley disappeared into the night.
He stayed another week in Lincoln County, camping out in the winter wilderness. He returned on December 10, this time hitting the Opera House Saloon owned by Smith and Brown. This early morning raid netted the young bandit $28.
Smith and Brown were established Kemmerer businessmen and posted a $5000 reward for anyone bringing in the outlaw. Though Sharpley could not read or write, he heard others talking and knew it was time to head back home to Moneta.
Sharpley kept his nose clean for a few years as he continued working in the area, but several unsolved saloon robberies in the Big Horn Basin and Buffalo were attributed to him by co-workers.
“He fancied officers were always after him for his holdup at Kemmerer. A rattle on the sheep wagon door at night was enough to make him jump from bed and cock his guns. We do not know why he more feared the police of Kemmerer than those of other towns where he had entered businesses. Yet it was a storm cloud that never drifted from his cliff.”
Percy Shallenberger
One hot July day, Sharpley was helping load 400-pound wool sacks onto freight cars in Moneta. Though slight of frame, Sharpley was incredibly strong and able to maneuver and lift the overstuffed bags into the waiting railcars.
As the day wore on and the temperature topped 100 degrees, Sharpley took off layers of clothes. He ended up wearing just his long underwear, with boots and a hat in the heat, but he also had both pistols strapped to his hips in the gun belt that never left him.
As the job closed for the day, Sharpley said to his fellow workers, “I can’t help you tomorrow boys, I’m going up to Riverton tonight. I think I can land a steady job up there.”
It was a 40-mile ride to Riverton through Shoshoni, but Sharpley cut across the desert and crossed the Wind River on the railroad bridge at Neble.
He arrived in Riverton around midnight and headed straight to the saloon district of the young town.
Sharpley robbed the Elk, Legal Tender and Club Saloons in the space of an hour.
Sharpley entered the first saloon, with a gun in each hand, his face covered and his hat low over his head. He lined the saloon patrons up against the wall, cleared the money off the poker tables, and had the bartender empty the contents of the safe. He then began taking money off each man lined against the wall.
One man was a blacksmith’s helper, with calloused, soot darkened hands. Sharpley took a look at the man’s hands and said, “I don’t want your money, you must be a working man. These hands look like a union card to me.”
One of the men against the wall said, “You’ve tackled the wrong saloon, if you’re after money.”
Sharpley took the man at his word and said, “Alright, let’s go up there and see what they’ve got. Line up here and forward march.”
They hit the next saloon and Sharpley once again lined up all the patrons, emptied the safe, cleared the gaming tables and took each man’s money.
“Well boys, let’s make a night of this and take in the third and last,” Sharpley said. “Keep your hands up everybody and keep in line.”
Sharpley had every late-night drinker and gambler in Riverton crowded into one saloon.
“Boys, to show you I’m all right, I’m going to stand drinks for the house. Keep your hands up there mister, I mean you! I’m going to leave the price on the bar, I don’t want the change.”
It was here that Harry’s luck changed. In his excitement at the loot he had just taken, and his magnanimous buying of a round of drinks for several dozen men, he stuttered.
The many sheepmen in the bar recognized his voice and he was doomed.
“I’m going to back out the door. Don’t try to sneak out of here for half an hour. A pal of mine will watch that door and plug the first man that steps outside. Gentlemen, goodnight.”
Sharpley couldn’t return to Moneta or Lost Cabin where he was well known and sheriff’s deputies would no doubt find him.
He rode out of town to the southeast, toward the Sweetwater country.
Sharpley had worked for Jim Graham, namesake of the Graham Ranch Road from Sweetwater Station to near Jeffrey City and decided to make his escape there, but it didn’t take long for Fremont County Sheriff William Johnson to locate the fugitive.
Sheriff Johnson organized a posse composed of Ed McKinney, Charles Fletcher, James Graham and Harry Fredericks.
They found Sharpley on Cottonwood Creek, on the old Rawlins to Ft. Washakie stage route about 12 miles east of Burnt Ranch and 22 miles south of Rongis.
McKinney held the five horses while Fredericks and Fletcher hid in the brush near a sheep wagon where Sharpley was staying with rifles ready. Johnson and Graham approached the cabin.
They spotted Sharpley and waited for him to go inside the wagon.
Sheriff Johnson and Graham walked to within 60 feet of the wagon when Johnson ordered Sharpley to come out and surrender.
Harry’s fear of authority and punishment overwhelmed him. His likely sentence was only a couple of years in the state penitentiary, but being illiterate, he didn’t realize that.
Sharpley jumped out of the wagon with pistols in both hands and started to fire at Johnson and Graham. Fletcher and Fredericks were further away and one opened fire with a rifle. Sharpley spotted Fredericks hat above the sagebrush and shot it off his head.
Johnson called for Sharpley to surrender three times, but the outlaw refused and kept firing.
Rifles barked from Fletcher and Fredericks but it was Johnson who landed three shots into Sharpley at just 50 feet. Sharpley was hit in the groin, the chest and the head.
He slumped over the tongue of the sheep wagon, dead instantly from Johnson’s final shot to his head.
A coroner’s jury of O. L. Middlehauf, E.E. Hallenbeck and McKinney was quickly convened. They determined Sharpley was killed by the shot to his head.
They buried Sharpley where he fell in an unmarked grave.
The only markers to tell of Harry Sharpley’s existence in Fremont County are a few shoots growing from the cottonwood trees he planted over a century ago at Moneta. Somewhere out on the vastness of the Sweetwater his bones line unmarked along the trail.