It’s not what he expected as he neared retirement. Charles Swaim lived an exemplary life, working across Fremont County as a blacksmith, sheepherder, bus driver, and rancher. At 71, the most momentous event of his long life took place early one morning when he fired a single shot from his .30-30 and eliminated one of the worst bullies to ever plague Wyoming.
Swaim was a man of the county, Fremont County that is. He lived in the span of America’s two greatest wars. Born in Carroll County, Indiana, on February 4, 1862, at the darkest hour of the Union in the Civil War, and passing on May 5, 1943, when the battle against Fascism was far from certain victory.
In between, Charley, as his friends all called him, lived a classic life on the frontier, culminating with the shooting of Jens Jensen LaGuarde outside a cabin in Lysite, Wyoming.
In 1938, he related the events of September 30, 1933, to Rex Lewis in a WPA Biography, now held by the Wyoming State Archives.
The Swaim family came west to Wyoming Territory in the late 1890s. Charley, his brothers, and extended family moved into Fremont and Sweetwater Counties. The primary industry in Wyoming was raising sheep.
From Kemmerer to Sundance and along the Platte, Green, Sweetwater, and Big Horn Rivers, vast herds of sheep, numbering in the millions, were raised on the sparse but rich forage of the Wyoming plains and foothills.
Charley tried other occupations before finally taking a homestead on Badwater Creek near Lysite in 1913.
He was a respected sheepman and overall handyman around Lander. He was often deputized by Fremont County Sheriff Charles Stough for work on posses, coroners’ inquests, and in prisoner transfers from the jail in Lander to the newly constructed state penitentiary in Rawlins.
Wind River Mountaineer – December 23, 1904
“Sheriff Stough accompanied by Chas. Swaim went out to Rawlins on Tuesday’s coach with the prisoners recently convicted and sentenced to the state’s prison at Rawlins. It was reported that they arrived at Lost Soldier on time next morning and proceeded in good shape.”
Lost Soldier was built by Herman Bohack in 1896. It was an oasis on the other windy, dusty, frigid (depending on the season), and hostile sagebrush between Beaver and the south side of Separation Flats.
A few weeks after his trek to Rawlins with Sheriff Stough, Charley had a little cash in his pocket, likely from his two weeks as a deputy sheriff.
He opened a blacksmith shop on the Corner of Second and Main Street in Lander
Wind River Mountaineer – January 20, 1905
“Charles Swalm has opened up a blacksmith shop in the old Stelzelman shop on the corner of Second and Main Streets. Formerly Mr. Swaim was a partner of Lewis & Swaim, blacksmiths and wagon makers, located in the brick shop on upper Main Street. He is a practical workman, has a first class location and should command his portion of the trade.”
There was no doubt that Charley Swaim was a practical workman with a stellar reputation, but the world of blacksmithing was changing. Lander already had several, and with the approach of the Chicago North Western Railroad just over a year away, the demand for blacksmiths was in decline.
He sold the business just three months later.
Wind River Mountaineer – April 21, 1905
“Chas. B. Swaim has relinquished his blacksmith shop at corner of Second and Main streets to Mr. Olson, who will continue the business and Mr. Swaim will shear sheep commencing at Hudson’s this week.”
Charley must have had a good grip; shearing sheep was lucrative. It was a few years before powered shearers took the place of the old-style hand-operated scissors. Charley was resilient.
A flood of homesteaders poured into Fremont County beginning in August 1906, almost all of them staking claims on a ceded portion of the Wind River Reservation in what was known as the McLaughlin Agreement.
Charley watched the flood of settlers moving to Riverton, Pavillion, and up the Wind River Valley to Lenore.
He took a homestead, but it was far from the newly opened lands.
His 160 acres were on Badwater Creek. Badwater was a name the Native Americans who had frequented the area for millennia gave the seemingly innocent little stream, brimming with trout. It was an innocuous stream flowing into the Wind River above Shoshoni most of the time, but during the spring, and especially during late summer thunderstorms it could explode into a raging torrent in just a few minutes.
WPA Biography 1938– Charles Swain – Rex Lewis – Wyoming State Archives.
“He made this his home. He raised a few vegetables, trapped and hunted for a living. The place was a hunter’s paradise. Deer were thick in the hills, and the stream teemed with fish. Gradually, as time passed, people came to know of this and went there to hunt and fish. Mr. Swaim also leased part of his homestead as sheep range.”
Swaim spent his free time panning for gold and found a little “color” in the Badwater and neighboring streams. After all, nearby Lost Cabin was named for a group of miners who were attacked and killed by Native Americans back in 1866, with only one man escaping with a bag of gold nuggets. Locals all tried their hand with the gold pan.
Charley was happy at his Badwater homestead, but he had family and friends in Lander. When US Highway 20 through the Wind River Canyon was completed in 1924, it opened an opportunity for passenger service between Riverton and Thermopolis. The route followed the Chicago Northwestern to Shoshoni, then took the Chicago Burlington and Quincy route from three miles north at Bonneville through the canyon to Thermopolis. It was an ideal job for Charley, who was now 62 years old.
Wyoming State Journal – March 27, 1926
THERMOP STAGE MAKES BEST RECORD OF STATE
Lander to Thermopolis and return every day for the entire winter and missing but one trip is the record of the Lander-Thermopolis Transportation Co., owned by H. W. Warne of Shoshoni, with Charley Swaim, mechanic and driver, at the wheel. This record is unparalleled in the state, for the buses on this line ran when the cars on all other lines were in the garages or stalled on the road.
“A change in the schedule was put into effect last month whereby the line no longer competes with the passenger service of the railroads but rather supplements it and makes it possible for commercial travelers to make double use of their time. The bus leaves Lander at seven each morning and reaches Thermopolis twenty minutes ahead of the Burlington train north. It gets in at 10:50. Returning, it leaves at noon for Lander and the commercial men drop off at Shoshoni or Riverton and make those towns and get here on the train or come clear through, arriving at 3:50 in the afternoon and work Lander and get out next morning for Riverton and be ready to travel to the next point on the noon train.
The line is equipped with a modern 12-passenger bus, comfortably heated and with big boot on the rear and a heavy top to support baggage above, a Hudson car and extra cars are available whenever the need demands. Charley Swaim is known as a careful driver and a good mechanic, capable of making temporary repairs and thus insuring delivery of his passengers at their destinations on time. The line has proven invaluable to the traveling public and brings many lines of merchandise samples to the Northwestern towns which they would not get with railroad service alone. The fare charged is but five cents a mile with a generous amount of baggage free.
When road conditions will permit regular travel south from Lander to Rawlins, this city will be a center of motor bus and truck service and greatly facilitate business.”
As cars became more common and the roads improved, there was less need for a bus service. Most people just drove after 1930.
Charley retired to Lysite.
At 71, Charley had a fatal encounter with a local ruffian. Jens Jensen LaGuarde was a sheepherder working around Lysite and Lost Cabin. He was amiable enough when sober, but he was a mean drunk, and he was drunk often.
LaGuarde was Danish and had the nickname “Butting Dane” for his propensity to headbutt men when he was lit up. He’d been in many fights at Lysite, Lost Cabin, Moneta, and Shoshoni. When he started drinking, he started looking for trouble, even if he had to make it.
He’d once gotten angry at a range boss. The boss was good with a gun, so in frustration, LaGuarde rammed his head into a corral pole three or four times until he fell to the ground unconscious.
His reputation preceded him. His signature move was to ram his completely bald head into the chest of some unsuspecting stranger until the man was knocked out. He usually left his victims with broken ribs.
He was shot after one head-butting incident, and in another brawl, he had a two-by-four with a 40-penny nail at the end of it, which hit him squarely in the head. He barely noticed as the nail bent and slid off. There was a prodigious amount of blood, but the Dane didn’t care.
On another occasion, the man fighting him picked up a three-pound rock and hit him in the head with it. It was the same, no effect. LaGuarde mauled the man viciously.
There weren’t many men tougher than Jens LaGuarde.
On September 30, 1933, LaGuarde parked his sheep wagon outside Swaim’s cabin. Swaim was inside with his friends Ben Johnson and Jerry Rastead. They were enjoying the fruits of the summer, a batch of chokecherry wine that Swaim was famous for.
Swaim’s narrative described the events preceding the shooting.
WPA Biography 1938– Charles Swain – Rex Lewis – Wyoming State Archives.
“On this particular occasion, a fishing party consisting of Jerry Rastead and some friends were visiting Mr. Swaim. Somehow, on that fateful day, the Dane had gotten some whiskey and became drunk.
Night came, and with it the beginning of trouble. The sheep wagon, where the Dane slept, was just outside the cabin door. Obviously, there was no reason for him to want to sleep in the cabin, especially since it contained only one bed, which was occupied by Mr. Swaim and Jerry Rastead. However, the whiskey made the man stubborn, and he insisted on sleeping in the cabin. He lay down on the floor, and the night immediately resounded with his drunken snores.
Jerry Rastead seized him by the legs, dragged him outside, and helped him into the sheep wagon.”
Rastead and Swaim went to sleep, thinking the “Butting Dane” would sleep in off. Through the night, LaGuarde yelled out that he was going to kill everyone in camp. They ignored him, thinking it was just the whiskey talking.
It wasn’t. Just as the sun peaked over the mountains to the east, LaGuarde stumbled into the cabin. Rastead sat up in bed, and the Dane shot him with a .50-40 lever-action rifle.
Rastead sank back on the bed, saying, “Charley, I’m shot.”
Swaim was almost out of bed when the LaGuarde put the rifle to his stomach and pulled the trigger. There was a click, but it didn’t fire. The rifle was empty.
LaGuarde bolted out the door, yelling, “I’ll get some more shells and kill every so-and-so in camp.”
Swaim was barefoot and in his night clothes, but he grabbed his .30-30 lever action rifle and followed the Dane.
Reaching the wagon tongue, Swaim could see the Dane standing inside on the right, grabbing cartridges from an open drawer and stuffing them in the magazine.
Swaim told him to put down the gun, but he refused. Swaim fired a single shot from his .30-30 that ripped through LaGuarde’s thigh. The soft-nosed, lead hunting cartridge did its damage, ripping a huge hole in the back of the Dane’s leg.
By telephone, authorities were notified. The shooting was in Fremont County, but Casper was closer, and Natrona County deputies soon arrived.
They interviewed Swaim and other members of the fishing party who’d witnessed the incident.
LaGuarde sobered up before he died and asked how Jerry Rastead was doing.
Swaim told him he had killed Jerry.
“Just as well I die too. I made a damn fool of myself,” LaGuarde said. “I do not want to hang.”
A coroner’s jury exonerated Swaim.
WPA Biography 1938– Charles Swain – Rex Lewis – Wyoming State Archives.
“Today he is a frail old man. He never talks of the incident unless he is asked, and then he never says much, except to regret that it happened at all.”
LaGuarde was buried in an unmarked grave near Lysite. Fremont County deputies were happy he was gone. He’d been a pain for a long time.
Charley Swaim lived to be 81. He died at the hospital in Lander, but was taken back home. He’s buried in the Lost Cabin Cemetery.