P a g e 4 G h o s t T o w n s a n d H i s t o r y o f M o n t a n a N e w s l e t t e r man, a 15-year old orphan, had been befriended and brought to the Little Rockies by Pike Landusky from Missouri in 1894. In Kellerman’s words, “A Christmas dance was being held in Landusky. That night the Curry Gang shot up the town, including the dance hall. They shot the piano to splinters, broke guitars over the musicians’ heads and generally wrecked the place. The Curry boys were pretty active around the old mining camp the first few months after I arrived. One time three or four of them rode into a pool hall and played a game on horseback. One of the horses broke through the floor and horse and rider dropped into the dirt cellar. They were always coming into town, getting liquored up and shooting up the camp.” This same Christmas season of 1894, Kid Curry shot and killed Pike Landusky in Jew Jake’s saloon. Kellerman had just left the saloon where he heard shots and someone shouting that Pike Landusky had been killed. He learned later that Jim Thornhill, Kid Curry, Loney Curry and Harry Longabaugh (The Sundance Kid) had entered the saloon “roughhousing and mean.” The kid who bore Landusky a grudge over a previous arrest and what he claimed a mistreatment, made a grab for Pike, knocked him down and shot him as Landusky reached for his gun. The Curry Gang rode out of town after the killing. They went into hiding on the ranch they had established south of the mountains where they had a few cattle. The ranch made a good headquarters for meetings of the “Wild Bunch” and was strategically located for a quick get-away. Sheriff’s officers from Fort Benton, county seat of old Chouteau County, were scouring the county for them and following up every lead. Kellerman said that sometime towards the spring of 1895, he walked to the Curry ranch. The Kid, Longabaugh and the cook were in the house. They greeted him cordially and invited him in. The Kid was watching a team and buckboard headed towards the ranch through a powerful field glass. Figuring it was the “law, “ he and Longabaugh slipped out the back door, mounted saddle horses and road towards the Missouri River. They were out of sight immediately and would be for 10 miles or so. “I was fooling with the Curry’s pet gopher when the buckboard stopped at the ranch. A man wearing a star stepped down and asked me if anyone was at home. I said, “no.” Figured the less I said the better off I’d be. I’d learned a lot in the short time I had been in Montana.” Henry Curry figured in a shooting episode at the Jim Winters’ ranch south of the mountains, which not only resulted in his death, but the death of Jim Winters.
5 Publizr Home