National Affairs: True Woodsman

Something of a hero, something of a joke in the country around Powell, Wyo. was huge, shaggy young Earl Durand, son of a respected rancher. From boyhood up, Earl talked about wanting to be a “true woodsman,” a “Daniel Boone.” He went to school through the eighth grade. Then, reaching a height of 6 ft. 2 in. and a bulk of 250 lb., all bone and brawn, he spent most of his time hunting and camping out in the Beartooth Mountains east of Yellowstone National Park.

He boasted he could live in the wilds alone, unaided save by knife and gun. He slept in caves and shelters which he called “forts.” He let his hair grow to his shoulders, his beard to his bulging chest. He could throw a baseball in the air and put four rifle bullets into it before it fell. Eight years ago, when he was 18, he accidentally shot himself in the chest. The bullet tore through his body but so tough was Earl Durand that he was out hunting again in a fortnight. He was never a bad boy, except once when he fired a shot over the postman’s head to scare him.

Game wardens went out and arrested Earl Durand last week for killing a bull elk out of season. When they found him he was devouring a slab of raw meat from another creature he had just shot illegally, a beef cow.

In the Cody jail one night, when Deputy Sheriff Noah Riley took Earl Durand’s supper to his cell, the huge, hairy youth picked him up like a puppy, took his keys, grabbed a rifle, forced the deputy to drive him to the Durand ranch. Under-Sheriff D. M. Baker and Marshal Charles E. Lewis followed. Earl Durand dropped them dead in their tracks with just three shots from his rifle, one wasted. Then he clubbed Deputy Riley unconscious, made his father put up provisions, headed for the snowy mountains.

A posse of 80 Wyoming and Montana law officers set out after Earl Durand. They moved warily. They knew he was more than a match for any of them hand-to-hand or at far rifle range. The law calculated Wyoming’s greatest manhunt in years might last a while.