After Deputy Spencer’s death: ‘Old Man Hughes’ taken off train to avoid mob

The 1892 shooting death of Whitman Deputy William B. Spencer ,. who was among 11 fallen officers honored Monday in the Spokane Public Safety Building, was followed by the arrest of another suspect who was brought to Colfax when feelings were running high after a reported 1,200 residents and fellow law officers attended rites for Spencer.

William Hughes was arrested at his farm home in Price Valley, near Fruitland on the Columbia River. He was brought to Colfax by three deputies who followed a circuitous route. The suspect and the officers walked into Colfax in the dead of night. Local reports at the time noted talk of lynching was circulating when residents learned Hughes was suspected of abusing Spencer after the deputy went down with a bullet wound in his left arm.

Called “Old Man Hughes” in newspaper accounts at the time, Mr. Hughes was the uncle of Charles Allen, the suspected horse thief who was killed in a corral at the Hughes place in a shootout with Deputy Spencer March 31, 1892.

Spencer died April 3, 1892, at Fort Spokane, located on at the mouth of the Spokane River on the Columbia. He had been brought to the fort for medical treatment after he was taken from the Hughes ranch where he had been shot.

The saga began when Spencer and Deputy Frank Young started out from Colfax March 27 in search of thieves suspected of taking horses from the E.C. Taylor ranch and from the Johnson ranch seven miles south of Colfax.

Deputy Young later told a reporter from the Gazette, then known as the Palouse Gazette, that they had tracked the thieves to Davenport and learned they had gone north to the Price Valley.

He said when they arrived at Price Valley they received tips that Allen had just driven the stolen horses into the corral owned by his uncle, Hughes.

The two deputies went to the corral where Hughes was standing outside and the suspect, Allen, was inside working with horses. The lawmen entered the corral and Spencer told Allen “We want you.”

Allen paused, then turned, drew his pistol and began firing while Young attempted to restrain him. Spencer went down but managed to fatally shoot Allen in the chest.

Young said he concluded Spencer had also died, and he was advised by neighborhood residents to ride south to Fort Spokane before Hughes, who had vanished, could get other members of the alleged gang and do in Young.

Young borrowed a horse, rode south to Fort Spokane where he discovered the telegraph line was knocked down. He rode on south to Davenport to get out word of the shooting.

Spencer, however, was alive after the shooting, and his treatment at the Hughes place that day led to charges against Hughes who was arrested April 8 at his ranch near Fruitland.

Some of the evidence against Hughes came from Frank Mobley, Spencer’s brother-in-law who reached Spencer’s side the day after the shooting.

“It was hard to be left alone with those horse thieves and receive the abuse they heaped on me,” Spencer told Mobley. He added Hughes and two others even refused to bring Spencer a cup of water.

“They talked like devils to me,” the badly wounded deputy reportedly told his brother-in-law before he died at Fort Spokane.

Hughes was described as the spokesman for the others and at one point told Spencer to “Go to hell; lie there and bleed to death.”

Five lawmen, including the Spokane county sheriff, set out for the Hughes ranch in Price Valley and surrounded it at night. Two Whitman deputies knocked on the door. When Hughes opened it, he “found himself looking down the barrels of two .45 Colt revolvers.”

The deputies traveled to Colfax by taking a train to Garfield to avoid service of a writ in Spokane County. Learning that there might be trouble because of the high level of excitement in Colfax, they requested the engineer to stop the train three miles outside of the town. The deputies and prisoner Hughes walked into Colfax. They arrived at 1 a.m. that morning.

Hughes was brought before Justice of the Peace John Pattison. He waived examination and was placed under $800 bond for pre-trial release. He was ordered to appear in superior court May 16.

Bond was posted up by Hugh McCool, a neighbor of Hughes at Fruitland, and E.N. Leslie of Colfax. After the bond was posted, Hughes reportedly headed for the train depot to catch a ride north out of Colfax.

A Gazette reporter caught up with Hughes as he was waiting at the train depot to leave Colfax.

Hughes denied he had mistreated Deputy Spencer. He said the wounded deputy actually walked out of the corral but fell on the side of a straw stack.

Hughes added a half hour after Spencer fell, a neighbor, Ben Noble. came and took the wounded deputy away. Hughes said he never heard Spencer ask for water.

He also denied knowing any of the horses Charlie Allen had brought to the corral were stolen. Allen had told him he obtained three horses through a trade for cattle along the Snake River.

“I will be able to prove myself innocent,” Hughes declared as he waited for a train out of town.

Hughes never had to prove himself innocent. Records in the vault at the courthouse show Hughes never had to come back for the May 16 court date.

In a May 2 note in the file, contained in a small cardboard packet used at that time, Prosecutor R.L. McCroskey informed Superior Court Judge E.H. Sullivan facts in the case were insufficient to convict Hughes.

“There is no testimony in reach of the prosecution whereby the defendant can be convicted or held for the crime in said cause, or for any crime,” the prosecutor informed the judge.

Hughes had actually been arrested on a warrant charging him with being an accessory in the theft of a bay horse worth $50 and a buckskin worth $20 from the Taylor ranch. The warrant was prepared by Deputy Prosecutor E.K. Hanna.

The warrant for Hughes had been made out April 6, a week after Deputy Spencer went down in the Hughes corral in Stevens County.

Court records show Deputy J.L. Warren was reimbursed $220 for mileage and expenses in bringing Hughes to Colfax. Justice Pattison, who filled out the warrant in longhand, was reimbursed $5.60.

Karen Curran, Clarkston genealogist who researched the Spencer’s death in advance of Monday’s observance, provided a report on Deputy Spencer’s widow, Cyrena Mobley Spencer. She was married to Francis Troughton and they moved to Kamloops, B.C. where she died in 1942.

Charles Spencer, who was six years old when his father was shot in Stevens County, never married. He died in 1956 in Edmonds and he was buried at Kamloops.

Curran during her research was assisted by Con and Doug Mobley of Armstrong and Powell River, B.C. respectively. They are great-nephews of Deputy Spencer’s widow.