7The lynching of Ellen Watson and Jim Averell by six prominent and politically powerful Wyoming cattlemen rocked the nation in July 1889. Newspapers immediately proclaimed that Ellen Watson (erroneously called Cattle Kate) and Jim Averell were rustlers, that Watson was a prostitute and Averell was a pimp. After over twenty years of research, George Hufsmith has challenged those assumptions with documented historic accounts and with newly-unearthed evidence. In this book, Hufsmith sets the scene: a region settled by cattle barons who ran vast herds of cattle on public domain land, the Cheyenne Club whose opulence rivaled anything found in European aristocratic clubs, and the devastating Blizzard of 1885-86.