Flat Nose
Another Canadian badman, Curry becomes the second of six children born to Scottish Presbyterians John and Nancy Ann MacDonald Currie, making his way into the world at West Point, Prince Edward Island, Canada, on March 20, 1871. In his childhood he migrates with his family to a farm in Chadron, Nebraska. Too tame a life for his tastes, at the age of fifteen Curry drifts into a life of crime stealing horses, modifies his name, and moves out into the wilds of Wyoming and Colorado. In the desolation of the Hole-in-the-Wall region of Wyoming Curry forms a gang of young outlaws that includes mentoring the wild Logan brothers, Harvey, Lonny, and Johnnie, who take the man's name on as their aliases, with Harvey becoming the infamous killer, "Kid" Curry. The gang, in the form of Flat Nose, Kid Curry, the Sundance Kid (Harry Longabaugh), Walt Punteney, Lonny Logan and Tom O'Day, makes its outlaw debut on the morning of June 28, 1897 ... a bungled debacle raiding the Butte County Bank of Belle Fourche, South Dakota (the men are expecting the bank's coffers to be full of cash from a reunion of Civil War veterans) in which O'Day gets drunk in a local saloon, loses his mount when the gang fires rounds into the air pretending to be drunken veterans to "quiet" alarms that the bank is being robbed, and then hides in a outhouse behind the bar he has been imbibing, Kid Curry will survive head cashier Arthur Marble pulling a hidden pistol that misfires, a heist, a posseman will be accidentally be shot off his horse by another posseman, and the bandits will leave town with a deposit bag containing only $97 in cash and coin. Tracked, Flat Nose, Sundance, and Kid Curry will be arrested for the bungled bank job by bounty hunters (Flat Nose takes a bullet in his arm) and put in the Deadwood city jail ... which they soon leave after overpowering one of their guards. Free, the men will shoot their way out of a posse ambush in Montana's Bearpaw Mountains, and rob two post offices before making their way back to the relative safety of the Hole-in-the-Wall area.
Kid Curry
Belle Fouche
O'Day
O'Day's Hiding Place
Belle Fouche and its aftermath finally put behind him, Flat Nose spends the next year in Utah and Nevada cowboying on a variety of wilderness ranches in the region (while using the alias, George Langthorpe). Gang folded into the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang of Butch Cassidy, Flat Nose participates in the early morning June 2, 1899 robbery (along with Will "News" Carver, Ben "The Tall Texan" Kilpatrick, Kid Curry, the Sundance Kid, and Lonny Logan ... a crime Cassidy doesn't participate in having given his word to the Wyoming governor that in exchange for a parole, he will commit no more crimes in the Cowboy State) of the Union Pacific westbound No. 1 Overland Flyer Limited on a siding just east of Wilcox, Wyoming in which the outlaws blow up the the express car with dynamite when messenger Charles E. Woodcock refuses to let the bandits into his car, escaping with over $50,000. Escaping the region, Flat Nose is with the Sundance Kid and Kid Curry when they are beset by a fourteen man posse led by Converse County Sheriff Josiah Hazen (who will be killed in the subsequent gunbattle with the outlaws). Cut off from their horses, in a heavy night rain the trio dash through a draw, swim two swollen creeks, and eventually flee the area on foot. New mounts obtained near the North Fork of the Powder River, the men engage in another gunbattle that takes out Deputy Sheriff William Deane before making their way to a hideout cabin at Brown's Park in Utah.
Hole-in-the-Wall
Robbery
Too Much Dynamite
Hazen
Brown's Park
Hiding out once more as a cowboy in Utah's Robber's Roost country, Flat Nose grows weary of ranch chores and waiting for details of the Wild Bunch's next robbery and makes the mistake of satisfying his need for an adrenaline rush by returning to his first criminal activity, rustling horses. Plying his trade in Moab County, on April 17, 1900, Flat Nose has the misfortune of being spotted gathering a herd of stolen horses by a posse of locals and lawmen (led by Sheriffs Jesse Tyler and Thomas Peerce). Heavily outnumbered, Flat Nose gallops off, starting a six mile running gunfight in which no hits take place until local ranch foreman Doc King takes careful aim with his rifle and puts a slug in Curry's head. Mortally wounded, Flat Nose scampers into some rocks for a last stand, but by the time the posse surrounds Curry's fort, the bandit has succumbed to blood loss and has died holding his rifle at the ready. Upset that there will be no final battle after their long hard ride, several men will celebrate their triumph over the outlaw by cutting several strips of chest skin from his corpse, tanning them, and then converting the leathered flesh into souvenir wallets, a tobacco pouch, and a pair of moccasins. Mutilation complete, is brought back to Thompson, Utah and dumped in a pauper's grave (the body will eventually claimed by the outlaw's father and brought back to Chadron, Nebraska for burial in the family's plot).
Robber's Roost
Flat Nose In Death
Final Resting Place
Enraged by the desecration of his friend, Harvey Logan will begin hunting for Sheriff Jesse Tyler and one of his deputies, Sam Jenkins. Outlaw seekjng lawmen and lawmen seeking outlaw, the men stumble across each other in the Book Mountains near Thompson, Utah a month later. Never one to hesitate going for his guns, Logan kills both men when they dismount from their horses and enter the outlaw's camp. Revenge ... Tyler's last words will be the salutation, "Hello, boys!" and he and the corpse of Jenkins will be left in the open for two days before being retrieved and brought back to town (wounded by a posse fleeing a failed Colorado train robbery, as Tap Duncan, Logan will commit gun suicide on June 17, 1904).
Tyler
Rotting Tap Duncan
4/17/1900 ... the criminal career of Flat Nose Curry comes to a ghoulish end in the wilds of Utah.
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