The Killing on Irons Creek
The marks on the hogs should have settled the matter.
Instead, they marked the beginning of a killing.
In April 1883, William "Bill" Potter and his neighbor George Noles found several of their hogs in the possession of Jack Daniels and Rial Blocker. The marks proved who owned them. Bill took his hogs home, and no fight was reported.
A day or two later, three men came into his field.
Bill refused to go quietly. He called for his wife as the men dragged him toward the woods. The first shot missed. The second, fired from a Winchester rifle, passed through his body. His wife reached him while he was still alive. He had time to tell her what happened and name the man he believed had shot him.
Bill Potter died nearly two hours later.
His murder opened the door to a violent manhunt through the mountains where Yell, Garland, and Montgomery counties meet. Before it ended, officers had been ambushed, prisoners had been taken from jail and hanged beneath a bridge, and wanted men had escaped again and again.
Yet no recovered court record gives Bill Potter's family a clean ending.
Drawing from surviving newspapers, public records, and family history, Kenneth Thomas brings the story home to the people who paid its highest price.
The outlaws got the headlines. This is the story of the man they left in the field.
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