The Deputy And The Deadly Dugout

By Shane Dunning

http://www.redshalereflections.com

Rosebud County Special Deputy Jack Arnold knew the horse when he saw it. It belonged to the Brown Land and Cattle Company's 4D Ranch near Birney and had been reported stolen. Arnold formed a small posse and found the stolen horse in a corral near a makeshift cabin in southeastern Rosebud County, near the community of Gopher. The alleged thief was a German immigrant decidedly disliked by the local populace by the name of John Lang (or possibly Lange). In front of the cabin, Lang met the posse. Inside the cabin, Lang would meet his fate.

The cabin was of the construction commonly called a "dugout," meaning a shelter dug into a hillside and roofed with sod or similar material. This particular dugout had only one opening, a hole later described as "but a small opening and more like a window than a door." John Lang met Arnold's posse alone in front of this opening, armed with an axe.

This event occurred in early May 1922. Bitter feelings toward Germany resulting from World War One and its buildup had been especially virulent in Montana. A "laissez-fire" immigration system predated the war, resulting in a large German immigrant population. In the leadup to the war, President Wilson had defined "all natives, denizens, or subjects of Germany, being males of the age of fourteen years and upwards, who shall be within the United States, and not actually naturalized" as enemy aliens. Thousands of these German aliens were rounded up and sent to internment camps nationwide. John Lang was one of those aliens.

When Lang was released, he came back to Rosebud County to find what belongings he had were now gone. Embittered, he struggled with his mental health and was known to wander the area with a wheelbarrow attempting to "recover" what he thought was his property. These activities only exacerbated local suspicions still seething from the war. The Forsyth Times stated:

Lang has been regarded as a desperate character for some time and during the war he was placed in a U.S. detention camp at Fort Douglas, Utah. It has also been reported that Lang was driven from Canada in 1914 because of seditious utterances against the Canadian government.

So it was when Deputy Arnold's posse arrived in the early evening of May 10th. Inquiring about the horse, Lang claimed he had purchased it but refused to name the seller. Jack Arnold lived in Birney and knew the horse's owners personally. Lang dismissed Arnold's accusations and told the deputy that it didn't make any difference; the horse was his. At this point, Arnold identified himself as a deputy sheriff and declared his intention to arrest Lang for theft and take him to Forsyth, the county seat.

As Deputy Arnold approached to arrest Lang, the suspected thief struck with his axe. Arnold was able to grab the axe and instructed other members of his group to take Lang. Lang dropped the axe and scrambled into his dugout through the single opening. Arnold now had to deal with a dangerous, cornered man. Arnold attempted to crawl through the space in a spirit of bravery, stupidity, or possibly, pure adrenaline. To fight him off, Lang stabbed at Arnold with an iron bar (purportedly the rear axle of a buggy) before he could get through. While the deputy was able to dodge this blow, Lang drew back on the bar and announced, "I'll get you this time." Seeing that all further effort to arrest Lang was useless and that his own life was in danger, Arnold fired the fatal shot. That single shot passed through Lang's heart, causing almost instantaneous death.

Arnold summoned Sheriff Thompson and the coroner from Forsyth. An inquest held in Lang's dugout by a coroner's jury found Arnold had acted in self-defense.

We further find that John [Jack] Arnold was the duly qualified and acting deputy sheriff of Rosebud County, Montana, and acting as such at the time he shot John Lang; that John Arnold was attempting to arrest John Lang for a felony and that said Lang was resisting the arrest and was attempting to strike said Arnold with a heavy iron bar.

We therefore find that the shooting of John Lang was excusable and justifiable by law. We commend John Arnold for his action in this matter and exonerate him from all blame." Signed: S.N. Moses, foreman, Allen McSwyen, J.M. Davidson, William Munson, Kenney Harp, Ezra H. Bourne, jury, and F.M. Booth, coroner.

Lang's body was quickly buried in the Birney Cemetery, with his final resting place marked with a simple flagstone. Any markings on the flagstone have long disappeared, and his grave could only be identified by process of elimination. Local oral history states that Lang was so disliked nobody was willing to take the body to Forsyth.

It should be noted that Jack Arnold had been a fixture of the Birney community for several years before this incident. In other words, his credibility and the testimony of his compatriots surely carried weight in the minds of the coroner's jury, as did the deceased's reputation. Five years earlier, he married Grace Brewster, the widow of Quarter Circle U Ranch founder George Brewster and they jointly ran that successful operation for decades. In 1928, Arnold was elected to the state legislature for Rosebud County, serving through 1933. In 1939, he was elected president of the Montana Stockgrowers Association. His sister, Kate Arnold, was the famous "Miss Kate" who reputedly haunts the Sheridan Inn.

An old-timer who knew Jack told me he never spoke about the killing of John Lang. The story became a singular chapter in the life of a well-respected stockman. Jack Arnold died in 1972 at the age of 86.