Before dawn on May 1, 1916, a 42-year-old male, Sheriff Frank B. Roach of Laramie County, answered a rancher's call about three stolen horses and gathered a small posse to run the tracks toward Granite Canyon.
The trail led roughly 33 miles southwest of Cheyenne to the Webster ranch, where Sheriff Frank B. Roach and the rancher closed in on two suspected thieves.
Official accounts fix the place near Granite Canyon and at the Webster place.
What happened at the ranch was quick
and violent. As the posse confronted the men, gunfire ripped through the dark; 42-year-old Frank B. Roach fell under the shots, and the ranch hand Nels Nelson, about 25, was killed as well.
Reports placed the shooting at roughly 3:15 a.m., marking the end of the night's pursuit and Sheriff Frank B. Roach's final watch.
The search for the killers ended almost as fast as it began. Two suspects—Clyde B. Pearson of Cheyenne and Peter Burns of Oklahoma—were arrested just over the Colorado line with Sheriff Roach's rifle and the rancher's revolver in their possession.
Records note the suspects were 21 and 27 and that both confessed: one was sentenced to hang for the killing of Sheriff B. Roach, but the death sentence was later commuted to life; the other received life for killing the rancher.
The prosecution proceeded in Colorado, where the killing was adjudged to have occurred north of Fort Collins, and both men were sent to the state penitentiary; parole records cited in historical summaries say the older man left prison in 1953 and the younger in 1960.
In the roll of fallen lawmen, Sheriff Frank B. Roach is remembered for six years of service and for a family; wife and child left behind in Cheyenne.
