Steven Boggs (1871-1907) was an American outlaw of the Wild West and the leader of the feared Laramie Gang of Wyoming and Colorado during the 1900s. He was killed by the former outlaw John Marston during a shootout at Hanging Dog Ranch in 1907.
Biography[]
Steven Boggs was born in 1871, and he became an outlaw and gunslinger in Wyoming during the final years of the Wild West era. He became the leader of the Laramie Gang (named after their base of operations: Laramie, Albany County, Wyoming) during the early 1900s, and his gang became a band of hired guns employed by the large ranch owner Abel Atherton during his dispute with Pronghorn Ranch owner David Geddes of Rio Blanco County, Colorado. In 1907, Boggs and his fellow outlaws Silvester T. Arneal and Sam C. Marsters came to Pronghorn Ranch to intimidate the ranch hand Abe Foster into convincing his boss, Geddes, to sell the land to Atherton, but Abe's fellow ranch hand John Marston came to the rescue and beat down Boggs in a fistfight. He continued to beat Boggs until his wife Abigail Marston broke up the fight, fearful that her husband would return to his old outlaw ways. Boggs threatened to return to the ranch, and, a few nights later, he and a few of his men attacked the ranch at night, set fire to the stables, and set the cattle loose; they also killed a ranch worker in the process. Geddes sent Marston, Foster, and Tom Dickens to retrieve his cattle from the Laramie Gang's hideout at Hanging Dog Ranch, and, as Foster and Dickens outflanked the outlaws in the ranch, Marston attacked the ranch head-on. Marston found Boggs in the barn, where they got into a fistfight before Marston kicked a sawn-off shotgun out of Boggs' hand and knocked him to the floor. Boggs began to taunt Marston about wanting to sleep with his wife, but Marston proceeded to shoot him dead with the shotgun.
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