Officials scheduled Maxwell’s arraignment for Monday, May 30. As the time for the arraignment drew near, a crowd eager to get a glimpse of Maxwell gathered near the old brick Utah County Courthouse once located on Provo’s Center Street and 100 North. Since the county attorney did not have the necessary papers filled out on time, the judge postponed the arraignment, and the throng returned home disappointed.

The justice held Maxwell’s arraignment May 31, and filed charges against him on July 5. On the day charges were filed against the robber, Deputy Clark Robinson asked Maxwell if his real name was John Carter. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, the prisoner responded, “That’s the way you’ve got it, isn’t itfi”

When asked a second time, the outlaw replied, “No, my name is Maxwell; Clarence L. Maxwell.” Gunplay appeared in court again on the morning of July 7 to make his plea. D.D. Houtz served as his court appointed lawyer. S.A. King became the prosecuting attorney. The prisoner entered the courtroom with his hands manacled behind him.

Provo’s Daily Enquirer described Maxwell’s actions in court: “He walked forward and calmly leaned against the corner of the table.” Once comfortable, Maxwell objected to being brought before the judge in irons, saying it was against the law. His little speech impressed neither the sheriff nor the judge. Sheriff Storrs left the manacles on, and Maxwell pleaded not guilty. Fourth District Court minutes show the judge set Gunplay’s bail at $5,000.

In order to amuse himself and pleasantly pass his time in jail, Gunplay read newspaper accounts of his attempted bank robbery and his capture. This he did with great relish. He also spent much time reading a novel and keeping current on news of the Spanish American War that was printed in the Tribune.

Gunplay also “talked a blue streak.” This, in part, prompted the Tribune to say of Maxwell: “He is without doubt the sharpest and brightest criminal local officers ever handled.”

During various jail conversations, Gunplay told newspaper reporters and Sheriffs Storrs and Knowlden information about the unsuccessful robbery. The outlaw told Sheriff Storrs he and his partner meant to rob the bank in Provo just before quitting time on May 26, but the bank closed five minutes early that day. By the time the robbers arrived, bank clerks had closed and locked the doors.

Maxwell also told lawmen and reporters that the outlaws had planned the Springville robbery for around 3 p.m. Their getaway horses were to meet them near the mouth of Hobble Creek Canyon.

The robbers got nervous and rushed things due, partly, to their concern about the growing suspicion demonstrated by local inhabitants. The outlaws also worried that Sheriff Storrs’ attempt to find the horse and wagon they had stolen from Lewis’ livery stable in Provo might put him onto their trail before they got the bank robbed.

These factors, and possibly others, convinced the outlaws to rob Springville’s bank at 10 a.m. instead of at 3 p.m. as they had originally planned. As a result, the lawbreakers reached the intended rendezvous site before the animals and their friends arrived. The Deseret News quoted Maxwell as saying, “If we had made our connection we would never have been caught.”

Action taken by Sheriff Storrs the day of the robbery seems to substantiate what Maxwell said. Storrs assigned some of the posse members to watch the mouth of the canyon. The Deseret News and the Salt Lake Herald reported that these men and some local inhabitants saw two armed strangers with four horses, two being ridden and two being led, on the mountainside above where the Springville men captured the robbers.

The Herald said posse members later found the trail made by these men and their horses. The posse also found evidence of a camp in Maple Canyon. They theorized the encampment may have been used by the mysterious men with the extra horses.

One thing Maxwell did not talk about was the name of his partner. A Tribune reporter preserved Maxwell’s reply when Sheriff Storrs asked his prisoner to divulge his colleague’s name. Gunplay told Storrs: “No, the man has a wife and family, and when he does not return to them in a certain length of time they will think he died a natural death, and there is no need of having them think anything else.”

Provo’s Daily Enquirer wrote that Maxwell refused to tell Storrs his cohort’s name because the deceased had “always been looked upon as an honest man . . . and had never done anything in a lawless way before.” Gunplay said the dead man had turned robber because he found himself in a tight place, and he needed money.

Maxwell may not have divulged the dead man’s name, but a lot of people had opinions about the identity of the deceased. A Springville woman claimed she recognized the dead robber as Jake Dalton, a man who had lived in the Tintic Mining District but had been forced to leave the area because he had been mixed up in an illegal ore-stealing scheme.

A Miss Holzbrook, who had spent two years in Moab, said the dead man looked like Pearl McCartey, a tough character who lived in that area. She could not, however, swear she was right. Some of Provo’s residents thought the victim might be Maxwell’s brother.

A rumor spread through Utah that the recently deceased was Jack Moore, a notorious character wanted by the law in Grand Junction, Colorado. Emery County Sheriff Allred and County Attorney Warf said the man was not Moore.

A well-dressed, smart-looking drifter, James G. Printiss, passed through Springville on June 20. He thought the dead man was Billy Reed, a noted outlaw from Indian Territory who had a price on his head.

Uintah County Sheriff William Preece informed Sheriff Storrs, via letter, that he thought the dead man was a Mexican named Poleto. When Storrs showed Maxwell the letter, the prisoner smiled pleasantly and said his former partner was not Poleto, and his identity would always remain a mystery. Storrs began to believe Maxwell might be correct.

Local lawmen followed these and more concrete clues. The rifles Maxwell and his partner had left at Jim Meldrum’s place near the mouth of Provo Canyon both carried a man’s name, “Pete Nealson,” carved into their stocks.

This seemed like a great lead, since Pete was not a law-abiding citizen. Author Charles Kelley asserted that people in Nielson’s hometown called him “Pete Thief” in order to separate him from the other Peter Nielsons in town

Constable J.A. Moore traveled up from Joseph in Sevier County to identify the body. Much to Sheriff Storrs’s dismay, Moore said the body was not that of Nielson.

Some people still thought Nielson, who was an acquaintance of Gunplay’s and a member of the Robbers’s Roost Gang, was mixed up in the affair somehow. The Herald reported hearing a rumor that Nielson was one of the men with the getaway horses, and he lost his nerve when he saw the size and tenacity of the Springville posse.

Nielson eventually went straight, but not before he purloined at least one more item that had once belonged to someone else. He married Gunplay Maxwell’s first wife, Ada.

Finally, officers of the law got lucky. Sheriff Storrs sent a picture of the two outlaws to Wyoming sheriff John C. Gatlin. From this picture, Gatlin positively identified the men as the two prisoners who had escaped from him in April. They were Gunplay Maxwell and a man named William Pearson.

Gatlin also sent Storrs a description of a gun, bridle and rifle scabbard stolen during the prisoners’ escape. The descriptions matched items the outlaws brought with them when they rode into Utah Valley. Sheriff Storrs became convinced the dead man was Pearson.

The Wyoming sheriff also warned Storrs that Maxwell had “escaped several times from the custody of officials through kindness and leniency because of his good looks and apparent unassuming innocence.”

Sheriff Brower from Lander, Wyoming, added additional evidence. He said he did not know Pearson, but he found out the man’s family lived in Litchfield, Nebraska. Brower wrote of Pearson: “He was not considered a bad man here. His photograph was recognized by everyone that saw it.”

Springville City Marshall Gammell soon received a letter from Pearson’s mother asking how her son had died. Gammell wrote back and informed her of the circumstances of her son’s death. He also sent her a photograph for identification.

Regardless of whether officials thought they knew who Gunplay’s partner was or not, the robber apparently stayed true to his word not to divulge his dead friend’s name. In later years, he listed his partner’s name on an application for pardon from the Utah State Prison as “William Carter.”

For a time in mid July, Maxwell was the only prisoner in the county jail. The ingenious man tried to take full advantage of his solitude. Ren Wilkins served as Gunplay’s night guard.

Wilkins was the same man the outlaw duped in Nine Mile Canyon in 1897, and the officer was not anxious for Gunplay to make a fool of him again. The deputy remained observant. He reported to Sheriff Storrs that he heard some scratching noises coming from Gunplay’s cell one night in late July.

A team of officers searched Gunplay’s cell the next morning. When they looked into a ventilating flume located in a dark corner of the room, the sleuths found a clever replica of a .38 revolver suspended above the floor by a string. They also located another partially finished pistol. The parts of the gun consisted of materials available around the jail. The cylinder was composed of matchbox cardboard and soap. Soap bullets, blackened to look like lead, filled the cylinder. The creative “gunsmith” constructed the pistol’s handle from a large matchbox and covered it with black cloth. He formed the barrel from a lead pencil and wire taken from a broom, and he used broom wire to fashion a trigger. The crafty mechanic covered these “metal parts” with tinfoil taken from chewing gum wrappers.

In the dark, Maxwell’s clever workmanship on the “homemade” pistol made it look like a real weapon. The Tribune said of the replica, “Altogether it is a weapon which very few men would care to face if made to do so suddenly.”

Lawmen theorized Maxwell meant to use the pseudo revolver to bluff his way out of jail. When officials confronted Gunplay, he denied ever seeing the fake pistol. The wily outlaw went on to say he would have had fun with Jailor Williams and Special Guard Wilkins if he had found the “weapon” before the authorities did.

Sheriff Storrs put the replica on display in his office. As a precautionary measure, he ordered his deputies to thoroughly search Maxwell’s cell every other day.

While Gunplay awaited trial in August, two events, one poignant and the other humorous, relieved the monotony of the outlaw’s confinement. The Tribune informed its readers that Gunplay received a letter from his wife who was visiting relatives in Eddyville, Massachusetts. She enclosed this printed note written by the couple’s six-year-old daughter:

“Dear Papa. — I would like to see you. I do not forget you, papa, and I love you. You are a good papa. Good-bye. From your daughter. Merl. xxxxx (kisses)”

Springville’s own Dr. A.M. Blanchard, noted traveler and self proclaimed author and poet, visited Maxwell’s cell in what appears to have been a scheme devised to “earn” Blanchard a little traveling money. The visitor said he had come to help Gunplay retrieve the money he said he cached in Hobble Creek Canyon.

Maxwell appeared ungrateful for the offer, and according to the Herald he replied, “You have, have youfi Well, I don’t remember having said anything of that kind, and I don’t think I ever shallfi” Having said that, Gunplay ordered Blanchard to leave his cell, posthaste. The Springville schemer wisely complied. Apparently finding the intellectual climate in the Utah County Jail stimulating, and since time weighed heavily upon his hands, Gunplay put his itchy trigger finger to work pushing a pencil instead of pulling a trigger. Maxwell decided to satisfy his creative instincts by writing his autobiography instead of changing brands on cattle. He told newspaper reporters his 100,000-word book would emphasize the 16 years of his career spent in the West, and in it he would name every man with whom he had been connected in his illegal profession.

Four to six hours a day, Maxwell turned cell number one on the second floor of the Hotel de Storrs into his personal literary office, and he made rapid progress on his book. He even advertised for a helper. Just days before his trial began, Gunplay handed a Daily Enquirer reporter a note. It read: “Wanted — Lady typewriter, for particulars call C.L. Maxwell, Storrs Block, room 1, second floor.”

The Salt Lake Herald said Maxwell drew caricatures of his capture and other events to illustrate his book. The newspaper called the prisoner something of an artist as well as an author, horse thief, bank robber and inventor. It appears that only one major irritation bothered Maxwell during his stay in the Hotel de Storrs.

To be continued…

D. Robert Carter is a historian from Springville. He can be reached at 489-8256. “Tales From Utah Valley” is now available atb ookstores.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page C2.