The Cabin Shootout: A Violent Encounter in the Woods
A standoff between a local traveler, a 10-year-old boy, and law enforcement leaves one man dead and another wounded in a remote cabin near Puyallup.
Taylor does not look like a desperado. In stature he is little shorter than an ordinary man. He wears long brown hair, with red mustache and whiskers. He wears a patched pair of very old and very dirty blue overalls and a blue jumper to match. A cotton shirt equally old and equally dirty, and heavy pair of patched logger shoes completed his outfit. Richard Holland, a 10-year-old boy who was with the man who was shot to death, said: 'We started to walk out to Meeker Junction. It began to rain and we went to the cabin for shelter. The man told us to get away, and finally came to the door and opened it. At the same time, he shot the man, who fell to the ground; and I started to run. He shot me through the hand.' An eye-witness reported that Sheriff Denholm and Marshal Mickens went to the cabin to investigate. Sheriff Denholm went to the door and rapped. Taylor refused to open it and Marshal Mickens pushed the door partly open. Immediately two pistols appeared and the man inside began pumping lead. Denholm fell backwards and was pulled around the corner of the house to safety.
“Immediately two pistols appeared in the opening and the man inside began pumping lead at the three men outside.”
The lurid detail of this 1904 crime report serves as a reminder of the era's 'frontier justice' atmosphere, where violence on the city's periphery was treated with sensationalist, often dehumanizing reportage. The location, near modern-day Meeker Junction, remains a transit hub where the intersection of transience and policing still echoes.
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