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Show Page 68 this excitement while growing up, whether lassoing bear cubs, fighting for Dixie Burr, or escaping Indians and killers. Perhaps she found adult life dull and she once again recaptured the excitement of youth in a life of minor crime. Around Brown's Park, however, Ann's guilt or innocence didn't matter. No one cared. Ann was a heroine. She looked the part. She acted the part. Nearly single-handedly Ann Bassett, a lone woman, a young woman, a very attractive woman, had taken on "King" Haley. And she had beaten him. With this victory, her quest for revenge and excitement must have been satisfied, for life quieted down for Ann after her sensational trial. In 1920, when she was forty-two, she married an old friend, Frank Willis, thirty-seven. Willis, like Hi Bernard, was a former employee of the Haley Two Bar. He had quit the company soon after Patton offered him $500 to work for Ann and secretly gather proof of her rustling. It was a satisfactory match: Willis was younger than Ann, which helped him keep up with her vigorous activities, and he was easy-going, which helped him survive her spirited temperament. With age Ann had apparently become less passionate about Brown's Park, less inclined to be its defender, because after the wedding the couple moved to California for a while, then, in 1931, to Arizona, where they raised cattle. Ann must still have missed Brown's Park very much, however, for in Arizona she enrolled in the University of Arizona as a forestry student. |