In the spring of 1937, R. L. Melville, while walking along Apple Creek south of Bismarck, found an old axe, hobbles made of iron for a horse or mule, and some links for a log chain. But it was a rusty old branding iron buried in the sand that caught his attention. The brand had been forged in the shape of a Masonic emblem. On this date in 1937, responding to a reporter’s questions, William A. Falconer, Bismarck’s oldest resident and historian, related the story of the man for whom the branding iron was forged and how he met an untimely death.