All the Twiggs in Twiggtown worked the land and it's plausible Gilbert did, too. But when his Uncle Argel, nearing 40, took his wife, Barbara, and headed west to Winfield in 1887, Gilbert got the notion to follow suit. It's not clear when he first arrived in Kansas, but the Winfield Courier, so good back then at tracking the minute comings and goings of townsfolk and visitors alike, recorded Gilbert visiting his uncle for Thanksgiving in 1889.

Soon after Gilbert Twigg began to work as a miller, sifting heavy flour and other materials. He first apprenticed in Burden, approximately 18 miles away, and then worked several years at the Baden Produce Company in Winfield. Twigg made the social rounds and was considered to be bright, with good background and character, not to mention pleasant to look upon, broad shoulders atop a 5-foot-9 frame. He met a young woman named Jessie Hamilton, born and bred in Winfield, and courted her seriously enough to propose marriage sometime around 1894.

The marriage did not take place. For unclear reasons, Jessie Hamilton broke it off. Gilbert Twigg was bereft, and while he continued to work at the Baden Mills, he also wanted out of Winfield. Two years later, in July 1896, 28-year-old Gilbert enlisted in the United States Army and headed for St. Louis, where he joined the 8th Cavalry and shipped out to Camp Forse in Huntsville, Alabama.

Within a year, Twigg's first-class marksmanship earned him a promotion to corporal. But when he learned the 8th Cavalry had been passed over for deployment to Cuba, Twigg switched to the 17 Company Signal Corps. He shipped out in December 1898, where he was assigned as a telephone operator but never saw combat, and his enlistment expired the following April. Twigg's discharge papers, stamped in New York City, indicated he had an “excellent record of service.”

But Gilbert Twigg wasn't quite done with the Army. He wanted the combat he felt he was denied in Cuba, and re-upped with the Signal Corps for a second three-year term. When he shipped out to the Banate on Panay Island in the Philippines in July 1899, that country was in the midst of its own bloody, brutal conflict with the United States. The Philippine Islands expected independence after the end of the Spanish-American War, but the U.S. maintained them as a colony. The resulting insurrection was ugly — introducing the epithet “gook” to the American lexicon, and the widespread use of torture by both sides — and costly, leading to the death of 4,200 American troops, more than 20,000 Filipino soldiers, and as many as 200,000 Filipino civilians.

Twigg’s personality, meanwhile, began to show signs of strain. High heat, forceful opposition, terrible conditions, and watching fellow soldiers die alongside you are prime ingredients for what we now understand to be post-traumatic stress disorder.

There Twigg engaged in his first major interpersonal conflict, involving an Army officer, Myron C. Bowdish, and a contract surgeon, O.W. Woods. Twigg’s later, rambling account was light on detail: “Now, there is one thing that I have to regret, and that is because I did not settle this thing with [Bowdish and Woods] ... Then I could have gotten what was due me, and this thing would have been over long ago. I would have settled these things then and there, but lived in the hopes that there would be some end to the thing some time, but it seems not. At least, there is no end in sight yet, and have no way of knowing that there ever will be.”

Clearly, something happened that he refused to forget. Whatever it was, the Army didn't think enough of it to blemish Twigg's record. His three-year enlistment ended on April 29, 1902, and Twigg, by then promoted to sergeant, was discharged in California with another citation for excellent service. He could have returned to Winfield, but instead found work at the Royal Milling Company in Great Falls, Montana, at $3 a day.

The work kept Twigg so busy, as he wrote to his friend Chance Wells in September of that year, that Fourth of July and the coming Labor Day were “the only time I have had to myself up to the present time.” Still, Twigg wrote, “I like the work and the place here very much and would like to stay here. This is a beautiful town of about 14,000 population with all the advantages of an eastern town ... it is only a matter of a few years when Great Falls will be a great city.”

Despite Twigg's optimism, he ended his letter to Wells, still living in Winfield, with more than a pang of sadness: "Well, Chance, I often think of the old days gone by when we use to have so much fun together in our little crowd. Those were the happiest days in my life, and it would have been much better for me if I had gotten married and settled down as you have done. I have no doubt but what you are very happy, while I am not.”

Less than a year later, after a return back East to see what remained of his family, Gilbert Twigg returned to Winfield for good. Any remaining sliver of optimism he seemed to have withered away, replaced by an outrageous plan.