He was better boatman than a cowboy, and a better cook than a train robber, but John Griffith, with the distinguishing mark of one blue eye and one brown eye, became a favored extra hand with the Wild Bunch, Butch Cassidy's gang, during his time in the Robbers Roost country of eastern Utah. Blue John, as his first employer called him, found entry into the area as a cook for the Harris cattle operation near Cisco, about sixty miles west of Grand Junction. After fewer than two years of legitimate work, the thirty-five-year-old fell in with Jim wall, alias Silver Tip, and "Indian Ed" Newcomb on a Cattle roundup for the 3B outfit in the spring of 1890. The 3B heard ranged the Roost under the infamous foreman Jack Moore, who proffered hospitality to the Wild Bunch during their frequent gatherings in that country bounded by the Dirty Devil, San Rafael, Green, and Colorado rivers. Sometimes dropping into the Roost for the entire winter, to set up a base camp prior to or after a raid, or to help with the 3B stock, the Bunch always had a welcome in the Roost.
Silver Tip, Blue John, and Indian Ed circulated with the Bunch as a trio of second-tier accomplices, contributing their skills to whatever was in the works, be it horse thievery, robbery, or wrangling. In 1898 they helped Moore rope in the remaining 3Bcattle of J.B Buhr's failing operation before they left for a horse-rustling escapade in Wyoming. The return trip cos Moore his life in a shoot-out. Early the next year, as the group returned to the Roost after delivering the stolen horse to Colorado for sale, Silver Tip. Indian Ed, and Blue John lifted another batch of the country