Our mission at Saddlebag Dispatches is to keep the spirit of the frontier alive by fostering interest, discussion, and writing in the history and legacy of the American West.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this magazine or its contents may be reproduced in any form without express written permission of the publisher. This magazine is the product of human creativity and effort, crafted without the use of generative artificial intelligence in its writing or storytelling. While AI is a valuable tool in many creative fields, we are committed to publishing works by humans about the human experience.
PUBLISHER: Dennis Doty
MANAGING EDITOR: Anthony Wood
COPY EDITOR: Don Money
FEATURES EDITOR: George “Clay” Mitchell
POETRY EDITOR: John McPherson
ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR: Terry Alexander
ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Benjamin Bailey
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS:
Reavis Z. Wortham, Chris Enss, Waynetta Ausmus, John T. Biggs, Paul Colt, W. Michael Farmer, J.B. Hogan, Regina McLemore
RESEARCH DIRECTOR: Barbara Clouse
BOOK REVIEWER: Doug Osgood
POET LAUREATE: Marleen Bussma
PHOTOGRAPHER: Patricia Rustin Christen
ART DIRECTOR: Casey W. Cowan
CONTRIBUTORS:
MANAGER: Amy Cowan SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER: Rachel Patterson
Reavis Z. Wortham, Don Money, Michael Norman, Lynn Downey, Ryan Michael Hines, Marika Psalidas, C. Michael Dudash, James A. Tweedie, J.B. Hogan, Gerry S. Wojtowicz, Kenyon Bennett, Regina McLemore, Terry Alexander CONTACT
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Dedicated to the memory of our late co-founder, Dusty Richards, and our dear departed friends and partners, Velda Brotherton and Bob Giel.
BEHIND THE CHUTES
Dennis Doty PUBLISHER
The West Rides On
New stories, old souls, and a legacy worth preserving.
Welcome to the inaugural April issue of Saddlebag Dispatches Magazine! We’re proud to bring you a fresh new edition packed with stories and articles from all over the West—true tales and imagined ones that dig deep into the grit, history, and enduring spirit of the frontier.
This issue also marks an exciting milestone for us: Saddlebag Dispatches is expanding to three issues per year. Reader demand has never been stronger, and we’re rising to meet it—fulfilling the charge given to us by our late co-founder and legendary Western author Dusty Richards, to keep the Western alive and thriving in the 21st century.
We’re also thrilled to kick of the 3rd Annual Longhorn Award for Western Short Stories. Submissions are open to original, unpublished short stories between 1,500 and 5,000 words on any Western topic. Entries should be emailed to submissions@saddlebagdispatches.com with a subject line of “Longhorn Entry” and attached as a Word document along with your cover letter. Be sure to include a 150-200 word third-person bio in the second paragraph of your letter, and format your
entry to standard Shunn manuscript guidelines with full contact information in the upper left corner of the frst page. The deadline for submission is midnight CT on August 1, 2025. Congratulations again to Bob Armstrong, last year’s winner, with “Clay Allison’s Girl.”
In this issue, you’ll fnd a range of unforgettable features. Regina McLemore explores the life story of Quanah Parker, while Sherry Monahan adds her signature sparkle in Lively Libations with a favorful cowboy cocktail. Terry Alexander examines the life and legacy of country music legend Kris Kristoferson—singer, songwriter, actor, and true American original. Among our historical features, Kenyon Bennett introduces us to Panhandle pioneer Belle Gray, and J. B. Hogan chronicles the life of John Rollin Ridge, the first Native American to publish a novel. Ridge’s The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta was not only California’s frst novel, but also the frst American novel to feature a Hispanic protagonist. And Michael Norman returns with the incredible story of Jason Betzinez, the last living member of Geronimo’s band.
The issue’s short fction section showcases five outstanding storytellers: Lynn Downey,
Marika Psalidas, Ryan Michael Hines, Don Money, and Michael Norman. These tales are full of tension, wit, and soul—the very stuf the West is made of.
And don’t miss “Third Anniversary,” the climax of our time-travel Western serial from New York Times bestselling author Reavis Z. Wortham—a story full of twists, grit, and echoes of the past.
At Saddlebag Dispatches, we believe the Western isn’t just a genre—it’s a legacy. It’s a living, breathing tradition passed down through story, song, and spirit. Every campfre tale, every dusty trail, and every unsung hero deserves a voice. We strive to give those voices a platform, whether they come from seasoned authors or frst-time storytellers inspired by the lore and land of the American frontier.
But we’re more than just a magazine—we’re a community. A camp circle where writers, historians, artists, and readers gather to preserve and reimagine the West. None of this would be possible without you, our readers. Your passion for frontier storytelling, your curiosity about the past, and your hunger for well-told tales are what keep the fame of the Western burning strong. Whether you’re a longtime reader or holding your very first issue, you’re part of a growing circle that believes the West still has something to say— and we’re honored to have you riding with us.
So pull up a log, pour yourself a hot cup from the camp pot, and settle in. The West is alive and well in these pages—and it’s waiting for you.
Dennis Doty
WILD WOMEN
Chris Enss CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
Doctor, Surgeon, Trailblazer
Dr. Sofe Herzog’s legacy of grit, guts, and gunshot extractions
The gunshot victim occupying a room in Doctor Sofe Herzog’s ofce winced in pain while struggling to remain still. His discomfort was not entirely due to the bullet lodged in his abdomen but in the uncomfortable position the Brazoria, Texas physician had him placed. The lower half of the man’s body had been raised with his ankles fastened to a horizontal pole. The upper portion of his body was fat against the mattress. Dr. Herzog’s procedure for removing bullets and buckshot were unconventional but had proven to be successful. It had been her personal experience that probing the wound in search of the bullet with a surgical instrument was detrimental to the patient. If, indeed, she had to do any probing at all, she preferred to use her fngers, but that was only a last resort. After tending to more than a dozen gunshot wounds, the doctor had learned the most efective way to deal with such an injury was to let gravity do the work. When the victim’s body was elevated, the bullet often found its way to the surface for easy extraction.
Dr. Herzog’s reputation for the treatment of gunshot suferers spread rapidly throughout the region in the 1890s. Her talents were in constant demand. When
she’d removed more than twenty bullets from outlaws and lawmen alike, she had a necklace made from the slugs with gold links to separate each projectile.
Sofie Deligath was born on February 4, 1846, in Austria, Hungary. The precocious young woman would eventually follow her father’s example and pursue a career as a physician. At the age of fourteen, before she fully realized it was possible for a woman to become a doctor, she married a prominent Viennese physician named August Herzog. Between 1861 and 1880, Sofe gave birth to ffteen chil dren, among them, three sets of twins. She lost eight of her children to various illnesses while they were still infants.
August accepted a position with the United States Navy Hospital in 1866, and moved his family to New York City. While caring for her home, children, and husband, Sofie decided to study medicine. Training for women in the profession in the states was limited to mid
wifery. The aspiring doctor not only took advantage of those limited courses but also traveled to Vienna to attend school. The stigma of women learning medicine was less controversial in Austria.
Armed with a certifcation in midwifery in 1871, Sofe returned to the U.S. and began practicing medicine. She continued her education in the states, receiving a degree in 1894 from the Eclectic Medical College. She worked as both a midwife and physician on the East Coast until her children were grown and her husband passed away in 1895.
Dr. Herzog traveled west shortly after her husband’s passing. The couple’s youngest daughter was living in Brazoria, Texas. Sofe decided to make her home and open a practice there after spending time with her daughter, son-in-law, and her grandchildren. She adapted quickly to her
new surroundings which were wild and rustic in comparison to where she had lived and worked in New Jersey. Brazoria was an agricultural town. Sugar and cotton mills provided the bulk of the employment and income for the region. Federal soldiers, Northerners, foreign immigrants, ex-Confederate soldiers from Texas and the South, ambitious businessmen, and desperados fltered in and out of the location, and many of the disputes that erupted because of combative, unruly individuals were more often than not settled with six-shooters.
Patients without gunshot wounds who couldn’t make it into town to see a doctor depended on physicians to travel to them. Dr. Herzog would have to make her way to homesteads and farms across the rugged trails on horseback. Those who objected to a woman being a doctor quickly set their biases aside when they were stricken with pneumonia or needed a broken bone mended. Adorned in a split-skirt and black coat, with a man’s top hat covering her short hair, the ffty-yearold physician visited the sick and hurting in and around Brazoria.
Dr. Herzog was not only the sole female physician in town, but she also served as the pharmacist. She always had ingredients “at the ready” to mix laxatives, treat malaria, check diarrhea, or help with upset stomachs, migraines, and hemorrhoids. The residents of Brazoria trusted the lady medic and fondly referred to her as Dr. Sofe. She made history in 1897 when she became the frst woman to join the South Texas Medical Association. Six years later, she made history again when she be-
«“AN ECCENTRIC INDIVIDUAL WITH AN INDEPENDENT SPIRIT, DR. HERZOG PUSHED THE BOUNDARIES OF PROPER SOCIETAL BEHAVIOR FOR WOMEN….”
Inscription on the Texas Historical Commission Marker for Dr. Sofe Herzog, 2018
came the frst woman to be elected vice-president of the organization.
In the spring of 1904, the St. Louis, Brownsville, and Mexico Railway began work on expanding the line that ran from Brownsville, Texas, to Houston, Texas. Hundreds of railroad employees fltered into the area to survey land and lay track for trains bound for Brazoria and surrounding communities. Dr. Herzog was frequently summoned to tend to the railroad workers along the line who were either sick or injured. Railroad executives soon recognized a designated physician needed to be added to the payroll, and they ofered the job to Sofe. She accepted the position as “railroad surgeon,” but, before she ofcially began work, she received a telegram from the board of directors of the line. Hiring a woman doctor seemed inappropriate to the railroad executives. They politely offered Sofie a way out, letting her know how understanding they would be if she reconsidered taking the job because it wasn’t suitable for a lady. Dr. Herzog responded with a telegram that assured the gentlemen she was up to the task and that her gender wasn’t a factor. She let them know she’d only step down if they fred her for not doing the work. No more discussion was had on the
subject in the twenty years she was employed with the railroad.
An article about the headstrong and accomplished doctor and her work with the railroad appeared in the January 4, 1910 edition of the El Paso Herald. “No railroad surgeon in the country is prouder of the title than is Dr. Sophie [sic] Herzog of Brazoria, Texas, who is the only woman in the United States to enjoy that distinction,” the report read. “Dr. Herzog has been a practicing physician in this country for nearly twenty years, the formative years of her American career having been spent in New York state. When she moved to Texas, her fame as a surgeon soon spread, and her reputation reached the ears of men backing the construction of the St. Louis, Brownsville & Mexican railroad, and she was employed as the offcial railroad physician. She has been retained in that capacity ever since.
“No matter what time of day or night she is needed, Dr. Herzog leaves her home for the scene of railroad accidents or other trouble. Freight cars, ‘wildcat’ engines, and handcars alike have been her mode of transportation when haste was necessary, for she does not balk at any conveyance when it gets her to her destination in a hurry.”
Although Sofe was employed with the railroad, she continued to maintain her own practice. Not only did she treat those sufering with everything from deep cuts to pneumonia, but she was also intent on fnding cures for more serious ailments such as smallpox. Her ofce was in her daughter and son-in-law’s home until her sonin-law learned Dr. Herzog was treating people with highly contagious diseases there. He did not want to run the risk of either his wife, children, or himself getting infected, so he asked Sofe to leave. The doctor then opened a clinic near the railroad. The building was large enough for her practice and included an examination room, waiting room, a pharmacy, and living quarters.
Dr. Herzog’s ofce was unique because, in addition to the usual elements found in a medical practice, the pharmacy area looked more like a mercantile. The doctor had several items on display for sale such as postcards, lace doilies, walking canes, and tonics she made herself. Among the ordinary merchandise was a collection of oddities that sparked Sofe’s fascination such as taxi -
dermy animals, snake skins, antlers, and bear rugs. She also had an enormous collection of books and invited citizens of Brazoria to borrow any title they wanted at any time.
Dr. Herzog’s interests were varied. She briefy ventured into real estate, opening the Jeferson Hotel on October 9, 1908. Her desire to maintain historic burial places led to her supplying the funds to build the Brazoria’s frst Episcopal church and cemetery.
A widely circulated newspaper article about Dr. Herzog’s career in January 1911, noted that in the last ten years the well-known physician had had many offers of marriage. When the reporter asked for a picture to accompany the published article and told Sofe he was going to mention the proposals she had received, she replied, “If you can fnd a husband for me, I can support one. He need not do anything except call me ‘honey’ and ‘sugar plum.’”
Dr. Herzog accepted Col. Marion Huntington’s invitation to be his wife in the spring of 1913. Before the pair was married on August 23 of that same year, Sofe had a prenuptial agreement drafted
and signed by her future husband. Their marriage certifcate is proof Sofe wanted to maintain her independence after the couple was wed. She insisted the document read Mr. Marion Huntington and Dr. Sofe Herzog. Sofe was sixty-seven when she married for the second time.
Shortly after Sofe and Marion were wed, she traded her horse and buggy for an automobile. Throughout the duration of her career, she made the rounds to see her patients in a Ford Runabout.
Dr. Sofe Herzog Huntington died of a stroke at a hospital in Houston on July 21, 1925, at the age of seventy-nine. The beloved physician was laid to rest wearing the necklace she had made from bullets she had extracted from gunfghters in Brazoria.
Chris Enss is a New York Times bestselling author who has written about women of the Old West for more than thirty years. She’s penned more than ffty books on the subject and been honored with nine Will Rogers Medallion Awards, two Elmer Kelton Book Awards, an Oklahoma Center for the Book Award, three Foreword Review Magazine Book Awards, and the Laura Downing Journalism Award.
LIVELY LIBATIONS
Sherry Monahan CULINARY EDITOR
Raise a Glass, Cowboy!
Turns out the Wild West wasn’t all whiskey shots and barroom brawls.
Adusty cowboy slapped the trail of himself as he entered the saloon. He grumbled to the mixologist, “I’ll have a whiskey toddy.” Wait, what? Didn’t they all just drink shots of whiskey? Nope. Cowboys, miners, ladies of the night, and most pioneers drank fancy cocktails.
Can you imagine Doc Holliday, Wild Bill Hickok, or Jesse James sipping a fancy cocktail? It’s true, and William F. “Bufalo Bill” Cody’s favorite cocktail was the Stone Fence, and he often drank it at the Buckhorn Exchange saloon in Denver, Colorado. It contained whiskey, ice, and seltzer water.
There were over two hundred recipes in wildly popular cocktail books under the categories of Punches, Sours, Flips, Shrubs, Juleps, Toddies, Daisies, and other cocktail drinks. Mixologists, chemists, or professors stocked a variety of liquors, mixers, bitters, and syrups to accommodate an extensive beverage list. Western-created drinks like the Martini, Pisco Punch, a faming drink called the Blue Blazer, and the Boothby Cocktail are still being made and enjoyed today. Another wildly popular drink was called the Rock and Rye and was made with rock candy syrup and rye whiskey.
This was a controversial beverage because not only was it ofered as a cocktail in saloons, but it was also sold as a health tonic. Some mixologists recommended it to soothe a sore throat, but some just liked the way it tasted. One Montana man tried to cure himself of “the grip” with Rock and Rye. Mr. W. Sampson was brought before a judge in Anaconda for disturbing the peace. Sampson, who had been a sober man for two years, had gotten drunk when a friend told him there was nothing better to cure the grip than Rock and Rye. Sampson trusted his friend and headed to the store and got himself a bottle. He felt so good after consuming the frst bottle that he proceeded to get a second. In the midst of his second bottle, Sampson “kicked up quite a fuss” and was arrested. When he was brought before the judge the court asked him if he could restrain himself and not go back to drinking. He told the judge he wasn’t sure, so the judge said, “Wouldn’t it be better for you if you went to jail for thirty days, so as to give you an opportunity to thoroughly sober up again?”
Sampson replied, “I haven’t the slightest objection in the world.”
Drinks aside, let’s talk about the shot glass. Mixologists listed
a wide variety of glasses in their books for various cocktails, but surprisingly, none of them were called “shot” glasses. The closest thing to what’s available today was called a whiskey glass that held one and one half to two and one-half ounces. It resembled the traditional shot glass used today. The frst reference to the actual use of the word “shot glass” appeared in papers across the country in the early 1930s, and the words were always in parentheses. In 1932, a judge heard a case about a “shot glass,” which he had never before. The case involved a restaurant owner seen by police ofcers carrying three shot glasses of liquor. The judge listened as the defendant’s attorney and police ofcer discussed the matter and from that conversation determined that a shot glass was the size of a drink of liquor—be it large or small. The defendant’s attorney told the police ofcer that he contended, “shot glasses were very small and made of heavy glass. The police ofcer said, “No. My idea of a ‘shot glass’ is a glass that a man takes a ‘shot’ of liquor from in one drink.”
Sherry Monahan is an award-winning culinary historian who enjoys researching the genealogy of food and spirits. While there’s still plenty to explore about frontier food, she’s expanding her culinary repertoire to include places and foods from all over America and beyond. She holds memberships in the James Beard Foundation, the Author’s Guild, and the Wild West History Association. She is also a professional genealogist, and an honorary Dodge City marshal. Her newest cookbook, Culinary Treasures: Dude & Guest Ranches of America, will hit bookstores this Spring, alongside Victorian Recipes with a Side of Scandal: The Story of Ethel Barry, which was released in December.
Stone Fence
2 oz. bourbon
2-3 ice cubes
Apple Cider
Add bourbon and ice to a tall Collins glass and top with cider. Stir and enjoy!
Source: Adapted from Jerry Thomas’s, The Bar-Tender’s Guide, 1887.
THE VIEW FROM MY HILL
Reavis Z. Wortham CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
A Squirrel’s Tale
What could possibly go wrong with three armed 12-year-olds and gravity?
Idon’t think we would have gotten into trouble if Grandpap hadn’t thoughtlessly left an old worn-out truck tire at the top of the hill. A nice round tire off the wheel is the siren call of trouble for anyone under the age of thirteen.
We were twelve. Cousin, Delbert P. Axelrod (An Alternate Life Form), and I were hunting squirrels with the Old Man that cool October morning in 1967. For some reason, instead of helping Grandpap change the tire on his ’57 Chevrolet pickup, Dad thought it was a good idea that year to take three pre-teens at the same time on their frst real squirrel hunt.
Walking toward the river bottoms through the pasture, we passed Grandpap and Uncle Lee beside the barn at the top of the hill, grunting and wrestling the tire of the wheel in the shade of a wide red oak.
Dad waved and spoke for a moment, but none of us boys made eye contact, afraid they’d ask us to stop and help. We had guns, and were intent on hunting, instead of hustling tools for a bunch of old men over ffty.
After hiking through the woods for what seemed like an hour, we fnally found a place that suited the
Old Man, and he assigned us to individual trees, making sure that everyone faced a diferent direction. “Shoot up, not down, or level. Now, settle in and watch this old trail. I heard when I was a kid that Davy Crockett might have ridden right through here after he got to Texas.”
I glanced around. “I thought he went down to the Alamo.”
“That was later, but he spent some time exploring this area, looking for land. He wrote a letter back to his family and told them he was thinking about settling a couple of miles west of here around Garrett’s Bluf, or back about thirty miles, close to where he crossed the Red River.”
Then, he settled himself inside the semi-circle, so he could watch us shoot squirrels. “Now, you boys get quiet.”
We sat still as posts, a skill already carefully honed by wishing ourselves invisible in math class fve days a week for the past month— two years after arithmetic had been abandoned and we were aficted with New Math, which tried to destroy our developing brains.
Each time Miss Exum looked around the classroom in search of the correct New Math answer she’d chalked on the blackboard, the three of us sat perfectly still to
avoid being called upon. We became one with the scarred, wooden desks. In fact, at the end of that year when we rose to leave on the last day of school, Miss Exum was shocked to see that the desks were actually occupied.
This camoufage worked just as well in the woods. Squirrels scampering in the trees high overhead just thought we were three scarred school desks. The single cracks from our rifes that echoed through the woods were the only thing that broke the stillness.
The Old Man called an end to the ambush around noon. We counted eighteen bushytails in the bag, and he pronounced the day a success.
“Now, c’mon boys. I want to get these critters cleaned before dinnertime and y’all might as well learn how.”
Dang it. We were going to learn something anyway.
On the Old Man’s orders, we shucked the rounds from our guns, handed the ammunition over to disappear into his pockets, and gathered our game. The walk through the woods itself was quiet, most likely because the three of us were mulling over the New Math in our heads—sets, unions, tangents, square matrix, radius, quadrant, hypotenuse of the triangle, algorithms, slope—slope, which brought us to the problem at hand.
After about thirty or forty miles of hard marching, we lagged behind the Old Man, who preferred to walk slightly under the speed required to qualify for the Indianapolis 500.
“Hurry up,” he said over his shoulder, never breaking stride.
“But we’re tired,” I answered. Tongues hanging out like hound dogs, Cousin and Delbert were reluctant to speak.
“I’ll go on ahead to get everything ready. You boys don’t take too long, those squirrels won’t keep if it starts to warm up.”
In minutes, he was gone and we struggled along, burdened by guns, squirrels, and brains heavy and full of New Math. At the top of the long hill overlooking Grandpap’s house, we stumbled across the tire he’d carelessly leaned against the tree. It looked innocent enough sitting in the shade.
We stopped and stared.
It beckoned. “Hey, we need to do something with this,” Cousin announced.
I had an idea. “Delbert, you get in, and we’ll roll you down the hill.”
“Are you sure? This doesn’t sound like a good idea to me.”
to my own, I needed to lighten my load. “Here.” I leaned over and stufed my game bag into Delbert’s curled form. “Hold these for me.”
“Me too,” Cousin said, adding the contents of his own game bag.
“Ready?” I asked, and without waiting for an answer, we gave the tire a push.
The frst rotation was glacial.
“This is fun!”
His initial squeal of joy shut of
We pronounce slud for slid in rural northeast Texas.
Delbert missed the front bumper by mere inches and crossed the yard in a whirring hiss, slamming into the front porch just as the Old Man stepped back outside through the screen door. The tire hit so hard that Delbert and eighteen squirrels exploded out of both sides as though someone had tossed a grenade in the front yard. He lay on the ground, retching, amid the squirrel carcasses. I did similar actions a few years later in college, without the squirrels, only it wasn’t the result of tires or gravity.
Holding the tire upright, I rocked it back and forth and caught Cousin’s eye. “I did this once. Remember?”
Cousin’s gaze cut to the tire and back to my face. “I want to do it.”
“Hey!” Delbert frowned. “He said I could go frst!”
“Don’t roll me fast.”
Cousin and I were shocked at his agreement.
“Fine then,” Cousin answered. Delbert leaned his rife against the tree. “You’ll have to carry this for me.”
We held the tire and being the smallest, Delbert folded himself inside in the appropriate position.
Annoyed that I was going to have to carry his rife in addition
as gravity quickly took over. Horrifed at the immediate results, we watched the tire gain speed until it rolled so fast downhill the entire thing was a cylindrical blur.
“Eeeeaaaahhhhuuuurrrrpppp!!!” Delbert and his rolling tire shot down the hill, took several impressive bounces over dried cow pies, and plunged through the fvestrand barbed wire fence beside the house. Grandpap was coming up the red rock drive in his truck. His eyes widened and to get away from the runaway tire, he turned hard and slud to a stop, throwing a spray of gravel a hundred feet behind him.
While Cousin and I slowly moseyed down to the house, trying to act as if we weren’t a part of the event, Delbert tried to stand. He staggered one way, then the other, before falling again.
“Hypotenuse of the triangle,” Cousin said, punching my shoulder in joy.
“Nope, square matrix,” I responded, and New Math fnally dawned on us.
Reavis Z. Wortham is the New York Times
bestselling author of the critically acclaimed Red River historical mystery series and the high-octane Sonny Hawke contemporary western thrillers. A retired educator, Wortham now writes full time, with The Rock Hole named a Top 12 Mystery of 2011 by Kirkus Reviews and Dark Places listed among True West Magazine’s Top 12 Modern Westerns. His novel Unraveled was praised by The Providence Journal as “Longmire on steroids.” In 2023, Wortham’s The Texas Job won the Will Rogers Medallion Award Gold Medal for in the Western Modern Fiction category. Reavis lives with his wife in Texas.
TALKING WESTERNS
Terry Alexander ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR
Three We Lost
Celebrating Donald Sutherland, Barbara Rush, and Shelly Duvall
In 2024, we saw the passing of three actors familiar to fans of the western entertainment genre. Donald Sutherland, Barbara Rush, and Shelly Duvall, who all appeared in a multitude of acting roles throughout their respective careers, made several contributions each in western television shows and flms.
DONALD SUTHERLAND
Donald McNichol Sutherland was born on July 17, 1935, at Saint John General Hospital in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada to parents, Dorothy and Frederick Sutherland. As a young boy, Donald had Rheumatic Fever, Hepatitis and Polio causing him to endure many hardships. He spent his teenage years at Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, Canada, where at 14, he was a news correspondent for radio station CKBW. Donald attended the University of Toronto later transferring to Victoria University, where he met his frst wife Lois May Hardwick.
Donald left Canada in 1957 and moved to Britain, where he studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. He found work in Scotland at the Perth Repertory Theatre and British TV, and even managed to
secure some small movie roles in horror flms.
Sutherland’s first big break came in 1962 when he appeared in two episodes of the television series The Saint with Roger Moore. The connections he made from the show garnered Donald his frst signifcant role in a Hollywood production, The Dirty Dozen in 1967. The movie starred several major stars including Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, Clint Walker and Ernest Borgnine. The movie told the story of a band of misft GI’s operating secretly behind the German lines in World War II. After the success of the flm, Donald left England to make his new home in California.
In Hollywood, Sutherland found steady work. His next big break came in 1970 when he played two bizarre characters in the hit flms M.A.S.H. and Kelly’s Heroes. In Kelly’s Heroes, Donald played Oddball opposite Clint Eastwood and Telly Savalas. Oddball was a dope smoking tank commander in Patton’s Army, who would go to any lengths
to avoid action. While filming in Yugoslavia, he contracted Spinal Meningitis which was nearly fatal due to the lack of antibiotics at the local hospital.
In M.A.S.H. , Sutherland costarred with Eliott Gould, Robert Duvall, and Sally Kellerman. The movie, a dark war comedy, about army surgeons at a mobile feld hospital during the Korean War. The flm went on to inspire a critically acclaimed TV show of the same name.
In 1971, Sutherland appeared in the detective flm Klute where he played Detective John Klute, who must protect a witness to a murder, a prostitute played by Jane Fonda. Donald and Fonda both won NAACP Image awards for their role in the flm. Fonda also won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for her role. He and Fonda lived together for two years after the flm.
Donald came to the attention
Donald Sutherland
of many new fans when he made his first western in 1974, Alien Thunder, or as it was called under the American title Dan Candy’s Law. The movie’s plot told the story of a Woods Cree Indian who killed a Northeast Mounted Police Sergeant and was hunted for two years by the man’s partner. His next appearance in a western wasn’t until 1994 in the TV movie, The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All. The movie was about an elderly
an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his role. In the 1999 TV movie The Hunley, he played General Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard, the Confederate leader who played a role in creating the H L Hunley, the frst submersible to sink an enemy warship. Donald won a Satellite Award in 1999 for the movie Without Limits, a biographical sports flm.
woman who relived the horror of the Civil War through her memories of her husband Captain Willie Marsden, who she married when she was fourteen.
In the 1990s, Sutherland starred in a trio of movies that garnered him accolades and awards. In Citizen X, a TV movie he made in 1995, he played Mikhail Fetisov, the man who was instrumental in the conviction of Andrei Chikatilo, a notorious serial killer in Russia. Donald won
Two more major awards were in store for Sutherland. In 2018, he received an honorary Oscar for his career achievements. He then went on to receive a Critics Choice award in 2021 for the TV limited series The Undoing.
Sutherland returned to television in 2023 for his fnal western role as Judge Parker in the program Lawman: Bass Reeves. This series recalled the events that led Bass Reeves to become
Sutherland returned to the western genre in the 2003 film Cold Mountain. The movie was set in the fnal days of the Civil War when a wounded soldier embarked on a desperate journey to Cold Mountain to reunite with his sweetheart. Donald played the father of Nicole Kidman’s character Ada Monroe, Reverend Monroe. Two more western flms followed, with Dawn Rider in 2012 and Forsaken in 2015. Forsaken also starred his son, Kiefer.
one of the first United States Deputy Marshals west of the Mississippi and followed him on his early assignments. Donald appeared in eight episodes.
Donald Sutherland died in Miami on June 20, 2024, at the age of 88 from chronic pulmonary disease. Whether he played a fawed hero or a despicable villain he made a truly lasting impression in the fantasy world of Hollywood.
BARBARA RUSH
Barbara Rush was born in Denver, Colorado on January 4, 1927, to parents Roy and Marguerite Rush. The family later moved to California, and she grew up in Santa Barbara. After high school, Rush attended the University of California, Santa Barbara. She received her first acting role in the university’s theatre program before graduating in 1948.
Rush made her western cinema debut in the 1952 western flm Flaming Feather. She appeared as Nora Logan in the story of two men, a rancher and a cavalry offcer, who raced to capture a famous renegade outlaw known as the Sidewinder.
Her next western was in 1954. She shared the screen with Rock Hudson in Taza, son of Cochise. Barbara played Oona, an Indian woman torn between two men. When Apache Chief Cochise died, the Chiricahua Apaches were torn between following Taza, Cochise’s son or the warlike renegade, Geronimo. One more flm followed in the 50s, when Rush played Princess Lucia in the 1955 flm Kiss of Fire. In 1700, a Spanish princess traveled from New Mexico to California with outlaw El Tigre as her guide.
Barbara transitioned to television appearing in the show Frontier Circus 1961. It told the story of a one ring circus that traveled through the American west. Barbara appeared as Bonnie Stevens in the episode “The Smallest Target.” The land leased by the circus for a weeklong stay was owned by the star performer’s estranged husband.
In 1966, Rush appeared as Sister Williams in the TV show Lar-
edo. A group of Texas Rangers working along the Mexican border got in and out of trouble while serving under the command of Captain Parmalee. The series ran for two seasons. Barbara appeared in the episode “Miracle at Massacre Mission.”
More western roles followed when Rush appeared as Audra Favor in her best western role in the 1967 release Hombre. The movie starred Paul Newman as John Russell, a white man raised by the Apache. John Russell became the only hope for the survival of the passengers after the stagecoach they were traveling on was robbed and they were forced to walk across the desert to safety.
Custer was another of the single season westerns that Barabara had a role in. It debuted in 1967 on the ABC network. The show was extremely far from historically accurate. In 1868, George Custer took charge of a mixed bag of ex-confederates and criminals at Fort Hays, Kansas. Barbara played
Brigid O’Rourke in the episode “The Gauntlet.” Custer must deal with a British colonel who arrived at Fort Hays and was set to make a reputation.
In 1972, she appeared as Louise Blanchard in the TV series McCloud. The show was a modern take on westerns, patterned after the Clint Eastwood film Coogan’s Bluff. Dennis Weaver played McCloud, a Deputy Marshal from Taos, New Mexico, who was loaned to the police ofcers assigned to Manhattan’s 27th Precinct. She shared the screen with Milton Berle in the episode “Give my Regards to Broadway.” When a police ofcer was killed in a grenade ambush, McCloud discovered he was extorting a theatrical producer to advance his daughter’s career. Diana Muldaur also appeared in the episode.
Cade’s County was another of the modern westerns loose -
Barbara Rush
ly based on Coogan’s Bluff. It ran for one season in 1972 and starred Glenn Ford as Sam Cade, the sherif of rural Madrid County. Barbara played the role of Jessie Braddock. She appeared in one episode as an old fame of Sam Cade and the main suspect in the murder of her husband.
She also appeared as Betty Spence in the 1975 TV movie The Last Day. The movie put a diferent slant on the story of the Dalton gang’s attempt to rob two banks in Cofeeville, Kansas. In this version, a retired gunman living near Coffeeville takes up his guns again when he discovered the Daltons planned to rob both the banks.
Her final appearance in a western was in the TV show Paradise in 1991. Barbara appeared as Patricia Forrester in the episode “Bad Blood.”
Barbara Rush was a successful film, TV, and stage actress who was the embodiment of style and grace. She died on March 31, 2024, from dementia at a care home in Westlake Village, California at the age of 97.
SHELLY DUVALL
Shelly Alexis Duvall was born in Fort Worth, Texas on July 7, 1949 to parents Bobbie Ruth, a real estate broker, and Robert Richardson Duvall, an attorney. She was an artistic and energetic child, given the nickname Manic Mouse by her mother. Shelly attended Waltrip High School.
Duvall’s frst movie role came in 1970, when she appeared in Brewster McCloud. The following year she appeared in her frst western in 1971 in the movie McCabe and Mrs. Miller. The movie is based on the novel McCabe by
Edmund Naughton. A gambler and a prostitute became business partners in a remote old west mining town. When a large vein of gold was discovered the big business interests moved in to control the town. Shelly played one of the ladies of the evening, Ida Coyle. Another western followed when she played Mrs. Cleveland In the 1976 flm Bufalo Bill and the Indians or Sitting Bulls History Lesson. A cynical Bufalo Bill hired Sitting Bull to exploit his image and add credibility to the distorted view of history that was being presented to the public.
Shelly produced several western themed shows with her Showtime series Tall Tales & Legends, which ran from 1985 to 1987 and produced nine episodes. The second episode starred Jamie Lee Curtis as Annie Oakley, with Brian Dennehy as Bufalo Bill. It told the story of the life of the world-famous female sharpshooter.
The third story was Pecos Bill, which starred Steve Guttenberg as the title character. It also featured Rebecca DeMornay, Martin Mull, and Claude Akins. A man raised
Shelly Duvall
by wolves turned a frontier settlement upside down.
Shelly herself starred in the ffth episode, “My Darlin Clementine.” It also starred Ed Asner and David Dukes. During the California gold rush, Clementine fell in love with Leve, but her father preferred a mountain man.
Barabara grew uneasy in Hollywood and moved to Blanco, Texas, in the early 2000’s. She appeared on the Doctor Phil Show in 2016. McGraw showcased her mental health issues, and many people thought he was exploiting her for higher ratings.
A foot injury left Duvall with limited mobility, and she made her last movie in 2023, The Forest Hills. She died in Blanco, Texas on July 11th, 2024, due to complications from diabetes.
Terry Alexander and his wife, Phyllis, live on a small farm near Porum, Oklahoma. They have three children, thirteen grandchildren, and four great grandchildren. If you see him at a conference, though, don’t let him convince you to take part in one of his trivia games— he’ll stump you every time.
THE BOOK WAGON
Doug Osgood BOOK REVIEWER
Six-Guns & Shadows
From classic vengeance to modern twists, these Westerns deliver.
The Man Behind the Badge
Of Norwegian and German descent, James Aurness was born on May 26, 1923, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to college-educated, professional parents. In his autobiography, he tells about his adventures growing up in the depression era Midwest. Drafted in 1943 for service in World War 2, and sent to the European theater, he fought at Anzio, where he was wounded leading a night patrol. It was an injury that led to significant pain later in life. After his recovery, he eventually found his way to Hollywood where circumstances led him to his iconic role as Marshal Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke. Arness had
many interests from surf ng, to sailing, and fying. Surfng almost derailed his Hollywood fame, but the intervention of his future frst wife salvaged his opportunity. Arness tells about the events in his life, rather than discussing and ofering insight into them. True to the personality shared by thoughts of his friends and co-stars in the appendices, Arness maintains his privacy and focuses mostly on the positive, often glossing over painful events. Much of the section on his Gunsmoke years centers on his and the show’s popularity with very few anecdotes. Despite the nature of autobiographies, Arness manages to come across as humble and self-deprecating.
I confess to picking this book up excited to learn about the life of the man behind the character I watched on television with my father on a weekly basis. In the end, I found the lack of insight and depth disappointing. James Arness: An Autobiography (Published by McFarland & Company, Inc., 2001) is interesting as far as it goes and does of er the reader a behind-the-scenes look at a path to success and flming a series, but it left me more than slightly unfulflled.
Rating: 3.5 Nuggets out of 5.
Short, Sharp, and Deadly
Bill Pronzini’s The Hanging Man (Published by Stark House Press, 2024) is a collection of short stories. In the titular opening story, Carl Miller and Ed Bozeman, deputy sherifs, must determine the identity of the drifter found hanging and who murdered him. Low on water deep in the Arizona desert, “Decision” follows Roy Boone when he comes upon a dry, neglected ranch and meets Jennifer Todd who has been badly beaten. Saddlemaker Reed Cable knows newly paroled Lee Tarbeaux holds a vengeful grudge and is headed his way in “Fear.” Storms have a way of exposing secrets and in the fnale, “Crucifxion River,” a violent storm forces Caroline Devane, James Shock, and many others to seek shelter at the ferry station run by T.J. Murdock and his family. No one is entirely who they seem and revealing what has been buried could ruin lives. Others stand to profit from the information, and doing the right thing isn’t always black and white.
Pronzini’s prose is peppered
with lingo that reads like he was raised in the old west. The inhabiting characters, despite frst impressions to the contrary, stand out as prototypes rather than cliches. His skill propels the reader from one story into the next even while digesting the twist that pulled the previous story together.
Many of the greats among the writers of western lore have published short story collections. Few are as delightful as The Hanging Man. Pronzini has the knack of crafting stories like both L’Amour and Leonard, with Christie’s mastery of the surprise ending. Prep the midnight oil—this one will keep you turning pages all night.
Rating: 5 Nuggets out of 5.
When Legends Fade
The demise of the Old West has not yet reached pre-World War I Arizona. Zach Provo spent the last twenty-eight years in the Yuma Territorial Prison plotting revenge against the man who put him there. When a work detail lands his chain gang well outside
the prison walls, he overpowers the guards and frees the entire crew. Retired sherif Sam Burgade knows, as soon as he hears the news, that Provo is coming for him. When his initial plan to trap Provo fails, Burgade insists on participating in the posse sent to track the gang, despite now needing assistance to mount his horse. How will he survive if the younger Provo again eludes capture and tracks him down?
More than just an action novel, The Last Hard Men, searches the depth of men’s souls and asks what revenge can drive a man to and the strength of a man’s ability to survive in the face of despair. This is an excellent study of vengeance by a master of the revenge theme as Garfeld previously demonstrated in Death Wish. The dialect is occasionally difcult to follow but does nothing to distract from the well-crafted plot or richly developed characters.
Outside the classics, many of the mid-to-late century authors are overlooked. Long since out of print, and thus not easy to track down, Garfield is worth the effort. The Last Hard Men (Bantam Books, 1971) is not only a fun look at the dying days of the wild west, but also thought provoking and well worth reading.
Rating: 4.5 Nugget out of 5.
Where Spurs Still Shine
Shiny Spurs and Gold Medallions (Thorndike Press, 2025) is a collection of award winning short stories by Rod Miller and Michael Norman. The opening story, “A Death of Crows,” takes an interesting look at Lieutenant Charles Gatewood, best known as
a controversial ofcer involved in the hunt for Geronimo, and the struggle to manage an Apache reservation. What happens when hungry tribal members and a wealthy cattle rancher clash? “Black Joe” examines the long memory of a wild stallion who leads a herd of mustangs on the range of rancher Duncan Kirkwood. Conor Doyle is hired to track down Issabella Grant who has run away to rejoin a Commanche tribe she had recently been rescued from after several years in captivity in “The Hunt for White Dove Woman.”
Miller and Norman present a series of stories that are both interesting for their Western fair and thought provoking for their deep dives into controversial themes and topics. Stories such as “The Death of Delgado” are almost ballad-like in their poignancy. Yet, while all these stories have won awards, none quite live up to the grandeur of the masters during the hay day of the genre. All of the endings felt inevitable and few could be called truly surprising.
Shiny Spurs and Gold Medallions is an enjoyable read. It
is worth the price of admissionto Miller’s and Norman’s West, though few of the stories draw me back for a re-read.
Rating: 4 Nuggets out of 5.
Legendary Lawman
Tilghman: The Legendary Lawman and The Woman Who Inspired Him (Two Dot, 2024) is the story of the intertwined history of Bill Tilghman’s career and his wife, Zoe’s, life after his tragic death. The narrative of the story switches back and forth between the events of Bill Tilghman’s law enforcement career and Zoe’s life after his passing as she seeks to raise their children and write a biography of her legendary lawman’s life. Major events of Tilghman’s epic life as a lawman
are retold by Zoe in a way that meshes with the life she is living as his widow.
The book is a compelling read that captures the struggle and beauty of life and death in the west in
this biography within a biography. Authors Howard Kazanjian and Chris Enss bring the story of a wife’s love to life as she seeks to honor her late husband’s legacy amidst the struggle of her own life. The attention to detail and use of primary sources garners an authenticity to the writing and brings the story of the Tilghmans’ to life on the page. The storytelling propelled me through this rich and interesting story of the history of the Tilghmans. The writing style of Howard Kazanjian and Chris Enss is a smooth narrative that gives the reader a satisfying deep dive into the details without feeling like a clunky, laborious read. The book is engaging and is unique in its presentation of a story within a story.
Rating: 5 Nuggets out of 5.
SADDLEBAG DISPATCHES POET LAUREATE
SADDLEBAG DISPATCHES POET LAUREATE
COUNTRY MELODY MARLEEN BUSSMA
COUNTRY MELODY MARLEEN BUSSMA
Quick lightning hammers edges of the mountains dim and dark. It splits the clouds with searing fingers burning bright and stark. Loud thunder rides along as sidekick, while it detonates its drumming, deep, ear-spli ing roar. The sky now merely waits.
It hovers heavy with expected rain that pastures seek.
Clouds boil to the thunder’s tempo and the lightning’s streak. They cast an eerie shade of green while blocking out the sun and threaten there’ll be violence before the day is done.
The ground is chopped and chewed by horses’ hooves that stomp and tramp, while dancing to the weather’s raucous music in the camp. The herd is tense and edgy as they push on the corral that’s temporary, made of rope, to suit the brief locale.
Quick footsteps of a cowboy fast approach the high-strung herd.
His duster flares like bat wings as he croons a gentle word to soothe the agitation that rides bareback in the pen and tries to earn a higher score than that of mortal men.
So -spoken words and soothing hands dissolve the herd’s unease. The cowboy strokes a buckskin as its mane li s in the breeze.
He’s back in camp to find a rested horse to search for strays.
His fav’rite ride’s the mustang that he’s used for several days.
He checks out the remuda, finally se les on a bay who turns his head, pricks up his ears, and steps out of the way.
The cowboy calmly vocalizes near the horse’s side and slips the bit between the teeth, soon ready for a ride.
The thunder sounds more distant as the storm clouds hesitate to wreak their havoc on the camp that’s meekly lain in wait. The cowboy tightens up the cinch beneath the skies of gray. He’ll take this outdoor office over Wall Street any day.
MICHAEL NORMAN CHASED TO GROUND
A SHORT STORY
Castillos, Mexico October 14, 1880
Chief Victorio sat quietly in front of his brush wickiup as the frst hues of pink and orange dusted the eastern sky. A small fre provided warmth to his aged bones as he smoked a cigarette and drank a cup of chicory coffee. His thoughts turned to the plight of his people. Ammunition and food were in short supply. The Apache god, Ussen, had provided them with an ample supply of water from the recent monsoons that flled every depression, hole, and crevice around Tres Castillos. This was good.
Days before, he had dispatched his segundo, Nana, and a dozen fghters to raid surrounding farms and ranches to steal cattle to be used for food and to purchase or steal additional ammunition. Nana had not yet returned, and Victorio, while concerned, felt safe in this desolate desert landscape. Surely, the predictable Mexican and U.S. Army would be searching for him where they always did—in the mountainous regions.
As the autumn sun climbed into a cloudless azure sky, Sanchez appeared at his fre and reported that all was quiet. He had changed the overnight lookouts and had posted three boys to watch over the horse herd. “Four more left during the night,” said Sanchez.
Victorio nodded. “It is to be expected. The People have endured many hardships in the struggle against our enemies, and I fear we are nearing the end. I worry about what will become of us.”
“Should we choose to surrender, we must not do so
in Mexico,” said Sanchez. “Better to cross the border and return to the reservation.”
Victorio paused. “Our people must choose their own path. As for me, I will never return to San Carlos. I would sooner die fghting my enemies, whether it be here or across the border.”
“As would I, my chief.”
Unbeknownst to the Apache, the peaceful tranquility of that autumn day would take a violent turn as the afternoon wore on. Mexican Army Colonel Joaquin Terrazas and his second-in-command, a veteran Indian fghter named Juan Mata Ortiz, met a short distance from Tres Castillos with their Tarahumara scouts. The scouts had discovered Victorio and his followers camped on a wide plain near a small lake that had formed during the recent monsoons. Above the plain were three low, rocky hills people erroneously called the Tres Castillos Mountains. In reality, none of the rocky hills stood more than one hundred feet tall.
Later that day, Apache lookouts spotted the large dust cloud from the approaching troops about onehalf mile from Victorio’s camp. The chief immediately dispatched around thirty warriors to contest the approach. A short engagement ensued in which shots were exchanged. The Apache quickly withdrew when they realized how badly they were outnumbered by the Mexican forces.
Victorio quickly ordered the women and children
Victorio’s Camp—Tres
to scale the nearest of the three-rock formations and prepare for an attack. He directed Sanchez to call in the youth guarding the horse herd to assist moving the women and children to higher ground. Meanwhile, Victorio spread his warriors throughout the lower portion of the rock formation to act as a rear guard against the pursuing Mexican army.
The Mexican troops quickly seized the horse herd and then launched a full-frontal assault against the now dug-in Apache. The bloody battle raged into the night with Victorio and his followers grudgingly surrendering ground to the much larger and better armed Mexican troops. As the night wore on, the fghting intensifed into close-quarter, hand-to-hand combat. Near dawn, Victorio moved his remaining people to the southernmost rock where they made their fnal stand. They built rock defenses and retreated to caves. By 10:00 that morning, the fghting was over. The bodies of the last two Apache were discovered in a cave. Between them, only one spent cartridge was found. Unofcially, Mexican forces counted sixty-two dead Apache fighters including Victorio, with an additional sixteen women and children killed. The Mexican army reported three dead soldiers.
After the battle, Terrazas gathered the sixty-eight captured prisoners, women and children mostly, and marched them to Chihuahua City where they were paraded in front of the local citizenry. The Apache scalps were hung on poles and displayed behind where the captives stood for photographs. As the celebration wound down, the children were separated from their mothers, and all were subsequently sold of as slaves to wealthy Mexican families.
El Paso, Texas—October 20, 1880
George Baylor sat alone at a small table, his back against the wall, facing the front door of the café. After so many years of chasing down renegade Indians, horse and cattle thieves, robbers and killers, all over Texas, he never sat in any public place with his back to the door. Just plain common sense he f gured. Baylor held the rank of Captain, Company A, of the Texas Rangers.
On this day, Baylor sipped Arbuckles’ cofee and devoured a leather-tough steak, biscuits and gravy, and canned peaches. He sat in the café at the Hotel Sheldon in El Paso, awaiting the arrival of George Gaston, editor of the El Paso Daily Herald.
An open copy of the newspaper lay in front of him. The front-page story that held his attention concerned the death of the feared Chiricahua Apache leader, Victorio, and the massacre of 250 of his warriors by the Mexican Army at Tres Castillos several days before. The story read like one of those cheap dime store novels sold across the American frontier as God’s truth to gullible settlers and storekeepers. Instead, they were full of exaggerated, factually inaccurate tales intended to glorify the exploits of prominent wild west characters. Baylor recognized the gross inaccuracies of this story for one simple reason. He had just returned from northern Mexico’s Chihuahuan Desert and those three piles of rocks people called the Tres Castillos Mountains.
Baylor glanced at his watch and muttered an inaudible expletive directed at the tardy Gaston. He
hated tardiness in people and felt genuinely irritated at the newspaper editor. That said, the two men had known each other for years, and Baylor knew all too well Gaston’s penchant for never getting anywhere on time.
As he groused, the café door burst open and in strode a harried looking George Gaston breathing heavily from obvious exertion. His unkempt mutton chop mustache, tweed suit, and bowler hat made him look like a citifed dandy. “Right on time, George.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Baylor, give it a rest, would you? This Victorio story is going to be the death of me. My readers are rightly celebrating the death of that heathen, but they’re pestering me for more information—information I don’t have but hope you do.”
Baylor used his index fnger and tapped the story in front of him. “After reading the gibberish you got in this here story, you obviously need my help, or somebody’s. I assumed that’s why you ofered to buy my breakfast this morning.”
Gaston raised his eyebrows then heaved an audible sigh. “I didn’t ofer to buy your breakfast, Captain Baylor, but I will, reluctantly, mind you.”
“Well, I appreciate that, George. You know with the shoddy wages we Texas Rangers receive we need all the help we can get.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s true.”
The waitress came over and Gaston ordered potatoes, runny eggs, biscuits, and cofee. Glancing at Baylor, he asked, “So, tell me, Captain, how was it that you and your Rangers happened to be in the vicinity of Tres Castillos when the big fght broke out?”
“It was like this, George. Me and a dozen of my Rangers were part of a coordinated operation that included a bunch of U.S. Cavalry troops, mostly from them Negro units of the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry, as well as about three dozen Apache scouts from Arizona, and, of course, the Mexican Army.
“The thinking was that ol’ Victorio was resting his people somewhere in the mountains cuz that’s what he’d always done. In particular, he liked the Black Mountains. The Blacks were close to their home in Warm Springs so his fghters knew every canyon, valley, butte, and mesa thereabouts.”
Gaston looked puzzled. “If what you say is true, why wasn’t the search concentrated in the mountains?”
“Oh, they’d been huntin’ for him in the mountains o’ course, but found nothin’, and that’s cuz the sneaky rascal wasn’t there. It just so happened the Mexican
Army commander, Colonel Terrazas, and his soldier boys didn’t trust the Chiricahua scouts—fgured they were men of divided loyalties. Terrazas used Tarahumara scouts instead. It was the Tarahumara scouts who tracked the Apache across northern Mexico’s Chihuahuan Desert to the Tres Castillos area. Victorio likely fgured that resting his people in the desert instead of the mountains would fool the soldiers, which it likely would have, were it not for the Injun scouts—best damn trackers I ever saw. I dare say that without them, nobody would have ever run ol’ Victorio to ground. And as for Victorio, well, he was probably the best Indian feld general to ever set foot on the American continent. That’s only my opinion, o’ course.”
“Opinion accepted. So, then what happened?”
“Well, this Terrazas abruptly told the U.S. Cavalry commander they were no longer needed in Mexico and should immediately return to U.S. soil. He also included my Rangers in that order. So, that’s what we did, well—all except me and Sergeant Dale Kittridge. We decided to stick around and watch the festivities from a distance.”
“I don’t understand. Why would Terrazas send the U.S. Cavalry home?”
“Simple enough, George. The colonel had a large force of his own and didn’t want to share the credit.”
“Makes sense, I guess. So, what did you and Kittridge do then?”
“Kittridge and me grabbed our spy glasses and found us an elevated patch o’ ground so’s we could watch the so-called Battle of Tres Castillos.”
Gaston scowled. “What do you mean the ‘so-called’ Battle of Tres Castillos?”
“Well now, George, that brings me to this here story in your paper which claims the Mexican Army killed 250 Apache warriors. How in hell did you ever come up with that number? Victorio didn’t have near that many fghters, even if you counted all the men, women, and children. He might’ve had sixty to seventy fghters, if you included some of the women and children who fought alongside the men.”
“Look, I had to go to press with something, so I went with what I had—speculation and rumor mostly. I admit it.”
Baylor shook his head in disgust. “Not only were the Apache badly outnumbered, but as the fght wore on, it became clear that they were also running out of ammunition. By the time the fghtin’ ended the
next morning, Victorio and his boys weren’t hardly shootin’ back at all.”
“Well, I can’t print that,” replied Gaston.
“And why not?”
“Because, my friend, I’m in the business of selling newspapers. What will my readers think if they read the Injuns ran out of ammo in the middle of the fght?”
“Why, maybe they’ll think the whole thing was more like a massacre, rather than the so-called battle you newspaper boys have concocted,” replied Baylor.
“Sometimes, Captain Baylor, talking to you is so damned frustrating. Go ahead and tell me what you and the sergeant saw next.”
“First thing we noticed was that Terrazas split his forces in two. He ordered his second-in-command, Ortiz, to swing his troops out wide around Tres Castillos and come in from the north. Terrazas led his soldiers in from the south—a pincer movement you might say. As soon as Victorio spotted the huge dust cloud comin’ his way, he sent out a couple dozen fghters to engage the Mexicans, probably so he’d have time to move his women and children to safer ground. That initial engagement didn’t last but a few minutes. I think, when the Apache fghters realized the size of the force they was up against, they retreated pretty damn quick.”
Gaston hurriedly scribbled notes into a bound notebook. “All right. Go on.”
“The Mexican soldiers ran of the Apache horse herd and that kinda sealed Victorio’s fate. No possible escape now except on foot.”
“And the time frame?” Gaston asked.
“The real fghtin’ started early evening and continued til it was dark. We fgured with darkness there might’ve been a pause in the battle. Apache don’t like to fght at night. Superstitious lot, they are, but they will fght at night when they must. Terrazas had no intention of suspending the fght until daylight, so the battle raged on all night. But as the night wore on, we noticed something began to change—the volume of shooting had declined.”
“Couldn’t that be because it had gotten dark and nobody could see what they were shooting at,” declared Gaston.
“Surely possible,” replied Baylor, “but after a while, it became clear that the reduced fring was coming mostly from the Apache side, not the Mexicans.”
“And that’s when you concluded the Apache were running out of ammunition?”
“Yep. By mid-morning, it was all over but the lootin’. The Mexican troops and Tarahumara scouts were busy rummaging through Injun belongings taking whatever they wanted, scalps included. The Mexican government, of course, is still payin’ a bounty on Apache scalps—men, women, and children.”
“And Victorio?” asked the newspaper man.
“Oh, he was dead, all right,” said Baylor. “There’s some question about exactly how he died. Some say a Tarahumara scout shot him, but some others say Victorio fell on his own knife—killed hisself. Apparently, he had no intention of being taken alive.”
Gaston set his pencil down on the table and stretched the stif fngers on his right hand. “Well, Captain Baylor, I must say with this new information, I can write a story for the newspaper that will make my readers happy. And it was well worth the cost of a breakfast, Captain Baylor. Thank you.”
Thus ended the historic battle of Tres Castillos. Many historians have argued that the Victorio War all but ended the Apache threat with respect to large numbers of hostiles banding together to attack civilian or military targets. Most assuredly, smaller Apache attacks continued until, and even after, the fnal surrender of Geronimo in the fall of 1886.
Author’s Note
Context matters in stories and this one is no exception. What follows is my attempt to place Victorio’s War into an historical perspective because this war,
like so many wars, did not start in a vacuum. The backstory explains actions taken by the U.S. Government that precipitated Victorio’s fnal decision to declare war against the U.S.
Victorio was the longtime chief of the Chihenne band of the Chiricahua Apache tribe. He and his people lived in southwestern New Mexico Territory in a place called Warm Springs, or Ojo Caliente, for those who prefer Espanol. They believed that Warm Springs had been given to them by the Apache God, Ussen, for the beneft of the People, and as such, they should protect and care for it.
Unfortunately for the Chiricahua, government bureaucrats in Washington had other ideas. In 1871, the government ordered the relocation of Victorio’s people to a newly created reservation some ffty miles west of Warm Springs at the foot of the Tularosa Mountains. In 1872, the army escorted the Chihenne to the new reservation. Unhappy with the place, the disgruntled Apache soon returned to their beloved Warms Springs while the government dithered about what to do. Finally, in 1874, the government relented and established the Chihenne Reservation at Warms Springs. Victorio and his people were elated.
However, the federal government in 1877, decided that all Apache tribes should be moved to Arizona’s San Carlos Reservation—a hot, parched, and desolate strip of land bordering the Gila River. The army drove Victorio and his people across the mountains, forcing them to share that horrid place with other Apache tribes, some of which were enemies of the Chiricahua. The men stayed for only a few months before breaking out and returning to their homes. Army patrols pursued Victorio and gradually pushed him north until he surrendered at Fort Wingate. There, unwilling to care for the Chihenne so close to their traditional enemy, the Navajo, the army soon decided the Chihenne could return to Warm Springs pending the Government’s fnal decision about their future.
Victorio and his people awaited the decision with growing fear, anger, and frustration. After two years of uncertainty, when a new rumor circulated that they would again be returned to San Carlos, Victorio had had enough. In late summer, 1879, he declared war against the United States government. For the next fourteen months, parts of New Mexico, Texas, and Northern Mexico ran red with the blood of civilians from both countries, the armies of Mexico and the U.S., and, of course, the Apache.
Victorio led those armies on a brutal, arduous chase, from deserts to mountains and back again, and ultimately to the killing ground of northern Mexico’s Chihuahuan Desert, at the place called Tres Castillos.
This story is a work of fction, and while I confess to having taken some literary license for entertainment’s sake, I made every efort to accurately portray what historians have learned about what actually happened at the Battle of Tres Castillos.
The character of El Paso newspaper editor, George Gaston, was fctional, as was the breakfast meeting between him and Texas Ranger Captain George Baylor. Baylor himself is not a fctional character but rather a former Confederate Army ofcer, who, after the Civil War, developed a distinguished career in Texas law enforcement, including service as a captain in the Texas Rangers. Baylor and a dozen of his Rangers were at Tres Castillos alongside elements of the Tenth U.S. Cavalry “Bufalo Soldiers,” all of whom were ordered out of Mexico by Colonel Terrazas before the fghting began.
The Mexican Army characters of Colonel Joaquin Terrazas and Juan Mata Ortiz are not fctional characters. Both were seasoned Indian fghters. Ortiz was killed a couple of years after Tres Castillos in an Apache revenge attack led by Chiricahua Chief Juh. Colonel Terrazas lived a long life. He died in 1901, reportedly in bed. Chihuahua City erected a statue of the colonel in 1910, to honor his military exploits against the Apache at Tres Castillos. {
THE AUTHOR
Michael Norman is the author of fve murder mysteries, three of which are traditional stories, and two that are contemporary Western novels set in the desert of Southern Utah. His debut novel, The Commission, received a starred review and was named by Publisher’s Weekly as one of its best 100 books of 2007. His other traditional novels include, Silent Witness and Slow Burn. Michael’s contemporary Western novels have been declared by some as reminiscent of the late Tony Hillerman’s southwestern mysteries. These titles include, On Deadly Ground and Skeleton Picnic. Recently, Michael has written seven Western short stories, the frst two of which won Copper and Gold medals from the Will Rogers Medallion organization. The award winners included, “A Death of Crows” and “Lozen’s War.” “A Death of Crows” also was declared the winner of the frst and now annual Longhorn Prize from Saddlebag Dispatches magazine for best western short story of 2023. Michael currently resides in Mexico with his wife, Diane, and their pit bull, Kady.
THE PANHANDLE CODE: FEED TRAVELLERS
Through grit, generosity, and frontier hospitality, Belle Gray and fellow Panhandle pioneers braved the unforgiving Llano Estacado—feeding strangers, battling the elements, and shaping the rugged legacy of West Texas.
STORY BY
KENYON BENNETT
Texas Panhandle settlers endured hardships: living in sod dugouts and harboring an almost endless supply of dirt; killing skin-colored stinging scorpions that had eerie pinchers in the front and a barbed, curled, and slightly elongated tail in the back; shooting coiled venomous rattlesnakes, usually of the Western Diamondback variety; and ignoring the constant high winds on the Llano Estacado, also known as the Staked Plains, in a region that is part of the Southern Plains. These less than satisfactory experiences did not deter hardy pioneers from building the sod dugouts on their primitive homesteads and establishing large or small ranches or farms in the Panhandle during the 1880s and ’90s. Houses built from lumber came later.
Pioneers in the Texas Panhandle often lived in sod dugouts when they frst settled in the area. This dugout was John Bouldin and his wife’s frst home in the Wildorado pasture near Serita La Cruz Creek on the L. S. Ranch northwest of Amarillo. 1898.
These pioneers exhibited character traits common to the Panhandle during that era of the Old West: a resolute determination to survive and thrive, a local philosophy to be generous, and the desire to extend friendly hospitality to others. Feeding travelers was one vitally important unwritten code they followed. Pioneers who became “old timers” in the twentieth century bemoaned later generations’ lack of frontier generosity and hospitality. One homesteader, Belle Gray, whose husband was Tristam “Tuss” Gray, was recognized as a big-hearted, welcoming, and resourceful woman.
Why? Starting in 1888, Gray served countless meals free of charge to lanky cowboys and transients journeying between Plainview and Amarillo or vice versa in the Panhandle. Weary travelers often stayed the night at the Grays’ homestead where the family had established a ranch near Tule Creek and Tule Canyon. Gray’s laborious efforts to feed travelers were notable and unselfsh actions.
What was traveling like for cowboys and others?
Long. The distance today between Amarillo, first developing as a settlement in spring 1887, and Plainview, established in 1887, but chartered in 1888, is approximately seventy-seven miles. Tulia, a community the Grays helped to establish with W. G. Conners around 1889-90 in what became Swisher County, lay ffty-three miles south of Amarillo and twenty-six miles north of Plainview.
During a personal interview that is now housed at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum at West Texas A&M University in Canyon, Texas, Gray revealed in a frsthand account what her life had been like when settling in the Panhandle.
The Grays had lived at Blanco Canyon in 1884, over eighty miles southeast of where Tulia would eventually be settled. When they arrived by the new Fort Worth and Denver City Railway service in Clarendon, Texas, in December 1887, they began traveling southwest to reach their ranchland.
“We got of the train at Clarendon and came across through the canyon over the roughest road I think I ever traveled in my life. When I got up here, I didn’t have any place to live, so after about three weeks, we built a dugout where we lived for about fve years,” Gray said, pointing out that most area settlers’ frst houses were dugouts.
“There was no town of Canyon then. Our dugout was the only stop between Plainview and Amarillo. There was always someone camped at our place from
one end of the year to the other. We had a dugout full of beds for the boys to sleep on account of storms and blizzards outside in wintertime. In summertime, the boys slept out on the ground,” she said.
“I couldn’t begin to tell the meals I have cooked for people that passed through. Of course, they were almost all cowboys, and after Amarillo started, it was transients and people traveling to locate at Plainview and down in there,” Gray revealed.
Gray wanted to buy a sewing machine. Most likely with a gleam in her clear eyes and a pragmatic attitude, she relied upon her personal grit when forming a plan to meet her needs. Cooking for so many dust-covered cowboys and others at her primitive dugout allowed Gray a defnitive means to obtain what she truly coveted.
“I needed a sewing machine, so I decided I would charge the transients 25¢ a meal until I got enough to buy it. I didn’t charge the cowboys anything. Mister Gray didn’t want me to charge the transients anything, but he was away, and I needed the machine so bad. I decided I would do it. I got the machine in less than a month.”
The cost? Thirty dollars.
Was Gray breaking an unwritten Panhandle code by charging for meals? Yes.
Her husband’s objections? Out the window.
Even a man of the cloth did not deter Gray from reaching her goal. “Mister Nance, the Christian preacher at Plainview, came through, but I decided he just
From left to right at the Yellow House Division on the XIT Ranch are 1. foreman’s house; 2. store and windmill, men’s house; 3. kitchen and dining room; 4. commissary; 5. bunkhouse; and 6. barn. The expansive XIT Ranch once covered parts of 10 Texas Panhandle counties and hosted dances for settlers. 1894. Photo Courtesy Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas.
TOP: Workers grade the frst streets near the east corner of Courthouse Square in Plainview, Texas. Transients and cowboys often traveled between Plainview and Amarillo. October 1900. BOTTOM: Wagons are loaded with supplies on the west side of Courthouse Square. Tulia, where Belle Gray’s sod house sat, was 26 miles north. Circa 1890. Photos Courtesy Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas.
as well pay as anyone else. After I got my machine, I didn’t charge anymore. The next time Mister Nance came through, he insisted on paying, but I wouldn’t take it anymore. There wasn’t anything else I wanted,” she stated.
The Grays, like most Panhandle families, required store-bought food and supplies to partially sustain their needs. “We got our food twice a year, in the spring and in the fall. We could go to Amarillo and buy all our supplies and clothing to last six months,” Gray explained.
“We kept dried fruit, canned corn and tomatoes, beans and potatoes, and we always had lots of meat. Our sugar, we got in the barrel. They didn’t have it in sacks. We bought cofee by the sack. Feeding so many people, it took a lot. I suppose we bought it by the thousand pounds,” she said. The family stored feed, four, salt for the cattle, and chicken feed in a small separate dugout.
Gray felt that she cooked well, but sometimes the meal variety sufered. “It was beans and meat and bread and potatoes and potatoes and bread and meat and beans,” she joked.
“I used to get so tired of cooking the same thing. I was a good pie and cake maker at that time, and everybody was always hungry at mealtime, and I guess it tasted good to them,” she said.
Nocturnal noises sometimes awakened Gray from sleep. Coyotes yipped in high pitches at night. If wolves were nearby, their drawn-out howls broke the serenity of inky nighttime darkness blanketing the Southern Plains. Other wild animals slyly visited at nightfall. Gray revealed an early event at the homestead. “When we came across the country over here, we
heard a panther hollering. I woke Mister Gray. I said, ‘What is that?’ He went back to sleep. I said, ‘What is that?’” she revealed.
“Now, you stay awake,” she warned her husband. “I want to know what this is hollering.”
Tuss heard the outdoor noises arising from a point past their dugout. “It is a panther,” he replied.
“Where is the ax?” Gray immediately asked.
“I think it is of out there where we staked the horses,” he answered.
“One of the horses was so scared it pulled and broke the rope. The panther only hollered three times,” Gray remembered.
Entertainment provided a reprieve from loneliness in desolate locations. Owners of large ranches sometimes hosted dances that entertained local settlers. “We would go to the ranches and have a dance occasionally. We always danced all night and stayed all day and had all we could eat,” Gray said.
“Once, a bunch of us went over to the XIT Ranch and stayed two days and two nights and danced. The lady was not used to a bunch coming, so she did not know how much food to prepare. I remember she only made twelve lemon pies. This was not a taste for the people there to [for] the dances,” Gray said.
Although Comanches, a ferce nomadic Southern Plains people, were mostly relegated to the Fort Sill reservation in southwestern Indian Territory by 1890, some Panhandle settlers felt that uprisings could occur. Apaches lived on other reservations. “We had an Indian scare after Tulia was organized. We lived west of town about four miles. Mister Gray had been over to the breaks, and when he was coming home, they had the report out in town that the Indians were
coming across. He said we must all come to town to stay. We came in that night and stayed all the next day and all the next night, but the Indians did not come. It was a false report,” Gray said.
Local families frightened by the rumors sequestered themselves in Tulia. The men “made a fort out of the wagons for the men to shoot behind. We had a good deal of fun, anyway. One girl said, ‘Gee whiz. I wish they would come on if they are coming. If there is going to be any fun, I want to have it.’ Everybody came from thirty miles around,” Gray recounted.
Gray and her family encountered additional perils on the Llano Estacado. “I have seen blizzards, storms, and prairie fres. There was one prairie fre I remember—it did not burn our house, but it did burn all our grass and burned ffteen head of cattle. The cattle would keep right in the fre until it killed them. Mister Gray came out and fought the fre and did not let it catch the house. We carried water in buckets and kept the house from burning,” Gray said.
Women desired neighborly visits. On occasion, pioneering women raising children in remote areas near Tulia grew despondent. They missed having female friends. Such was the case for Laura Word, married to Charles Thompson Word. Gray initiated the custom to “spend the day” with other women on neighboring ranches or farms.
Amarillo, Tulia, and Plainview have grown since 1890. According to the World Population Review in
2024, the population of Amarillo was 203,035; Tulia, 4,390; and Plainview, 19,180. Panhandle pioneers like Gray, once noted for their unbridled generosity, helped establish the settlements that became cities. Gray, like the other hardy settlers, staunchly observed the unwritten Texas Panhandle code: Feed travelers.
Kenyon Bennett, nonfction historical writer, specializes in Old West adventures. She has passionately researched cattle drives originating in Texas, notorious Texas outlaws and gunslingers, brothers becoming cattlemen, a U.S. Dragoons expedition, and more.
Bennett grew up working on her family’s cattle ranches in Lampasas County, Texas. Her insider’s knowledge of actual cowboys and their dry humor helped foster her deep affnity for the Old West.
True West Magazine has published her features: “Bold and Lethal” (2018), “The Santa Fe Trail Beckoned the Mosty Brothers” (2021), and “Rowdy Cowboys, Outlaws, and Blood Feud” (2023). Bennett was a fnalist for the 2024 DOWNING Journalism Award, sponsored by Women Writing the West, for “Rowdy Cowboys.”
Bennett’s historical work has appeared elsewhere. The Lampasas County Historical Commission published “Watering Station, Heaven or Hell” (2020). She presented “Henry Dodge and the Dodge-Leavenworth Dragoon Expedition of 1834” to a local historical society in 2024.
Bennett currently writes historical and modern-day features for The Dodgeville Chronicle and The Democrat Tribune, southwestern Wisconsin newspapers. Long-term projects on cattle drives and a young nineteenth-century Lampasas deputy sheriff also take her time.
Bennett earned her Master of Science and Bachelor of Science in Education degrees and taught English for two decades.
XIT Ranch cowboys near Rita Blanca Well are at home on the range. From left to right are Helland Joolé; W. A. Askew; Ed Austin; Hop Standifer; Ealy Moore, range boss; Bob Duke, straw boss; Rif Read; Florence Moore, Steve “Gib” Neuberry; Fidel Trujillo, bronc buster; and Tom Dixon. These cowboys might have attended the dances the XIT Ranch once hosted and that Belle Gray attended. n.d. Photo Courtesy Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas.
LYNN DOWNEY
LAST STAGE FROM WICKENBURG
A SHORT STORY
Mollie Sheppard checked her carpetbag one fnal time, looked around the now-empty rooms of her home, sighed, and adjusted her hat. When she heard the buckboard pull up, she walked out the front door and closed it with a fnality that startled the birds in the cottonwood trees.
Arthur Henderson jumped of his perch in the wagon and took Mollie’s bag, helping her into the seat. He climbed back in, took the reins, and moved the horses in the direction of Prescott’s stage stop.
“I’m sorry you’re leaving, Miss Mollie,” Arthur said.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’ll miss you. It’s not been easy to keep friends around here.”
“I know, ma’am. And I understand your reasons for gettin’ outta town.”
Mollie turned her head as they passed a small, unpainted house.
“I started to lose heart when Ellen was murdered last year,” said Mollie. “And Jenny just before her. Seems the smaller the town, the more danger for women like me.”
“Well, I reckon you know what you’re doin’. But I still think it’s a shame.”
They didn’t speak again until the wagon pulled up to the station. Arthur helped her get down, and she pressed some bills into his hand.
“Thank you, Arthur.”
He touched his cap and drove away.
The November morning light was weak and did nothing to warm the chill in the air. The four horses hitched to the coach breathed out steam, and the other passengers milling around did the same.
Mollie recognized driver John Lance, who was
bustling about loading bags and trunks and keeping an eye on the horses. She also saw jeweler Frederick Shoholm, who returned her greeting. She knew he’d sold his share of the business and was on his way to San Francisco. Four other men were strangers to her, but the last one was not. Kruger. William Kruger, the clerk to the quartermaster at the army encampment at Date Creek about twenty miles from Prescott. He and his brother lived in a boardinghouse in town, and she knew him—as she would have put it if asked—“professionally.”
He grinned when he saw her and ambled over.
“Good morning, Miss Sheppard. I heard you had sold up and were leaving Prescott. It will be a privilege to travel with you. Are you heading to San Francisco?”
“Hello, Mister Kruger. What are your travel plans?”
He noticed she hadn’t answered his question.
“Just to Ehrenberg to take up a new post there,” he said. “But I doubt it will have the same charms as Prescott.”
Mollie inclined her head and moved away from him just as Lance called, “Okay, everybody, time to get aboard.”
All the men stood aside as she got into the coach frst. As the rest piled in, she noted that three of them seemed to stick together, and one was a handsome boy with a mischievous face. Lance climbed into the driver’s seat and took the reins. He shouted to the team, and the coach rolled forward knocking the passengers together.
A long coach trip makes strangers into easy acquaintances, and Mollie was never one to wait for introductions.
“Good morning, gentlemen. Are you all taking the through stage from Wickenburg?”
The good-looking young man spoke frst.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m Frederick Loring, and these are my colleagues, Pete Hamel and Will Salmon.”
The two men touched their hats and smiled.
“We have just fnished our duties with Lieutenant Wheeler’s western expedition and are on our way to San Francisco.”
He had an interesting accent that Mollie couldn’t quite place.
“I heard about that. What an exciting time you must have had.”
“Well, not all of it was exciting, but we did very good work,” said Hamel.
“Mister Hamel is our topographer,” said Loring. “He made sure we didn’t get lost. And Salmon here kept our horses and gear in good shape.”
“Loring was our secretary,” said Hamel.
“Secretary?” asked Mollie.
“Yes, to document our activities for the government. I also have a contract with Appleton’s. Perhaps you know the magazine?” Loring asked.
“I do, though I haven’t seen a copy in quite some time. It’s hard to get magazines delivered out here.”
“I compiled stories of our adventures for their readers,” Loring said.
“He even got the facts straight.” Hamel grinned. Loring pretended to roll his eyes, and Mollie couldn’t help but laugh.
“Where are you from, Mister Loring?” she asked.
“Boston, ma’am,” he replied.
“You’re a long way from home.”
“Yes, and I’m heading back after I spend a little time in San Francisco to write a few more articles.”
“I admire your industry,” Mollie replied.
“Well, I only read the Army and Navy Journal,” said Kruger.
No one had an answer for this. The other man then gave his name as, “Charles Adams, four merchant,” and the passengers settled into the long trip.
The coach rolled into Grant’s stage station in Wickenburg just before midnight. The weary group stumbled into the station where the owner gave them something to eat and showed them to a series of rooms where they could bed down for a few hours.
Departure time, 7:00 a.m., came too quickly. The roads would be better after Wickenburg, so they had that to look forward to at least, and their
Concord-style coach was roomier and more comfortable than the one from Prescott. Mollie got in frst, sitting in the rear-facing seat, and Kruger plopped himself next to her. Salmon, Shoholm, and Hamel also stepped in, while Loring and Adams sat up top with Lance.
Once they put a couple of miles behind them, Kruger asked the men if they wanted to play cards. They all agreed, and he pulled a pack from his feld bag while Mollie draped her fur cape across the center bench to make the game easier. She wasn’t included in the invitation, and she didn’t ask to join in, though she watched for a while. It never hurt to learn new ways to play poker.
About an hour later, as the men grew more boisterous in their betting, everyone felt the coach surge forward, and then Lance’s voice pierced the air.
“Apaches! Apaches!”
No one moved, but the stage suddenly lurched and seemed to turn on its axis. And then more sounds came.
Of bullets hitting wood and fesh. And screams.
Mollie saw Shoholm jerk and fall over the center bench and then felt a sudden searing pain in her right arm. Salmon leaped out of the coach as Hamel and Kruger pulled sidearms from under their seats and started fring through the windows. Kruger grunted as a bullet grazed him.
Mollie kept low, cradling her arm, and then there was no more noise and the coach ceased to sway.
She and Kruger stared at each other, and then Mollie reached down and picked up the gun that Shoholm had held but had no chance to fre.
“We have to run for it,” said Kruger, looking at her and Hamel. They nodded as he looked carefully out the window.
“The coach has turned around,” he said. “We’re facing east, and we need to go the other direction. Get ready.”
A few moments later, he pulled Mollie to her feet, threw open the door, and they both jumped to the ground. They couldn’t help looking behind them and then wished they hadn’t.
Lance, Adams, and Loring lay dead or dying on the ground. A few yards away, a group of men on horseback or on foot lurked behind low mesquite trees. Mollie gasped and started to say something to Kruger, but he prodded her forward.
“Come on, we have to move!”
Kruger turned and fred in the direction of the
men who made some efort to pursue them and then stopped. With Kruger now and then supporting Mollie as they ran, they headed of the road into the desert, fnding cover in a large creosote bush. They lay still, not speaking, counting each minute they didn’t hear the sounds of men or horses approaching.
Nearly an hour later, Mollie and Kruger stumbled back to the road avoiding the site of the attack.
“We’ll keep going west,” Kruger said.
“Why didn’t Hamel follow us?” Mollie said.
“He must have been killed. They’re all dead. Damn those Indians.”
“What?”
“It was Indians, didn’t you see them?”
“I saw some white men, or maybe Mexicans,” Mollie said.
“Don’t be stupid, it was Indians. They wanted our money. They wanted the horses.”
“I’m telling you, there might have been some Indians. But I also saw white men.”
Kruger didn’t answer as he pulled on Mollie’s uninjured arm and strode westward.
They were both so tired they barely registered the sound of the approaching buckboard. Kruger was the frst to notice, and he ran forward raising his arms. Driver John Nelson pulled up and stared at the disheveled pair.
“Thank God,” said Kruger. “We need your help.”
“What happened? Where did you two come from?” Nelson asked.
“We were attacked. Our stage was attacked,” said Mollie. She was already getting into the wagon.
“Hey, wait a minute…” Nelson began.
“Sir,” she said. “We are the only survivors of an attack on the Wickenburg stage. The killers might still be out there.”
Kruger jumped into the wagon next to her.
“Where are you headed?” he asked Nelson.
“I’ve got the Wickenburg mail,” he said. “But I’ll take you back to Culling’s Well. It’s closer. I’ll have to leave you there and deliver the mail, but I’ll send back help.”
“Thank you,” breathed Mollie.
The Culling’s Well station was crude, but welcome, and Mollie and Kruger managed to sleep for a few hours before a group of horsemen with a wagon pulled up after nightfall.
“Are you the folks from the stage attack?” asked one of the men as the weary pair approached them.
“Yes,” said Kruger, as Mollie nodded.
“Well, get in, we’re taking you to Wickenburg. Where are your belongings?”
“What belongings? We have nothing. We left everything behind. Our shoes have barely survived, not to mention ourselves,” said Mollie.
The man ignored her and motioned for the two of them to get into the wagon. Well-armed horsemen followed behind as it rolled away. The rescue party arrived in Wickenburg near dawn, and Mollie and Kruger walked into Grant’s Station once again, collapsing into the same beds they’d slept in the night before.
Later that morning, Dr. Evans, camp physician at Date Creek, came into Wickenburg to look at Mollie and Kruger’s wounds. His was superfcial, but hers was troubling. A splinter of wood from the coach had torn into her right arm and was still there—deep. The wound was infamed, and the doctor feared that infection would set in. So, he suggested that she come back to Date Creek with him for treatment in the infrmary.
“You can board with our matron,” Dr. Evans told Mollie. “She’ll take good care of you.”
“I’m obliged, doctor, thank you,” she said.
“You can remain here in Wickenburg and wait for another stage to take you on your interrupted journey,” Dr. Evans said to Kruger.
“No,” he said. “I need to make sure Miss Sheppard is well taken care of.”
“I don’t need you to watch over me,” said Mollie. “I’m in good hands.”
“You need protection, especially in light of your… situation.”
“And what situation is that?” Mollie said, with a hard stare.
Evans spoke before Kruger could reply.
“I don’t care what situation she’s in. She is coming with me to Date Creek. You can join us or not, but you will need to bunk with the enlisted men. We have no facility for guests.”
The doctor’s carriage was comfortable, but Mollie was grateful when they fnally pulled into the camp. Evans steered her toward a small adobe where a thin woman in a black dress and white apron greeted her and tucked her into a small cot.
She made Mollie stay in bed, and though the throbbing in her arm didn’t get worse, it still made movement difcult. The matron wasn’t exactly friendly, but she wasn’t hostile either, even though Mollie was sure she knew about her former profession.
Kruger asked the matron if he could visit during those first few days, but Mollie refused him. She was puzzled by his attention, which seemed more desperate than carnal.
Late on the third day of her convalescence, Date Creek’s commander, Captain Richard O’Beirne, came into the matron’s quarters to speak to Mollie. Kruger trailed him into the room.
“Good morning, Miss Sheppard. I hope you are recovering well?”
“I am, thanks to your generosity,” she said.
“Doctor Evans tells me that your wound is healing, though slowly. We are not equipped to take on a long-term patient, so I have arranged for you to stay with the Gilson family at their ranch a few miles from here. Missus Gilson is happy to take you in, and we will make sure she and her husband are compensated for any costs. Mister Kruger is also invited to stay.”
“That is unacceptable, Captain. Miss Sheppard must remain under your protection, considering what has happened to us. The Indians might want to return to fnish the job,” said Kruger.
“That is unlikely,” said O’Beirne.
“Then the real reason must be because she is an unfortunate,” Kruger said. “And you do not want her presence to taint your post.”
“That is a positively unfounded and despicable accusation, Mister Kruger. I only care about Miss Sheppard’s welfare.”
He then spoke directly to Mollie, turning his back on Kruger.
“I hope this conversation hasn’t upset you, Miss. With your permission, the Gilsons will pick up both of you tomorrow.”
“Thank you for your concern, Captain. And I will gladly go to the ranch.”
O’Beirne herded the loudly protesting Kruger out of the room.
Mollie enjoyed her time with the Gilsons. They were kind and didn’t ask questions. She had a room to herself while Kruger bedded down in the lean-to that served as a kitchen. He sometimes rode the three miles back to Date Creek saying he needed to talk with ofcials there.
A few days after Christmas, Kruger walked into Mollie’s room. She was now well enough to sit in a
chair and read, and she asked him why he was still at the ranch.
“There is no reason you can’t go back to Wickenburg and resume your journey,” she said. “I’m sure you are anxious to start your new position.”
“I have more important things to do, and so do you,” Kruger said.
“I need to rest. That’s all I have to think about,” she replied.
“Listen, Mollie…” he began.
She bristled at the use of her Christian name.
“Mister Kruger, let’s please keep to the formalities, despite our current circumstances.”
“Fine. Miss Sheppard, you and I both lost money and other valuables in the attack. The
only way we can get any recompense is to fle a claim of Indian depredation with the government. They pay people for losses due to Indian raids.”
“I know. Captain O’Beirne talked to me about that. But I don’t believe that Indians were fully responsible.”
“What are you talking about?”
“As I told you at the time, I saw white men, or maybe Mexicans, among the attackers. I don’t dispute that a few Indians might have joined them. But to call it an Indian raid is wrong.”
“What do you care? Do you want to leave here with nothing? Haven’t you seen the newspapers?”
“Yes, I read the account of the ‘Wickenburg Massacre’ in the Prescott paper. I see they got all the facts from you,” she said. “But I have been down to nothing before and survived. I am grateful I have my life, and I will not swear to something I don’t believe. You are welcome to do whatever you please.”
Mrs. Gilson popped her head into Mollie’s room.
“Excuse me, Miss Sheppard. You asked about the La Paz stage to San Bernardino. You can pick it up the day after tomorrow. Will that suit you?”
“Yes, Missus Gilson. Thank you.”
Kruger said to Mollie, “I’ll go with you and make the arrangements.”
“Mister Kruger, I appreciate your concern, if that’s what it is, but I am well enough to get to California on my own. The Army returned my cape and some of my jewelry. That is enough to get me started again.”
“You need an escort.”
“I do not.”
Mollie picked up her book and started to read. She heard Kruger mumble something, and then he was gone.
She wasn’t surprised that he was at her side the morning she left. Mollie was feeling hopeful because the wood splinter had fnally worked its way out of her arm. Mrs. Gilson had cleaned the wound thoroughly and given her fresh gauze to take with her to keep it that way.
Boarding another stagecoach brought back terrifying memories, but Mollie didn’t let them bother her. What did irritate her was Kruger’s announcement to the other passengers that he and Mollie were the only survivors of the Wickenburg Massacre followed by a highly embellished account of how he saved both of them from a mob of howling Indians.
Some of the passengers asked Mollie for her version of events, but she refused to talk about it, asking them to respect her privacy as she was still recovering from her wounds. When Kruger looked relieved, she fnally realized why he was sticking to her so closely.
He needed her to corroborate his story about bloodthirsty Indians stealing his life savings so he could get money from the government. If she spoke up, if she told anyone she thought white men were involved, no one would believe his story.
She considered this option for a moment. Kruger would not only be discredited, he would be humiliated. It was tempting. But if she did that, he would continue to hound her, and that was unacceptable.
After a few days in San Bernardino, Mollie and Kruger made their way to Los Angeles.
Reporters sought them out, and Mollie told them about her fur cape, even showing the newspapermen
the bullet holes that she hadn’t yet repaired. She let Kruger do most of the talking purposely placing herself in the background of the story.
In early January, they took a steamer to San Francisco and checked into the American Exchange Hotel. Reporters besieged them there, too, and Kruger’s story was picked up by papers as far away as Boston, Cincinnati, and New York.
One morning, after a late night of drinking with some traveling salesmen, Kruger knocked on Mollie’s door. There was no answer, so he went down to the dining room, but she wasn’t there either.
He walked up to the reception desk and asked the clerk, “Can you tell me if Miss Sheppard has come down for breakfast?”
The young man looked through his ledger and said, “Miss Sheppard checked out very early this morning.”
Kruger gaped.
“Did she leave a forwarding address?”
The clerk checked again.
“No, sir. She paid her bill in full.”
“Do you know where she went?”
“No, sir. But you might ask the bellboy.”
He pointed toward a sturdy youngster in a burgundy uniform.
Kruger hurried over and got his attention.
“Did you see Miss Mollie Sheppard leave this morning?”
“Yes, sir. She took a hackney, but I don’t know where she was headed.”
“Damn.”
Kruger walked out of the hotel’s front door and looked up and down Sansome Street. He knew he wouldn’t see her, but he had to take some sort of action. He stared at the people bustling past him for a full minute then his shoulders drooped, and he went back into the hotel.
Luckily, the bar was open.
The April day was summer-like as government officials, Boy Scouts, bands, and spectators gathered around the stone structure a few miles west of Wickenburg. The city had planned two big events for the same day—dedicating a new highway underpass and a monument to the victims of the Wickenburg Massacre, placed on the site where it happened more than sixty-fve years before.
First on the agenda was the monument. Made of
large, multicolored river rocks, its pyramid shape was topped with a bronze sculpture of a stagecoach pulled by four careening horses, held back by a driver with a whip in his hand. On the stone face was a plaque in the shape of Arizona, with the date of the massacre, names of the dead, and the culprits—Apache-Mohave Indians.
After the speeches were over, the crowd lined up a few yards away for barbequed hamburgers and hot dogs and sat at tables covered with red and white checkered cloths. The Boy Scouts got there frst.
A woman in her thirties wearing a smart navy-blue suit stayed behind as people moved away toward the food. She held onto the elbow of an old woman who wore a green gabardine dress and matching jacket. She leaned on a cane, but her posture was perfect. Now alone, they walked up to the monument.
Paul Hughes, a reporter for the Arizona Republic newspaper, noticed that the women didn’t join the other revelers and headed slowly in their direction as the older woman ran her hand over the plaque. He took a notebook and pencil from his jacket pocket and joined them, touching his hat.
“Excuse me, ladies. My name is Paul Hughes. I’m
with the Arizona Republic. I wonder if I could ask you some questions?”
The younger woman glanced at her companion.
“What about?”
“Well, for one thing, you seem more interested in this monument than anybody else does, including the Wickenburg ofcials. Can you tell me why?”
The older woman pointed at the plaque.
“It wasn’t Indians,” she said.
“What?” said Hughes.
“Do you see what it says there?” she asked him, ignoring his question.
Hughes peered at the carved words.
“Yes, ma’am. It’s the names of everyone killed in the massacre.”
“Why do you suppose it says that ‘Mollie Sheppard died of wounds?’”
“Well, I guess that means she lingered for a while, like they said during the speeches. Though come to think of it, the plaque doesn’t say anything about the man… what was his name… the man who survived?”
Hughes fipped through his notebook.
“William Kruger,” the old woman said.
“Why, yes, that’s right,” said Hughes. “He told people the Sheppard woman died soon after the massacre.”
“They only have his word for it, don’t they? Some people say she just disappeared after they got to San Francisco, and nobody heard from her again. They also never found a death notice.”
“How do you know that?” Hughes asked.
“I guess you can say I’m an expert on the ‘Wickenburg Massacre,’” she replied.
Then, turning to the younger woman she said, “It’s getting warm. Will you help me with my jacket, dear?”
She shrugged out of her jacket, still holding onto the cane. Her companion gently pulled her slim arms out of the sleeves.
Hughes waited respectfully before asking his next question. “How do you know so much about the massacre? My readers would love to have your perspective. Would you be willing to give me an interview?”
He got closer to the women and noticed that the old lady had a long scar above her right elbow.
She smiled at him and said, “Certainly, young man. Why don’t we go into town and you can buy me a drink.”
Hughes returned the smile.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot to ask your names.” He turned frst to the younger woman, pencil at the ready.
“I’m Sarah Finnerty. This is my grandmother.”
“My name is Mary Finnerty,” the older woman said.
As Hughes wrote down her name, she spoke again.
“Call me Mollie.” {
THE AUTHOR
Lynn Downey is an award-winning historian, novelist, and short story writer. She has written two books about Wickenburg, Arizona: Wickenburg: Images of America, and Arizona’s Vulture Mine and Vulture City, fnalist in Arizona History for the New-Mexico Arizona Book Award. Her other passion is the dude ranch, and her Journal of Arizona History article, “A House-Party on An Old Frontier Ranch: How Arizona Became the Dude Ranch Capital of the World,” was a fnalist for the Spur Award in 2024. Downey’s latest book is American Dude Ranch: A Touch of the Cowboy and the Thrill of the West. Her debut novel, Dudes Rush In, set on an Arizona dude ranch, won the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for Historical Fiction. Downey is the Past President of Women Writing the West and serves on the board of the Dude Ranch Foundation. Her author photo was taken by Mark Yateman.
YELLOW BIRD’S LAMENT
In the shadow of his father’s brutal murder, John Rollin Ridge became a fugitive, a poet, and America’s frst Native novelist—crafting vengeance into verse and fction that echoes to this day.
STORY BY
J.B. HOGAN
In the early morning hours of June 22, 1839, a group of men—presumed agents of Cherokee Principal Chief John Ross burst into the home of John Ridge. The attackers pulled John Ridge from his bed, drug him outside his home, and in full view of his wife Sarah and their children, stabbed him some twenty-nine times.One of the children watching their father killed was twelve-year old John Rollin Ridge, the eldest son. For Rollin, as he was familiarly known in his family, this horrendous scene afected the rest of his life.
In the immediate aftermath of the slaying, on July 1, 1839, Sarah Ridge brought her seven children from the family home near Honey Creek in the northeastern corner of Indian Territory to the relative safety of Fayetteville in the newly minted state of Arkansas, established in 1836. Fayetteville, founded in 1828 when Arkansas was still a territory, was barely a decade old itself and just thirty miles from the western frontier of the United States. Sarah Ridge moved her family into an existing
dogtrot home on what is now West Center Street in Fayetteville, and even though distraught herself, the grieving widow seems to have tried to establish a sense of normalcy for herself and her children by continuing their education right away.
Education had always been a priority of the Ridge family, and when still living in Georgia before the relocation, the children had attended a school run by educator Sophia Sawyer. Sawyer lived with the Ridges and accompanied them to Indian Territory where she had also established a small school. In Fayetteville, she quickly started a school which the Ridges and other local children attended. This school was the Fayetteville Female Seminary, and it would become one of the best known and infuential institutions of learning in the town and state. Sawyer also allowed boys to attend daytime classes and John Rollin Ridge was, as he had been back in Georgia, one of the students at her school. Rollin also attended a male seminary in town conducted by Reverend William Scull, an Episcopal minister.
Around 1842, Mrs. Ridge moved the family to Osage Prairie, now Bentonville, in Benton County. This was about the time she sent Rollin back east to continue his studies. From this time until 1843 or early 1844, Rollin lived and studied in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, near his mother’s family in Connecticut, and received a classical education at the Great Barrington Academy there.
Later in 1844, Rollin was back in Arkansas where he attended classes at Cephas Washburn’s Far West Seminary in Mt. Comfort, a few miles northwest of Fayetteville. He studied there until the Summer of 1845, and by 1846, he was studying law—possibly under the tutelage of early Fayetteville settler and attorney, A. M. Wilson, who often represented the Cherokee in legal matters.
In 1847, Rollin, who was beginning to write poetry under the name Yellow Bird (the translation of his Cherokee name Chee-quat-a-law-ny), married Elizabeth Adelaide Wilson in Indian Territory. They moved to the farm Rollin had bought back in Honey Creek the previous year. Little is known of Elizabeth’s background other than that she originally came from Tennessee. The following year, the Ridge’s daughter, Alice Bird, was born.
Any chance that Rollin’s new life as husband, father, and poet would be stable and tranquil was dashed in 1849 when he killed a man, ostensibly over a horse. Accounts of the incident indicate that a neighbor, David Kell, a pro-Ross man, took one of Rollin’s horses without permission and gelded the animal. Rollin confronted Kell, an argument ensued, and then boiled over to the point that Rollin drew his pistol and shot the man dead. Doubting that he would get a fair trial in the Territory, and fearing retribution from the Ross camp, Rollin fed to Missouri. Later in the year, Rollin traveled to Osage Prairie to stay with his mother and the rest of the family living there.
Remarkably, during these tumultuous last years of the decade, Rollin Ridge was actively writing and publishing poetry. In 1848, while he was still living with his new bride in Honey Creek, the Arkansas State Democrat newspaper printed his poems “My Harp” and “To a Thunder Cloud.” He was only twenty-one years old, and the violence that would create havoc in his life was, at that time, yet to come.
Around this same time, in the latter days of the 1840s, with the Mexican War just concluded, the gold rush began in earnest in the California hills. Several
groups from the local area formed up and headed out in search of the precious mineral. On April 18, 1850, Rollin Ridge, accompanied by his brother Aeneas, threw in his lot with one of the later groups to leave. Led by Colonel Matthew Leeper, this party took a northern route to California and the waiting promise of untold wealth.
Although he had indicated in letters to his cousin, Stand Watie, that his plan was to someday return to Indian Territory and Arkansas, it was not to be. When Rollin Ridge left for California—wife Elizabeth and daughter Alice Bird were left behind but would join him later—he never made it back home. By leaving the area, it also meant he would never have to stand trial for the killing of David Kell. The past was behind him now, and his destiny lay in the burgeoning expanse of the new and barely tamed American west.
While Rollin’s gold dreams would never pan out in California, his career as a newspaperman, poet, and novelist was about to strike a mother lode. Before the end of 1850, his poem “The Harp of Broken Strings” was published in the Marysville Herald. Marysville, the county seat of Yuba County, California, would play a prominent role in Rollin’s journalistic career in years to come. The new arrival was immediately making a name for himself.
Settling in Sacramento, Rollin began providing stories about the exciting new land of California–which became a state on September 9, 1850–for the New Orleans-based True Delta newspaper. He continued publishing poetry as well, and his work appeared in such publications as Alta California, Golden Era, Hesperian, and Hutching’s Illustrated California Magazine—as well as in the aforementioned Marysville Herald.
Then in 1854, W. B. Cooke & Company of San Francisco, California, published The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta: The Celebrated California Bandit. The book was, like his poetry, credited to Yellow Bird. At the time, the book was presented more as a historical work than a fctional one, but over time, it has become known as the frst novel published by a Native American, the frst novel published in California, and the frst American novel with a Mexican protagonist.
The book depicts the motivations and extraordinary exploits of the gentleman bandit, Joaquin Murieta, whose gang exacted revenge on gold miners, Chinese workers, and most anyone else unlucky
enough to cross their revenge-minded path. The story, filled with frequent and graphic stories of gruesome violence against the backdrop of the new California land, reads more like a dime novel than a history book.
One observer’s early description of Murieta provides a look at Ridge’s writing style. “The frst that we hear of him in the Golden State is that, in the spring of 1850… He was then eighteen years of age, a little over the medium height, slenderly but gracefully built, and active as a young tiger. His complexion was neither very dark or very light, but clear and brilliant, and his countenance… exceedingly handsome and attractive.” This latter description of Murieta could have applied just as well, of course, to the author, Rollin Ridge, himself.
The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta: The Celebrated California Bandit by Yellow Bird—aka John Rollin Ridge. The book, presented as a true history of Murieta’s life, paved the way for the much more well-known character of Zorro.
Having left his home in Sonora, Mexico, to make a better life in California just after the conclusion of the bitter Mexican-American War, Murieta found deceit and maltreatment at the hands of the Americans he had once admired. Ridge took pains to give his dashing gentleman hero legitimate reasons for creating the havoc that he does. Murieta suffered three ignominious incidents at the hands of lawless Americans that set him on his trail of crime, violence, and revenge. First, he was forced of his mining claim, beaten, and forced to watch as his attackers “ravished his mistress before his eyes.” Then, Murieta and his mistress tried to make a living quietly farming in “a fertile valley,” but once again “unprincipled Americans” drove him away. The resolute Murieta recovered again and became a successful gambler, dealing monte, a three-card game of chance popular in the Old West. But when he was caught riding a stolen horse given to him by a half-brother, Murieta was bound and whipped and the brother later hanged.
That was all Murieta could take and he created a gang that then terrorized the California countryside, committing crimes and murdering at will. With his inner circle of Mexican outlaws, including the psychopathic killer, Three-Fingered Jack, slaughtering at will—especially “American” miners and Chinese workers, the depredations become so heinous the government became involved. Eventually Murieta, Three-Fingered Jack, and other henchmen and outlaws in their gang were killed or rounded up.
But even in death, Murieta’s exploits and legend live on—thanks in no small part to The Life and Ad-
ventures of Joaquin Murieta, presented initially as true history rather than fction. But over time, with reprints and spinof books by other authors, and a posthumous, updated 1871 version, the book has since been recognized as fction, a novel based on some real events but fictional nonetheless. Eventually, the basic story would morph into the Zorro story—frst published in 1919 by Johnston McCulley. Even the creator of Batman, Bob Kane, acknowledged his indebtedness to the Murieta story.
Thematically, the fctional acts of Joaquin Murieta may refect to some degree the reality that was John Rollin Ridge’s personal life. As we have seen in the early, young life of Rollin, deceit, violence, and revenge were driving forces that built and sustained his adult personality. It is not too much of a reach to suggest that the actions of Murieta often mirror the feelings, if not the acts themselves, of his real-life creator.
In the years after the publication of The Life and Adventures, during the runup to the Civil War, Rollin Ridge continued to make a name for himself as a newspaperman. Among the papers he worked for or edited from around 1856 until the beginning of the war in 1861, were the California American out of Sacramento, the California Express, Daily National Democrat, and News, all in Marysville. He is also credited with starting and editing the Sacramento Bee, although he was only with the paper a short time.
anti-Lincoln. He is believed to have been a member of the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret society that advocated slavery.
As tensions increased leading up to the war, Rollin’s positions were decidedly in line with his Southern background. While initially opposing secession, he was anti-abolitionist, pro-Douglas, and
During the Civil War, Rollin continued his newspaper career, editing the San Francisco Evening Journal and National Herald in 1861. He edited the Red Bluf Beacon in 1862, and the Trinity National in Marysville in 1863. By August of 1864, he was editing the Grass Valley National. In 1866, with the
John Rollin Ridge (standing) pictuted with an unidentifed man and child, ca. 1866.
Photo by G.H. Joslyn & Co..
war over, Rollin joined his cousin E. C. Boudinot as part of a contingent that went to Washington D. C. to advocate for Southern Cherokee reparations from losses accrued during the confict. The group met with President Andrew Johnson to present their case. Unfortunately, Rollin and Boudinot had a falling out after the meeting involving the disbursement of monies granted to the delegates.
After the D. C. trip, Rollin returned to California and edited the Grass Valley Daily Democrat there. By the fall of that same year, however, his health began to fail. He had contracted encephalitis, a dangerous condition causing inflammation of the brain. His health worsened through the end of 1866 and on into spring and summer of 1867. Finally on October 5, 1867, John Rollin Ridge died in Grass Valley. He was buried two days later in what is now the Greenwood Memorial Cemetery in Grass Valley.
In the following year, 1868, his widow Elizabeth collected most of his extant poems and published them. The collection, simply titled Poems by John R. Ridge, was published by Henry Payot and Company of San Francisco and contains forty-four poems of various lengths. Written in the lyrical, often highly expressive style of the late Romantic period, Rollin’s poems may seem dated to modern readers. His topics, also refecting the Romanticism prevalent at the time, typically have to do with nature, love, and progress—especially as it was seen in science and the growing United States.
Rollin’s best-known poem, “Mount Shasta,” is a nature poem. It is essentially an ode to this majestic mountain located in northern California, which stands:
Imperial midst the lesser heights, and, like Some mighty unimpassioned mind, companionless And cold. The storms of Heaven may beat in wrath Against it, but it stands in unpolluted Grandeur still….”
In addition to being in the posthumous collection, “Mount Shasta” originally appeared in the Marysville Daily Evening Standard in 1853. It was reprinted many times afterward, and Rollin put the entire poem in the early part of The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta. A sampling of other poetic titles in the “Mount Shasta” vein include: “A Night Scene,” “To a Mockingbird Singing in a Tree,” and “To a Star Seen at Twilight.”
Rollin also wrote several love poems, including “The Robber’s Song to His Mistress,” “The Still, Small Voice,” and “A Cherokee Love Song.” Sample lines from the latter poem show his style in this type of poetry:
Oh come with me by moonlight, love, And let us seek the river’s shore; My light canoe awaits thee, love. The sweetest burden e’er it bore!
Among the poems dedicated to progress, both scientifc and of the nation itself, are “California,” two just called “Poem,” and probably the best known of his optimistic celebrations on the topic: “The Atlantic Cable,” which follows “Mount Shasta” at the very beginning of Poems. In cheering the latest scientifc breakthrough, Rollin could hardly be more enthusiastic:
Let Earth be glad! for that great work is done, Which makes, at last, the Old and New World one!
Let all mankind rejoice! for time nor space
Shall check the progress of the human race!
In the end, although he had a solid body of poetic work as shown in Poems, John Rollin Ridge has been and still is mostly remembered for The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, described by academic Hsuan Hsu as “one of the most infuential and one of the most invisible novels in the history of American literature.” Whether Rollin’s work is truly invisible or not, it continues to resonate today, and he is a serious subject for scholarly interest and research.
With the modern emphasis on social justice, Rollin Ridge is perhaps not just remembered for his own personal conficts and contradictions, but also for producing “a classic American story of anti-racist insurrection.” In sum, he was an important mid-nineteenth century American author and his work, while a century and a half old now, still lives today.
J.B. Hogan, an award-winning author, poet, and historian, is a U.S. Air Force veteran with a Ph.D. in English Literature. He’s published over 300 works and 13 books, led local historic organizations, and played bass in a family Americana band—all while preserving and celebrating Arkansas history. His original article on John Rollin Ridge, published in Flashback, the offcial magazine of the Washington County (Arkansas) Historical Society, recently won the Arkansas Historical Association’s Walter L. Brown Award for Best Biography, Autobiograpy, or Memoir Published in a Local Historical Journal.
REAVIS Z. WORTHAM
THIRD ANNIVERSARY
PART THREE OF THE EXCLUSIVE SERIAL NOVELLA
A SHORT STORY
Tt was raining and had been for hours, the type of cold, steady shower that seems to fall endlessly, whispering onto the cracked pavement. The saturated ground could hold no more. The runof in front of the Alamo flled the gutter, curb deep.
The Boeing 737 hung in the clear blue sky above the Texas hill country. Flying business class, Ambrose B. Hollis stared out the starboard window while Sandy Anderson sat in absolute silence, poring over her iPad. She occasionally twirled a blonde strand of hair as she frowned at a website flled with information about the Kennedy assassination, as if disagreeing with the information.
Hollis frequently shifted his short legs hanging above his broad-brimmed hat on the foor. Being uncomfortable in a world designed for “average size” people was a way of life for him. His black cane with an odd metal head leaned against the seam between their seats.
A dwarf, the term he preferred over “little person,” Hollis kept shifting his position because his feet kept going to sleep during the brief ride from San Antonio to Love Field Airport in Dallas, the same airport that received President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Coincidentally, Kennedy had also fown earlier that fateful day from San Antonio to nearby Fort Worth with his wife, Jacqueline.
Kennedy lived less than three hours following his arrival in Dallas, allegedly assassinated by a lone shooter, Lee Harvey Oswald. Despite mounting evi-
dence, history still listed Oswald as the only shooter, and the unlikely odd couple were after the truth. Together, Hollis and Sandy planned to stop the murder that had happened generations earlier. They felt they could possibly change history, after realizing that at two historical sites, the Custer Battlefeld National Monument and the Alamo in Texas, they and an unknown third person could somehow open a brief window into the past allowing Sandy to step through.
She did it once, only a couple of days earlier when she met Hollis for the second time in their lives at the Texas mission. Somehow they completed a strange circuit that thrust her into the chaos of the battle for a couple of moments before being yanked back into the present.
The decision to visit Dallas was unscientifc to say the least. While trying to make sense of the tragedy they’d been involved with in front of the Alamo, they holed up for the night in The Ranch Motel in San Antonio, a mid-century motor court tucked of Broadway Street, within walking distance of the Pearl Brewery.
In the uncommonly large motel room, the virtual strangers who to that point had only shared death, fnally grew at ease enough with each other after consuming a rodeo-cool six-pack to discuss how fate had drawn them together.
“We have unimaginable power,” Hollis said, sitting on the motel’s worn desk chair. He fnished his
third beer and considered moving to the bed, but they were in Sandy’s room and the idea of mussing the smooth covers made him uncomfortable.
“We only have the power of death.” Eyes dull from fatigue and the horror of seeing what had occurred in the minutes before dawn on March 6, 1836, left her almost unable to function.
Sandy curled up in one of the chairs beside the round table, staring at the images on the television and peeling the label of a Miller High Life bottle. News crews breathlessly reported from in front of the Alamo after the afternoon’s incident where a man died under mysterious circumstances.
On the screen, Hollis caught a glimpse of himself and Sandy over a newscaster’s shoulder, near a
horror of such a slaughter and soon became the fnal victim of a battle that happened close to two hundred years before.
Now in the motel room, Sandy surfed the available channels, watching diferent reports of the bizarre death from the various local and national news channels. Listless, she remained where she was, sometimes absently holding the remote and not really seeing what was on the screen.
His bad leg aching half an hour later, Hollis fnally needed relief. Climbing on the bed, he adjusted the pillows and leaned back. “I want to try it again, but this time in a controlled situation.”
His comment yanked her back into the present. Her eyes widened in shock. “It always ends in death!
bright yellow police line, answering questions from a uniformed police ofcer. He was surprised to see his blondee acquaintance looked much taller than he thought.
They couldn’t explain what had happened to the ofcer because the story was too bizarre. Hollis was leading a tour in front of the sacred Texas shrine when Sandy stepped of the bus. They made eye contact, she came close, and somehow the cane he used to support himself came alive.
The gnarled head made from a meteorite glowed beneath his hand, and seconds later a tourist somehow found himself seeing in his mind what had happened on that cold March morning as Mexican soldiers swarmed over the walls to kill everyone who resisted them.
As shocked tourists watched, the stranger stepped inside the mind of David Crockett, experiencing the
There’s no way to control what happens.” Sandy shook her head and tucked a strand of hair behind one ear. “Neither of us understands the trigger or the actual process. I can’t take it again.”
As if expecting a news crew to be set up outside to do a live ten-o’clock report, she put the remote aside and peeked through the curtains at the brightly lit parking lot and the large neon sign over the front ofce. The lot was devoid of reporters and their broadcasting production trucks. No one knew where they’d gone after leaving the Alamo Plaza.
Hollis looked across the room to see his black cane with its gray metallic head leaning in the corner behind the door. “All I know is that whatever it is we have, that cane is the integral part that allows us to see into the past. There has to be a safe way to pursue this and there must be a use.”
Sandy closed the curtains and adjusted them so
no artifcial light bled through. “It’s best we separate and never see each other again.”
Virtual strangers, the first time they met was when her husband died on the hillside on the Custer National Battlefeld. The media called the incident The Horrifc Anniversary and reporters harassed her for months about her husband’s strange death, until Sandy quit her job, sold their house, and moved.
And now, they’d somehow connected for a second time at the historic Texas chapel when a stranger completed their deadly mental circuit and was somehow jolted into the past to watch the makeshift fort fall. It was only then that they came to understand what happened.
Hollis studied her profle for a moment. “Think
if this power puts me in place when he’s a baby? I can’t murder a baby, no matter who he is. And if it pulls in someone like my husband or that poor man this afternoon, how are we going to explain that a little baby, or a child, or a young man needs to die, while another stranger is fghting for life?”
“Fine then.” Hollis settled back like a petulant child. “Maybe if we can learn to get you back in time, you can maybe keep Hitler’s parents from meeting.”
“What you’re coming up with is speculation, and it would be impossible to target a specifc moment in time like that.” Exasperated, Sandy threw up her hands. “Besides, those kinds of things would change timelines and the world would be diferent. We might not even exist if I did that. Think of the consequences.
about this. You were physically in the year eighteen thirty-six while that man saw it in his own mind. For a moment, you were there at the battle of the Alamo...”
Sandy shuddered. Her eyes flicked from the screen, to Hollis, then back again.
“...and I think you can do it again. If you can, we might be able to harness this power to see into the past at will, and not just on the anniversary of some historic event. We can uncover the secrets that have bafed mankind since the beginning of time, or even to change history. There’s a chance you can save thousands of lives with one little word or action.”
He pushed himself up against the wooden headboard and twisted around to better see the stricken woman. “Think about it. How many people would jump at the chance to waste Hitler? Think of the horrors that might never happen if he was eliminated.”
“You mean kill him? I’m not an assassin, and what
I might be standing in Germany and show my boobs to Hitler’s dad half a minute before he’s supposed to meet his future wife, and it would change a whole world of people that might wink out of existence.”
“Austria.”
“What?”
Hollis smiled. “I’m a historian. Hitler was born in Austria.”
She threw up her hands in exasperation, something Hollis was used to after a lifetime of correcting people about history and dates. “You see my point.”
“We wouldn’t be able to pinpoint that exact moment, of course.” He thought aloud. “I wonder if we can touch some items from that period in time and make it happen? You said yourself that James saw items in the Custer Battlefeld museum that began the process.”
“Neither of us is God.” Sandy’s voice was sharp.
“You can’t change what has already happened, and like I said, the repercussions would be incredible.”
Hollis thought aloud, switching gears. “You said the Mexican soldiers heard you shout. You said they paused. Did you change history then?”
She looked surprised. Glancing around the room as if expecting something to be diferent, she shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“That’s my point! We wouldn’t know. Maybe you did in some way we don’t recognize now. What if you were on the bridge of the Titanic, then, and warned the ofcers of an approaching iceberg? You could save over ffteen hundred lives in a single moment!”
She thought about the problem and rubbed her forehead at the far-reaching implications of those many lives and their impact on history. “It’s not right. We don’t know what will happen if something changes. We save them, history will fall like dominoes and this room could not exist.”
Hollis shrugged. “Then we wouldn’t know. Maybe I’d be six feet tall.” He brightened. He tried another tactic. “All right. Try this. What if you could bring your husband back?”
Her head snapped around and her face hardened. “Don’t even joke about James!”
“I’m not joking. If you can get back to some point in time before you two arrived in Montana minutes before his death, you might be able to change his mind. A left turn instead of a right. We’d never meet, he would be alive, and the two of you would still be together.”
“And history would be changed. The history of the entire world.”
“I doubt there would be signifcant changes,” Hollis smiled and drew a cigar from where it nested with others in his vest pocket. He still wore the tour guide outft from the early 1800s. His broad-brimmed hat rested crown down on the chest under the television. “No matter how we would like to think, you and I probably aren’t that important in the long run. World events wouldn’t be afected.”
He could tell her mind was racing with the prospect of getting James back.
Her voice came soft and he could tell the idea of getting her late husband back had merit. “What do you suggest?”
Trying not to show the joy that welled inside his chest, Hollis nodded. “I think we try one more experiment before we make any attempt to see James. I would love to hear what happened on the Titanic
just before it went down, but there’s no way to be at that particular spot to wait for an Event. There are so many possibilities though.
“We could possibly discover what really happened to Nikola Tesla and uncover the mystery of his vanished papers, or fnd who carved the great lines in Nazca. That should be safe.” He waited for a moment and rolled an unlit cigar between his fngers. “Or we could go to Dallas and see just exactly who shot Kennedy.”
“I don’t know who Tesla or Nazca are.”
He sensed a crack in her resolve. “He’s an inventor and might have changed the world, but he died, and all his research vanished. The Nazca lines were created centuries ago in Peru and can only be seen from the air. It would be a magnifcent achievement to answer those questions, and when it is over, we would have enough information about the process to possibly harness the power to go after your own personal history.”
Sandy ran a fnger around her mouth in thought. “You said Kennedy. We could be there in a few hours. That’s Dallas where James grew up.”
“Then your husband was raised in the middle of the greatest tragedies and mysteries in the history of our country.”
“No mystery. Everyone knows Oswald killed him.”
“Au contrairie, sixty-fve percent of Americans think Oswald worked in concert with others. One study I read said that only twenty-nine percent think he was alone.”
“They heard the gunshots.”
“They heard reports bouncing back and forth among the buildings. As a student of history, I’ve read accounts of Apache ambushes in New Mexico and Arizona canyons where the cavalry said they couldn’t tell where the shots were coming from. The echoes in those rocky walls distorted the sound and they thought they were outnumbered when only a handful of warriors were above them. If you look at Dallas as concrete canyons, it was an Old West ambush that succeeded. People had no defnite idea where the shots came from.”
“So we need to go back to Dallas, where my husband grew up. He always said that’s where we would settle down.”
Hollis sensed a crack in her resolution and hid a grin. “Yes. I sense that getting James back is your ultimate goal.”
Her eyes went fint hard. “You’re right about that.”
On the plane, they were online researching the activities surrounding Kennedy’s arrival in Dallas and the planned motorcade.
None of the passengers around them noticed the luminescent blue glow emanating from the head of Hollis’ cane leaning against his seat and half-covered with an airline blanket. At the same time, a young dark-haired man passed the couple on his way to the restroom toward the middle of the plane.
Deep in thought, Hollis glanced away from the screen and caught a glow from out of the corner of his eye. He froze in the horrifed realization of what was about to happen. It had happened twice before. The power in the head of his cane was growing.
“Sandy,” Hollis covered the cane’s head with the blanket. The passing traveler had completed their circuit, something they hadn’t considered while fying.
She tapped at the keyboard on her device with a well-chewed fngernail and looked up. “Hum?”
“My cane.”
Sandy’s eyes widened at the dim glow coming through the thin material. She realized what was about to happen. The only two other times Hollis’ cane had glowed resulted in death, James and the poor bystander at the Alamo. Fear froze her hand.
She checked to see if those around them had noticed. The people she could see were all absorbed in their own devices, books, or were leaned back with their eyes closed. “Who is it?”
“Maybe that young man who just passed on his way to the bathroom in front of us, I suppose.”
“What are we going to do?”
Hollis looked around. “We have to separate. We’ve
somehow completed another circuit with someone in this plane. One of us has to put some distance between us. You can move faster than I can. Go to one of the restrooms in the back and get away from me. Maybe it’ll be enough to cancel whatever is about to happen until the plane lands. It may kill us all if we have an Event while we’re fying.”
Unsnapping her seatbelt, Sandy virtually threw herself over Hollis and rushed down the narrow aisle to the rear of the plane. In seconds, she arrived at the restroom door at the same moment a nattily dressed elderly gentleman emerged.
Sandy slipped past, nearly knocking the old man out of her way.
“Young lady!” he began as he grabbed for purchase on the slick preparation counter beside the restroom. Before he could complete his admonishment, the metal door slammed shut and the “occupied’ sign appeared with a frm snick.
Sandy sat on the toilet lid in the harsh lights of the claustrophobic restroom and forced herself to breathe. She looked down at her shaking hands and stared into the mirror. The light enhanced the tiny wrinkles at the corners of her eyes.
Laugh lines, James had called them the night before he died.
The roar of the huge jet engines and their vibration seemed to be magnifed in the tiny restroom. She waited, hoping the cabin would remain silent.
Maybe I got far enough away from whoever made the fnal connection in front of the plane. I wonder what we just avoided?
Checking her watch, Sandy sighed and again
glanced into the mirror at a woman who was once bright and perky, but now looked worn and tired. She couldn’t stay in the restroom for too long or one of the flight attendants might become concerned and demand she open the door. Luckily, the fight to Dallas was short and they were ready to begin the descent which would take them to the airport in the center of the city.
Sandy heard the pilot advise the staf to prepare for descent. She unlocked the door and made a show of returning to her seat. Seeing the staf was moving down the aisle and collecting the last furry of trash from the passengers, she took a vacant seat in the back and buckled up.
The overworked fight attendant didn’t notice, or chose not to say anything, and they reached their gate.
At the gate, Hollis glanced around the cabin and realized Sandy was somewhere in the rear of the plane. She must have found an empty seat and convinced the fight attendant to let her stay back there. She was a fast thinker and might have explained to a sympathetic attendant that they’d had a spat and she needed some space.
He gathered his belongings and followed the shufing line of passengers as they disembarked. In the terminal, Hollis moved away from the crowd and found a location across from the arrival gate in Love Field. He waited for Sandy to emerge ten minutes later, the last one of the plane. Their eyes met in relief. With only their carry-on backpacks, they hurried out of the airport and into a waiting cab.
“Good job,” Hollis said as their cab pulled away from the curb.
“It was the only thing I could think of,” she answered. “What now?”
“To the Texas School Book Depository.”
“This isn’t the day he was assassinated. Why do we need to go there right this minute?”
“Because.” Hollis stared at the Dallas skyline, chewing on still another unlit cigar. “Somehow our bond has grown stronger and events are accelerating enough to have initiated an incident on the plane. Together we’re causing things to happen now, and not having to wait until a specifc date. That’s both a good, and dangerous business. I have the feeling that an Event will occur once we’re at Dealey Plaza.”
Sandy looked unhappy. “Why don’t we wait then,
and do some more research? We can prepare ourselves with a little more time.”
“Well for one, we were told by the police not to leave San Antonio. You’re supposed to be at your motel room and I in my apartment. You and I are essentially fugitives if anyone comes looking for us, and they will. The authorities might be after us at any moment and any detective worth his salt will check with the airlines, or bus lines, to see if we’ve fed.
“Time is against us in another way, also. It’s going to happen again soon if we stay together. Let’s try and control what we can. There’s no need to wait. We know what to expect.”
“And what is that?”
“I strongly believe that we tap into some sort of psychic force when we’re together with the right person. I think buildings and certain locations hold psychic concentrations or recordings of what happened there, if the emotions or events were strong.”
“Someone may die,” Sandy said again. Tears welled in her eyes.
He shrugged. “That’s a possibility.”
“Then it’s murder,” she snapped, watching the driver and hoping he couldn’t hear the insane conversation going on in his backseat. His music was loud, and he’d given no indication he was listening. Now that they were in Dallas, doubts began to creep in.
“No. It isn’t murder. Maybe it would be if we intended for something to happen, but maybe—just maybe—no one will be hurt this time. It’s not like the massacres at the Little Big Horn or the Alamo. This time it’ll be diferent since only Kennedy and Governor John Connally were hit.”
“I’m not talking about the historical fgures. I mean the poor soul who connects with us.”
Instead of answering, Hollis only looked at his cane and the leaden head in his small hand until they arrived at Dealey Plaza.
The cab driver pulled away as Hollis and Sandy stood on the sidewalk beside Elm Street that looked much the same as it did that day in 1963. The wooden picket fence still stood a surprisingly short distance away, along the crest of what eventually became known as the grassy knoll—really a grass-covered slope leading up to the parking lot and railroad yard at the top of the hill.
Sandy studied the street on which Kennedy’s open-top car was traveling when the fatal shots were fred. Elm Street wound past the schoolbook
depository and beside the hill. By the time Kennedy’s limousine passed under the overpass that day, he was out of range from the sniper, but the damage had been done.
Noisy cars passed on the street, most of the passengers not even paying attention to the site where the world was forever changed. Hollis turned his attention from the tree-shaded fence and a handful of tourists, briefy scanned the buildings across the divided four lane street, and then looked toward what was once the Texas School Book Depository.
The Sixth Floor Museum now occupied the foor from which Oswald fred. Anyone wishing to gather information on the assassination could easily fnd material on any theory they believed. There were plenty to choose from.
“We’re here.” Sandy turned in a slow circle. “So now what do we do?”
“We could go upstairs to the sixth foor and look around,” Hollis mused, adjusting his hat to better shade his eyes. He was concerned though, if an Event occurred there, he wouldn’t be able to see what was happening on the street where they stood.
Now that they were on site, neither knew what to do. Despite his verbal confdence, Hollis found himself unsure. They turned in slow circles on the street, looking for something they would only recognize when it occurred.
“Come on.” Hollis’ patience quickly waned and he limped toward the former schoolbook depository. “We can’t stand here all day.”
Glancing around, Sandy followed with some embarrassment. His strange period clothing from two hundred years earlier drew attention from everyone passing on the sidewalk or on the street. She managed to ignore it on the plane, but here his tour guide clothing for the Alamo stood out like a neon sign that said, Look At Me.
The elevator ride was uneventful, but both were alert and tense, waiting for something to happen in the quickly rising cubicle. With a sigh of relief, they stepped through the doors and into the museum’s entrance. Hollis dug in his pocket and paid their admission price, ignoring a quizzical look from the cashier.
They entered a room of glass-encased history.
Photos lined the walls, supported by text detailing the day of November 22, 1963. Everywhere they looked were photographs of the clear, bluebird morning Kennedy and Jackie arrived, frst in Fort Worth
and then at Dallas’ Love Field. Many were bright and cheerful. Jackie with an armful of roses or Jack smiling and shaking hands. Then, as they moved deeper into the museum, the scenes and copy began to grow darker, more ominous as 12:33 approached—grainy black and white.
They gave the cases full of memorabilia little more than cursory glances.
Hollis watched Sandy’s face. “Feel anything?”
“No.” She glanced at several nearby visitors who concentrated on the displays. At the Little Bighorn, James was already showing signs that something was strange when we passed the displays, but I was perfectly normal… just like at the Alamo until that man started seeing things.”
Both were drawn into the story depicted by those photos. Then came the shooting, the time of death, to the confusion and showdown at the hospital. Photos reported to be from the Kennedy autopsy were displayed without apology, in the interest of history and the search facts.
“The Warren Commission,” Hollis snorted at the volumes of books that made up the much-maligned report. “That bunch of stufy paid-of boobs wrote what they were told and made history. The gullibility of the American public is an amazing thing.”
He’d unconsciously moved into his “tour guide” mode once again. The jobs he held both times when Sandy appeared.
“Guess who was a member of the Commission.” Hollis spoke loudly and felt in his pocket for a cigar. He held it between stubby fngers and pointed at the gold lettering on the report. “Gerald Ford. He wrote a book about the assassination and was the only person on the commission to make money of the investigation. He also ran to J. Edgar Hoover every time he heard something juicy. It’s not surprising that he became president. The whole thing stinks.”
Curious visitors drifted toward the quirky little man full of charisma and knowledge that made Hollis one of the best tour guides in the business, no matter if they were going through the Custer Battlefeld, the Alamo, or here, unofcially at the Sixth Floor Museum.
He noticed the Plexiglas-protected window Oswald was said to have used as a vantage point. “I know one thing as sure as I know I’ll never be six feet tall. No matter what the government or the media tries to force down our throats, there’s no way in hell Oswald
could have fred three rapid shots so accurately from a twenty-dollar rife with a shaky scope.”
“So you think there were more people involved?” asked a tourist who looked as if he spent all his time indoors. “More than just Oswald.”
“Of course,” Hollis responded brusquely and chewed his cigar. A museum curator watched nervously, lest Hollis produce a match. No smoking signs were prominent, but they said nothing about chewing cigars. “There had to have been more than one. That’s why I’m here, to fnd out.” He trailed of uncomfortably, realizing he’d said more than he intended. The tourist waited for him to continue.
He didn’t.
Sandy paused in front of a photo showing the grassy knoll. A circle drew attention to a pale smudge near the fence line. The caption noted the smudge resembled smoke and many conspiracy theorists felt it was the location for a second rifeman.
“Hollis, did you see this?”
He limped across the room and joined her gaze. “It’s a logical place for the shooter. The Zapruder flm shows Kennedy’s head snapping back from the im-
pact of a bullet coming from ahead and to the right of the car, and not behind as Oswald purists say. It’s my opinion that a man’s head snaps forward when hit from behind and back when hit from the front.”
Sandy suddenly remembered her vision at the Alamo. Davy Crockett desperately fghting the soldiers ahead of him and the shot that came from behind. “You’re right. Crockett’s head jerked forward.”
Hollis nodded and watched her. The tourist, who had been standing quietly nearby since Hollis began talking, overheard the conversation and likely wondered who Crockett was and how the slender young lady before him would know about impact wounds.
Hollis turned toward the exit and Sandy followed. He’d seen enough. “I say we return to the street. I want to get the positions of the buildings in my head.”
They returned to Elm Street without incident. both nervous as cats as they waited for something to happen. Neither noticed the tourist who followed them down, interested in the exchange he heard upstairs and apparently curious about what the two had
in mind. Hollis didn’t stop, walking past a section of curb where he vaguely remembered seeing a photo where still another bullet impacted, throwing of the accepted number of shots from Lee Harvey Oswald’s rife. That section was long gone.
He laboriously climbed the grassy knoll, using his cane to support much of his weight as he trudged up the slope. Sandy waited on the sidewalk below.
“He’s not just killing time, is he?” asked the tourist. Startled, Sandy turned toward him. “My name is Spencer Fields,” the curly-haired man said, introducing himself.
She backed away from him. “Go away. You don’t know what you’re doing or what you’re getting into.”
“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I was just interested in the little guy’s discussion upstairs and wanted to talk a little more about the Kennedy assassination. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“I’m not scared of you. I’m afraid for you. You don’t know what you’re getting into. Just get away from here as fast as you can.”
“Wait!” Hollis called from the fence. “The two of you stay right there for a minute.”
She looked uphill. “This could be dangerous!”
“I don’t think so. I’m getting no response from my cane, and the weather is still bright and sunny. There’s not a cloud in the sky.”
Fields looked at them strangely. “His cane?”
“Don’t ask. Just go! Go now!” she hissed.
He didn’t leave the strangely acting lady. Spencer Fields simply moved a few steps down the sidewalk and watched Hollis pacing up and down along the fence, occasionally examining his cane. Other times he sighted down its length, as if he were holding a rife. Finally, he slowly made his way back to street level.
“Here’s my theory,” Hollis ofered without being asked. “Oswald was the fall guy. They, whoever they are, used him to take the focus of the entire operation. I believe there was one rifeman behind the fence, one across the street somewhere in the DalTex building, and someone in the window above the sixth foor.”
He pointed at the old depository with the cane. “One shot may have come from up there, maybe it was the one which hit Kennedy in the back. But another shot must have surely come from across the
street, and the killing shot, the one captured on the Zapruder flm, came from the fence. The others were probably just insurance or diversions.”
“I agree with you,” Fields said, rejoining them. “Although I think there may have been someone else.”
Hollis studied him for a moment without answering. “I think there were two people at the fence, one to make the shot and one to escape with the rife while the triggerman left without attracting notice. The second rife, planted evidence they pinned on Oswald, was in the depository on the sixth foor, but I’ve always thought there was another shooter in the window directly above, sitting back so he couldn’t be seen. It was an even better vantage point.”
He pointed to the Dal-Tex building across the street. “Maybe even one from the roof up there. They found a shell casing years later, and when they took down one of the stoplight poles there at the intersection, there was a bullet hole in it that no one had ever found.”
“You need to get away from us!” Sandy’s voice cracked in exasperation and she gave Fields a slight shove. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with here.”
“Probably don’t. But I think you guys are more than just typical Kennedy tourists.”
Hollis continued to stare upward at Spencer Fields without expression. Sandy fnally realized he was being patient, waiting for Spencer to make that mysterious three-way connection which gave birth to an Event. The color drained from her face at the realization.
“Hollis, it isn’t happening! He’s not the one!” Her steadiness, sharp with anger, was directly opposite of his lack of concern or emotion of a potentially deadly Event. “I can’t believe you’re so callous and that life means so little to you!”
There was a long pause, then Hollis reluctantly agreed. “You’re right, no lighting, no clouds, no rain. It isn’t him.”
“What?” Spencer asked.
“Nothing. We’re waiting for storms and someone we haven’t met, and it isn’t you.”
“Well, that’s convoluted. To do what?”
“Never mind. Hollis jerked a thumb at Fields. “She’s right. You should leave now.”
Fields crossed his arms. “I have the right to stay here just as much as you two.”
Hollis dismissed him with a wave of his hand. “Fine. Just... stay out of my way when things start happening.”
More tourists on the street stepped around the trio, mostly ignoring their agitated movements. Fields began to formulate a response but stopped, bafed by the conversation up to this point.
“There should be some manifestation by now,” Hollis mused, more to himself than to anyone else. “We’re on location where a tragedy occurred, you and I are close enough to the cane, and we have a third person. I don’t know what else to do.”
“He’s not the right one.” Sandy stepped forward and rested her hand over Hollis’, which gripped the odd head. “Maybe it’s over.”
He looked down at her red nails. The cane began to emanate a dim, cold glow. “Maybe it’s not.”
She drew back in horror, as if it had suddenly turned into a snake under Hollis’ hands. Both glanced at Fields, waiting to see if he was behaving oddly. He stared up at the book depository and didn’t notice the queer light.
“It’s starting,” Sandy whispered.
Hollis studied Fields for a moment then gave up. Nothing out of the ordinary was happening. He turned in a slow circle, carefully watching the pedestrians on the sidewalk.
“There’s something diferent.” He held the cane higher. “There’s no weather manifestation. I thought Fields was the catalyst, but now I don’t know. Look, it’s glowing brighter.”
Sandy drew closer, awed by the glow. Fields fnally noticed and stepped forward, fascinated by the bluish light. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Hollis responded. “This is what we’ve experienced before when Sandy and I are together.” He looked up at Fields. “But the third person usually dies when it happens.”
Fields backed away from the couple.
The glow in Hollis’ fst intensifed until it hurt the eyes to look into the cold blue core. A slight electric tingling traveled through the ebony wood, causing a chill to run up Hollis’ spine. A distant hum like the drone of bees far, far away flled the air around them.
Tense, Hollis clamped down harder on his ever-present cigar and continued his search for the mysterious third person who was being drawn into the past. It was becoming more difcult to do because the blue light attracted curious onlookers as moths are attracted to a lamp. Most kept looking at him, waiting for him to make a statement or acknowledge the phenomenon. Many smiled and pointed.
A trio of young people began to record the event with their devices.
The high-pitched hum continued to increase in volume. It drowned out the trafc sounds around them. Sandy could hear it too. Fear appeared in her eyes. “Hollis.”
“I hear it.”
“Hear what?” Fields asked.
“You don’t hear that hum?” Curious, Hollis had to raise his voice to be heard.
“No. I don’t hear anything but a train over there.”
The roar of its diesel engine was virtually drowned by the electronic hum.
“Do you see anything?” The strange noise forced Hollis to shout, causing the gathering crowd to titter.
Her touch was like an electric jolt. “Hollis!” The pressure in her head became almost unbearable.
At the sound of her shriek, the high-pitched tone cut of as if someone had thrown a switch.
The buildings and overpass shimmered as if viewed through shimmering brackish water. Time adjusted itself in a way that made Sandy’s head spin. For a moment, they were surrounded by thick groves of trees, which gave way to a burned landscape, as if a wildfre had raged through. From where they stood, the Trinity river’s clear banks were visible before another shimmer erased that world and replaced it with board buildings to the east.
It was Dallas in the late 1800s, before fickering again to tall glass and steel buildings stretching into
She also unconsciously raised her voice. “I don’t see anything, but that sound is pounding in my head.”
“What sound?” asked a lady in shorts and sunglasses. She stopped at the edge of the rapidly accumulating assemblage of people watching what appeared to be some kind of strange play performed on the sidewalk.
Fields frowned in fascination, as if something extraordinary was about to occur. He answered her. “They hear something we can’t.”
The lady retreated with her friend, hurrying down the sidewalk. “Those people are crazy. They’re hearing voices.”
“What do you think you should be seeing?” Fields asked Sandy. The noise filled her head and she couldn’t hear him. She could only see his lips moving. Fearfully, she reached a hand to Hollis’ shoulder to steady herself, anchoring herself in reality.
the blue sky, refecting sunlight down on a mass of moving cars and trucks unlike any they’d ever seen. The air darkened with ugly, green clouds threatening a tornado until the skies again cleared to a sunny day.
Sandy looked upward at the blue sky and shivered. “What was that all about?”
Hollis looked from Sandy to the antique cars passing on the street. “It was us moving through time!”
She followed his eyes past the strangely dressed pedestrians lined up along the street. Facing away from them onto Elm Street they laughed and talked, waiting for a glimpse of the president as he passed. Sandy hadn’t seen such clothing in her lifetime. She was looking at Dallas in 1963.
“We’re here,” she breathed.
“Yes.” A grin spread across his face. “This time we both made the trip. You and I connected with the cane when you touched me. Quick, what time is it?”
She looked at the watch on her wrist. The inside of the crystal was fogged as if water had somehow seeped inside.
“They’re coming!” Hollis said loudly. He pointed. The crowd of parade-watchers craned their necks to see up the street and frowned at the queerly dressed couple with annoyance.
“Very funny, bub,” said a man holding an old Brownie Hawkeye camera. His young family gathered around them. “We’ll see them before long. You shouldn’t ought to tease these kids that way.”
Hollis scanned the face of the book depository and saw the suspicious window Oswald was said to have used. It was partially opened. He couldn’t see anything inside. However, in the window one foor
Fields almost laughed at the antics of the strange couple beside him. At frst they were hearing things, which was weird enough that they shared the same ailment, but suddenly neither acted as if they were standing inside a crowd on the busy Dallas street.
At least the dwarf’s cane had stopped glowing, but now they reacted as if they were talking to invisible people. Both had a weird look in their eyes, making Fields think they were seeing something beyond his vision.
“We’re here,” Sandy said in awe.
“Yes,” Hollis’ grin spread across his face. “This time we both made the trip. You and I connected with the cane when you touched me. Quick, what time is it?”
above he noticed a slight movement as if someone was standing back in the shadows.
“One of us needs to get up there. I see someone in that window above Oswald’s! It has to be you. I can’t move that fast.”
Two or three people looked up at the window and seeing nothing of interest, resumed their watch on the street, waiting for Kennedy’s limousine. Without responding, Sandy headed for the building at a run. Hollis, knowing he would have never made it up to the seventh foor in time, turned his attention to the grassy knoll behind him.
Two shadows moved behind the fence.
He began a laborious scramble up the hill.
They had moved from being observers to being participants in the drama that was about to unfold.
She looked at the watch on her wrist.
“They’re coming!” Hollis said loudly.
In Field’s world, the blonde woman looked at the watch on her wrist. She frowned as if she couldn’t see the timepiece’s face.
“They’re coming!” Hollis announced loudly. The crowd of awed onlookers around the odd couple glanced up and down the virtually empty street, expecting to see something exciting. Yet, all they found was trafc and more sightseers.
Hollis looked up at the former schoolbook depository. “One of us needs to get up there. I see someone in that window above Oswald’s! It has to be you. I can’t move that fast.”
Everyone surrounding Hollis, including Fields, looked up at the famous window. They saw nothing
but the aging building which hadn’t changed in decades. The blonde woman bolted back up the street. The crowd fell back as if a scythe were cutting through wheat. Had they not moved, she would have surely run completely over anyone in her way. The look on her face was pure determination.
The dwarf turned and looked up at the knoll. The expression on his face was one of absolute satisfaction. He painfully began climbing the slight grade, using the cane to maintain his balance.
Fields was drawn between the two. He wanted to follow Sandy to see where she was headed, but the little man was having difculty walking across level ground. Climbing to the top of the little knoll was challenging enough.
Deciding to follow Hollis, Fields was ready to catch him if he fell.
Unknown to Sandy, an of-duty policeman trailed behind her as the possessed woman wove through the crowd no one could see, waiting for Kennedy. The policeman in jeans and a sweater had been watching the activities with more than a little interest. The odd couple’s antics on the sidewalk were strange enough to make him wonder what was going on.
Punching his cell phone alive, he spoke softly to dispatch, requesting an additional ofcer. Getting confrmation, he held up the phone and snapped a picture of the blonde woman rushing down the sidewalk.
Officer Randy Philips didn’t know what they were up to, but he had a good idea the young lady was the one who would be hardest to catch in the event something happened. He decided to stay close to her. He didn’t think anything illegal was happening, but his policeman’s instinct said to be cautious just in case.
Sandy ran behind the crowd waiting for the president and through the double doors of the Texas School Book Depository and past a startled secretary behind a worn gray metal desk. She almost dropped the cigarette she’d just lit and jumped to her feet.
“Wait a minute! You don’t work here! There’s no sightseeing in here.”
Before the stern-looking employee could catch the young woman running down the hall, Sandy turned the corner and rushed through what she thought were the doors leading into the stairwell. She had no time to wait for an elevator.
A handful of people lounged in the smoke-flled room, uninterested in the presidential motorcade about to pass by outside. Sitting around a battered aluminum table and sipping soft drinks from bottles, they frowned at her sudden appearance. Sandy almost ran past without stopping but her attention was caught by a nervous-looking man in a short sleeve plaid shirt.
She stopped halfway through the spartan room and stared at the nervous-looking man she had seen hundreds of times in still photos and newsreels. Holding a soft drink, Lee Harvey Oswald froze in mid-swallow when Sandy burst into the room. He raised an eyebrow at the young woman in an apparent hurry and seeing she posed no threat, tilted his Dr Pepper again.
“Hollis was right!” Sandy charged through the opposite door and headed up the stairs. First, she’d stop at the sixth foor. She knew the real gunman would be above, though, a second rifeman would make the diversionary shots that might or might not hit something, and vanish in an instant, leaving Oswald to take the fall.
Hollis was right. She had to get there to hear what was going on.
The of-duty ofcer, Randy Philips, followed her through the front doors of the Sixth Floor Museum, and then continued to shadow the young woman as she hurried through an empty ofce. He was making no efort to hide, but she acted as if she didn’t care if anyone followed or not.
Staying close, though she gave no indication he was behind her, Philips watched her screech to a momentary halt halfway through the room, stare in wonder at a blank wall.
“Hollis was right!”
She sprinted through a second door. A uniformed security guard appeared and started toward Sandy.
“Whoa!” Randy called and fashed his badge. “Let her go. I want to see what she’s up to.” Skeptical, the guard followed the police ofcer as he chased Sandy up the dusty stairs.
The distant roaring of cheers reached Hollis halfway through his difcult ascent. The motorcade was coming and would soon turn the corner down Elm
Street. Then it would be only a matter of seconds before the frst shot was fred. He was closer now to the top, and the movement had ceased behind the fence.
Behind Hollis, the motorcade made the turn northward and headed for the freeway. From an elevated concrete slab Abraham Zapruder wound his camera, placed it to his eye and from his vantage point, found the president’s car in the viewfnder. He pressed the button and recorded the scene. Dozens of cameras snapped on the street, and the supportive crowd snapped photos of their president.
Kennedy and the First Lady smiled at the people lining the sunny street. Kennedy, shifted in the seat away from Jacqueline to ease his aching back, rested his right arm on the door and waved with a huge smile. In the front seat, Governor John Connelly and his wife, Nellie, also waved at the crowd. Connelly held his trademark Stetson and occasionally waved with it.
Secret Service agents rode in the limousine immediately behind Kennedy. Most were sufering the debilitating efects of hangovers from a night spent at a club owned by a minor-league criminal named Jack Ruby. One or two more dedicated agents were carefully watching the people on the streets.
No one paid the slightest attention to the tall buildings behind them after they passed. There were no signs of danger anywhere on the Dallas street.
Most of the people on the street missed Hollis’ desperate climb behind them. They were intent on the approaching motorcade.
One gentleman waiting for Kennedy near the curb adjusted the umbrella in his hand and watched with concern as a dwarf in strange clothing made his way up the hill. He turned back to the street, said something to the Latin man beside him and then returned his attention to the president’s car.
Spencer Fields watched in wonder as Hollis achieved the crest of the knoll and listened in amazement when he shouted at the empty parking lot at the top.
“I knew it!”
Fields and a curious businessman standing nearby exchanged glances. Fields shrugged as an electric car passed on the street behind him.
When she burst into the sixth-foor area, Sandy was gasping for breath from her climb up the stairs. She’d been there only minutes before and knew the layout, but now her way was blocked by crates and boxes of books covering the foor. It looked completely diferent. The dim lighting from shaded bulbs suspended from the ceiling gave the room an eerie feeling. She dodged through the narrow aisles toward the bank of windows overlooking Elm Street.
There was the window ahead and the stacked boxes obscured the view of anyone who happened to be casually passing. The theory was that Oswald had moved the boxes around to create a secure shooting nest. The Warren Commission said he was at the window at that moment, through with lunch and preparing to fre at Kennedy as he passed below.
Without thought for her own safety, Sandy jumped up on a cardboard box full of books and looked over the top of the stack.
Ofcer Philips rushed through the door behind her in the Sixth Floor Museum, followed by the security guard. Ahead, they saw Sandy race past the ticket counter and run a zig zag pattern through the brightly lit foor and approach the famous window. Patrons leaped out of her way and gestured angrily at the young lady.
An employee on the foor shouted. “Hey!”
Sandy took a running leap, breaking through the thick plastic barrier designed to protect the display. Unfazed by the Plexiglas shattering around her, she landed on the lowest box and peered over the top.
Museum patrons watched her actions in astonishment. Startled visitors screamed. Most patrons hurried away from the frantic woman while the rest of them raised phones to record the incident. The museum curator shouted again.
For a second time the security guard moved to take her into custody, Philips held his hand out. “Hang on a second.”
Sandy held the pose on top of the box for a good ffteen seconds without moving. Then she was of in a fash, running back through the gathering crowd and past Philips and the guard.
Frustrated, the security guard pointed. “I have a job to do. She’s wrecking the place.”
“I do too. Let’s do it together.”
Her glassy eyes were proof that she wasn’t seeing the people in front of her.
She was looking into another dimension.
Oswald wasn’t there.
The shooting site was nothing more than a ruse. Sandy knew the Warren Commission had been wrong. The whole thing was a set-up to draw suspicion away from the real shooters, wherever they were, and to implicate Oswald as the lone assassin, the patsy.
The only thing she saw were the remains of a chicken dinner and empty shell casings carefully arranged on the foor, as if someone had eaten lunch while waiting for the motorcade before fring through the partially opened window.
Sandy took in the whole scene and evaluated it in seconds. She leaped of the box and ran for the stairwell. Someone upstairs had the rife.
Two men dressed as tramps stood behind the chest-high wooden picket fence, just as Hollis expected. Though they wore faded, tattered clothing, dingy shirts, and tousled hair, their smooth shaves belied the costumes.
One shouldered a gleaming scoped rif e. Even with Hollis’ limited knowledge of frearms made after 1900, he could tell the weapon was on the 1960s cutting-edge technology of long-distance killing machines. The other tramp watched Kennedy’s procession through very expensive looking binoculars.
Both were so intent on their target neither was aware of Hollis’ approach up the small hill until he shouted and swung his cane high over the pickets. “You’re not going to do it!”
The tramp nearest to him lowered the binoculars and stared in openmouthed shock at the cane-wielding dwarf. He put out a hand to ward of the apparition as Hollis swung the cane upward with all his force. The heavy meteorite head caught the spotter solidly on the jaw and he fell back.
Another voice shouted from the parking lot and railroad yard behind them. Hollis ignored the shout and swung the cane again. Of balance, he fell forward and reached his entire length at the rife barrel extending over the fence.
The rife went of in a blaze of white light and physical shock from the muzzle’s pressure wave.
From the sidewalk below, Spencer Fields was joined by a dozen other onlookers as they watched Hollis reach the top, lunge forward toward the fence and swing his cane. “You’re not going to do it!”
Incredibly, the cane ceased its forward movement in mid swing, as if he had impacted with some solid object.
Hollis, though, faced nothing but empty air and a barren fence.
He collected himself, stepped forward to swing again. This time his balance appeared to be of, and he fell forward, reaching for some distant goal with the cane.
“That man’s lost his mind,” the businessman said. Fields was quiet for a moment. “Somehow, I think we’re seeing something remarkable.”
Sandy hit the stairs to the seventh foor and took them two at a time. It was almost 12:33. She’d spent too much time with the sixth-foor decoy. She burst through the unlocked metal doors, slamming one of them into the wall in her rush to get in.
An explosion flled the entire foor with noise. She knew the distinctive sound. It was the harsh report of a rife shot. Ahead of her were still more large boxes, but this time she knew exactly where to go. She rounded the corner and ran full tilt into a surprised man in a white shirt.
He and his associate had been startled by the boom when the door slammed open. So startled in fact, the one with the rife had almost missed his frst shot. He cursed, worked the bolt and slammed another shell into the chamber.
The spotter grabbed Sandy and tried to wrestle her away from the window. A professional, the shooter grimly ignored the fght behind him and attempted to regain his target in the scope.
Below, Kennedy jerked forward from the impact of the misdirected low-velocity bullet in his upper shoulders, near the soft tissue at the base of his neck. The bullet exited and struck the inside door frame as Kennedy gasped at the sudden, horrifc pain.
Another report came through the open window from a building’s roof across the street. Sandy braced
her tennis shoes against the dusty foor and pushed hard, raising her head sharply under the chin of her attacker. The equivalent of a violent uppercut snapped his head back and he stumbled.
Together they fell toward the rifleman. The three of them collided in a tangled heap and the rife boomed again.
On a curb below, a puf of powdered concrete went unnoticed by most.
Ofcer Philips watched her gyrations with awe. Before him the woman struggled with a phantom. She stopped suddenly as if she’d hit an immovable object. Straining, actually straining against an unseen force so hard the muscles on her arms bulged, she planted her feet and raised her head with a grunt. Sandy toppled forward, her arms held in a loop ahead of her. She appeared to be holding something, or someone.
The security guard began to laugh, and then stopped when Philips cut him of with a savage look.
The building shook ever so slightly, causing Philips and the security guard to stumble. They looked up, but nothing seemed amiss.
Spencer Fields watched the little man with the cane pretend to fght at the top of the knoll. If anyone had asked him for an opinion, he wouldn’t have even been able to venture a guess.
The businessman snorted. “Drugs, or crazy as a Betsy bug.” He walked away.
Light fickered around them, as if lightning fractured the sky and the ground shifted almost imperceptibly underfoot, but when they looked up, there was nothing but sunny skies.
Hollis knew what Sandy’s late husband, James Anderson, had experienced all those years ago on the grassy hills of Custer’s Battlefeld. He was solidly in the past. He could feel the slight breeze as it blew under the small live oak trees. He felt the solid jolt as his cane impacted with the man holding the binoculars, and when the head of his cane connected with the bolt action rife in the gunman’s hands, he experienced the most painful sensation he’d ever known.
The crafted meteorite head of the cane touched the rife barrel, and the resulting explosion was as if
he’d held the bare wires from a hot 220-volt circuit against the metal. Sparks showered them both, heat sizzled throughout both the cane and the rife, and the concussion from the detonation rendered them both senseless.
Darkness took over for a moment as Hollis passed out. He lay below the fence without moving. The shot, which had been directed toward the right side of Kennedy’s head, missed completely and shattered into a hail of lead fragments when it hit the brick wall of the building across the street.
The ground underfoot seemed to move sideways before it stabilized.
The limousine driver turned, saw his wounded president, and tromped on the accelerator. The big automobile leaped forward. Bleeding profusely, Kennedy fell to the left, into Jackie’s lap.
Her personal Secret Service agent, Clint Hill, raced from the limo behind, vaulted onto the trunk and fell across them both. A fourth shot hit him in the lower back.
Another bullet struck Connelly.
Still a diferent round came from another shooter on the Dal-Tex building across the street from the book depository. That executioner realized the entire assassination attempt was foiled. He’d hit the governor instead of the President. He disassembled the rife as he hurried away and placed it into a cotton laundry bag.
Ofcer Philips watched Sandy roll on the dusty foor. Face contorted, she grunted and pushed at invisible objects or assailants until she suddenly lay still. He and the guard moved closer. Her eyes were closed as she panted from exertion.
The loudest clap of thunder either of the ofcers had ever heard rolled over the entire city and rattled the building. The vibration was a physical presence. Windows rattled. The clear blue sky outside gave no hint of an impending storm.
Suddenly, Sandy’s eyes snapped open and she looked at the two men staring down at her. Shocked, she recoiled from her surroundings as if seeing them for the frst time.
“Can we help you, Miss?” Philips asked. “You’ve taken a pretty severe fall.”
Her brow creased at his comments. The uniformed security guard reached a hand. “You really shouldn’t be up here. They’re doing renovations on this foor and you might get hurt.”
Sandy surveyed the room and noted the debris usually associated with building renovation. Sheetrock lay stacked in large piles, and aluminum supports and struts were everywhere. Cables hung from the ceiling like leafess vines. Half-fnished walls were everywhere, their aluminum skeletons waiting for someone to apply a skin of sheetrock.
“I’m sorry,” was all she could say.
“There’s nothing to be sorry for. I just heard a noise up here. We came up to investigate.”
Something wasn’t right. Sandy moved slowly to gain time. She needed to think. Moments ago she was wrestling with two killers in 1963, and now these two were talking to her as if nothing had happened. She knew from experience her actions should have attracted attention. They didn’t even seem curious.
“I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere,” she said. “I was looking for the Sixth Floor Museum.”
Both men looked perplexed. “What museum?” Philips asked.
“You know... the one about the Kennedy assassination? In 1963?”
The guard shook his head. “You mean the attempted assassination. Oh, sometimes we have people come into the building to look at the site where the rife was found, but they never made a museum out of it.”
Sandy began to grin.
An incredibly loud clap of thunder rattled the Dallas skyline. The people riding on the elevated monorail glanced fearfully out the windows at the sunny city. They relaxed and settled back in quiet comfort when there seemed to be no danger. The thunder rolled away into the distance.
A man named Fields watched Hollis regain his feet near the fence. He called up to ask him if everything was all right, but the Bullet Train bound for Houston drowned his voice. He waited for it to pass and then called again.
“Mister! Are you all right? You fell pretty hard. You’d better come on down.”
Hollis moved to a sitting position and picked up his cane. The metal grip was malformed, and the ebony wood had cracked along its length. He shook his head to regain his senses and started to respond to the man calling from the street.
His answer never materialized. The passing automobiles on the street behind the curly-headed stranger caught all his attention. Their streamlined bodies were something out of an old Buck Rogers serial. Strangely, no sound came from them. Then he realized the implications.
They were electric cars. The roar of diesel and gasoline engines was absent.
He looked toward the schoolbook depository, hoping to see Sandy. It was diferent somehow, newer
looking, the results of a recent facelift. It wasn’t the same building he’d seen moments before.
The concerned stranger called out again. “Mister?”
“I’m all right. I’m coming down.” Hollis painfully made his way down the grassy knoll being careful not to put too much weight on the fractured cane. He stopped beside the pedestrian to knock dirt and leaves from his trousers.
The man considered the dwarf wearing western clothing and a big hat. “You hit pretty hard.” He produced a card from his suit coat pocket. “I’m a doctor and my ofce is down the street. Come on by and let me check you out. There won’t be any charge.”
“I’m fne.”
“Hollis!”
He turned toward, Sandy who was hurrying down the street.
“We did it!” She hugged him. Bewildered by the events of the past few minutes, Hollis barely responded to her enthusiasm.
The stranger shook his head at the behavior of the two strangely dressed individuals and continued down the sidewalk.
“We changed history!” Sandy said, still pumped from the adrenaline rush.
“Looks like it,” Hollis laughed. “Are you all right?”
“Of course. Things got a little scary there for a while, but now everything is fne. You’re not going to believe what happened.” She told Hollis what had occurred after they separated. He listened intently, located a cigar in an inside pocket of his jacket and then flled her in on the details of his own.
“Together we kept Kennedy from being assassinated,” he surmised. “That’s why things have changed. This means Johnson probably never took ofce, there wasn’t a Vietnam War because Kennedy was withdrawing troops when he died in our world, and the entire thrust of this nation took a diferent path. I think it was a good one.”
A frown fickered across her face. “So how are we here and now?”
“I have no idea.” Hollis shrugged his small shoulders. “Time traveling writers have struggled with this concept since H.G. Wells.”
“Who?”
“It doesn’t make any diference. The answer is, I don’t know.”
Still jubilant, Sandy moved from one foot to another. “We did it without hurting anyone else.”
“We sure did. But we may be through now. Look.” He held up the shattered cane.
Her enthusiasm slowed. “Oh, Ambrose. We can’t use it anymore?”
“I don’t have any idea. Probably a good thing. We didn’t know what we were doing anyway. We were lucky. Things could have turned out diferently. And besides, you have your own mission now.”
“What’s that?” she asked, not understanding.
“You have to fnd James.”
“What makes you think he even exists?”
“I don’t know. Probably because time took a different turn. We both know for a fact that everything has changed.”
“But maybe we aren’t supposed to be together in this world.”
“You said yourself back in the motel room that you believe couples come together throughout time. Maybe now you’re supposed to fnd each other here and start a new life. Look… nevermind. Come on. Let’s fnd a telephone, you have some calls to make.”
“I hope money hasn’t changed too much,” she said, digging in a jean pocket for change for what she hoped would be a pay phone. She grinned. “We’re here and now. Back from the future.”
Hollis raised an eyebrow. “You beat anything I’ve ever seen.”
Sandy hung up the oddly-shaped phone screen on Dr. Field’s waiting room wall and turned to Hollis. There were tears in her eyes.
“Well?” he asked.
“He’s alive, and a full professor at the university where we met. They say he’s in the classroom right now, teaching a history course, so I couldn’t talk to him. When I asked if Missus Anderson was picking him up after work the receptionist said he wasn’t married. He’ll be available at three.” She laughed.
Hollis checked his watch. “You’d better hurry. You can get there in time to see him leave class.”
“Aren’t you going with me?” She was still worried. They were strangers adrift in a new world, without a home, job or friends, or money. She was also suddenly scared that James would have no desire to talk to her.
“No ma’am. When the two of you meet, you’ll feel just the same as you did the frst time. Just control your emotions. I have no doubt you were meant to be together. There are some parallels in all these possi-
ble worlds. You’ll be fne. Now remember, meet me right here this same time next week. We’ll catch up and compare notes.”
“What are you going to do for a week?”
“Find a library and read. I’ll probably watch a lot of television, if I can fnd one. I have a lot to learn.”
“What are we going to do for money?”
He smiled. “I’ll fnd a Y, or a church that’ll take me in until I can get on my feet. I have a suspicion Professor Anderson will take care of the rest for you.”
“I don’t know what to say, or what to tell him.”
“That’s easy. Tell him the truth.”
“What? He’ll think I’m crazy.”
“Don’t tell him right of, of course. But, after the two of you have time to get reacquainted, you and I will sit down with him to talk.”
“Great. And how do we convince him we aren’t escaped inmates?”
“Tell him everything you know about his life from when he was born until our worlds diverged. You know his mind, how he thinks, what he likes, what food he likes. You knew his mother and father. That part will be the same, everything before the moment someone fred at Kennedy, and I’m sure they had dozens of stories to tell about him when he was growing up. Use them for verifcation. Tell him about a secret mole, or about the scars on his hands and body that only he knows about. James can’t help but believe you when he hears details about his life you couldn’t have known.”
She listened intently, her mind racing with possibilities.
“You’re right. Let’s go.” She leaned down, hugged Hollis tightly for a moment and then turned away.
Hollis headed downtown to f nd a library. He paused at a trash can near the monorail terminal. He hefted the broken cane for a moment, thought about dropping it into the garbage and changed his mind.
A group of people passed him on the sidewalk and he followed, limping slowly up to the monorail gate to wait for the next train.
The sky remained clear. There were no clouds in sight.
A stranger brushed past, barely touching, and the now-malformed cane’s head glowed for a moment before Hollis’ head spun and he lost consciousness. The last thing he heard was a sharp snap.
Ambrose B. Hollis’ eyes opened, and he looked up into a sky bluer and brighter than anything he’d ever seen. Water hissed nearby and it took a moment to realize a horse was peeing in a dirt street only a couple of feet away.
A man wearing a big hat knelt beside the dwarf who would have barely stood little more than four feet high, if he was upright. The puzzled stranger tilted back his hat and smoothed a thick mustache with one fnger. “Hey, feller. You all right?”
Struggling up on one elbow, Hollis took stock of his surroundings. Lying on a board sidewalk, a nearby pile of horse dung flled the air with an odor he hadn’t smelled in years. “What happened?”
“I don’t rightly know. I heard something like a gunshot and turned around to see you laying there like you’d been hit. You’re not wounded, are you? Some of these durn fools’ll shoot their pistols wherever they want, and I’d expect one to take a notion to shoot at a circus performer, if he saw one.”
“I’m not with a circus.” Hollis stood and took stock of a dirt street lined with false-front buildings, horses hitched to wooden posts, wagons pulled by mules, and people dressed like they were in a western movie. “Where is this?”
“You must’ve been knocked in the head. This is Dallas, of course. You just get of the train? Where you from? I ain’t seen clothes like that since I was a kid.”
“A long way of.” Mind reeling, Hollis struggled to his feet, leaned on his split cane that seemed incapable of holding his slight weight, and took stock of his surroundings and the cowboy standing close by. He’d hoped to see Sandy, but she was nowhere about. “What year?”
The cowboy frowned and handed Hollis his hat. “I believe you need to sit down and let me fnd a doctor to check your head. You might’ve been grazed by a bullet.”
“I’m fne. What year is this?”
“It was eighteen and seventy-fve when I woke up this morning.”
“Well, I woke up in a diferent time myself.”
The stranger shook his head. “I don’t know if I believe that.”
“You wouldn’t believe most of what I can tell you.”
Down the street, he caught sight of an old woman who seemed to be foating about a foot above the street. It was a world of strangeness, and the street seemed to shift for a moment before Hollis steadied.
The old white-haired woman’s voice came soft and clear as if she were standing beside him. “Hollis, now that you’re fnally here, you need to get yourself out to the Magic Spring as soon as you’re able. We need you to escort the baby, White Bufalo Calf, to safety. I fear my time is short, and bad folks are on the way.”
“Who’s that woman?” Hollis asked the stranger.
The man looked in the direction Hollis indicated. “You’re hurt worse than you think. There ain’t no woman down there.”
“They call me Miss Hattie, and don’t dawdle. Hurry, hon.” The old woman smiled. “Look for a couple of Texas Rangers in your travels. Buck Dallas and Lane Newsome. Lane’ll want you to know Buck won’t bite. You’ll soon learn why. Now, get going, hon.” She vanished like a puf of smoke.
Which reminded Hollis. He found his last cigar and stuck it into the corner of his mouth and looked up at the stranger. “Got a light?”
The man struck a lucifer and held it down low. Hollis pufed the cigar alive and squinted upward. “Your name isn’t Buck or Lane, is it?”
He smoothed his handlebars. “Nope. King Fischer. Here in town from down around Eagle Pass, visiting kinfolk over in Collin County.”
A student of Texas history, Hollis nodded in recognition of the part-time outlaw’s name. “I’ve heard of you, but it would have made things easier if you were one of the other two.”
Fischer pointed. “There’s a blacksmith here in town who can put a strap around that cane for you.”
“I’ll have to look him up.” Hollis settled his hat back into place. “Ever heard of Magic Spring?”
“Well, there’s stories coming out of Comancheria about Magic Spring, though I’ve never seen it myself. An old woman lives beside a big spring up there with a Kiowa squaw and an albino baby called White Bufalo Calf. The Comanches stay away from there because she’s a witch.”
Hollis sighed and stared down the busy street, now devoid of strange old women foating in the air. “That fgures.”
THE AUTHOR
New York Times bestselling author Reavis Z. Wortham is the recipient of numerous Will Rogers Medallion Awards, the Western Writers of America Spur Award, and the Independent Book Publishers Association’s Benjamin Franklin Award. He has been a newspaper columnist and magazine contributor since 1988, penning over 2,000 columns and articles, and has been the Humor Editor for Texas Fish and Game Magazine for the past 26 years. When he’s not writing, Reavis is also an avid outdoorsman, loves to travel, camp, canoe, backback, hunt, and fsh. He and his wife, Shana, live in Northeast Texas.
JAMES A. TWEEDIE
poetry by
It’s be er to ride on the top of the stage Than to sit in the cramped space below Where there may be a child of an uncertain age With his brothers and sisters in tow.
The dust from the trail—though the curtains are drawn— Finds its way through the cracks in the door. And when all the best seats have been taken and gone There is no place to sit but the floor.
Close quarters and sweat are more burdens to bear And the rocking can turn strong men green. There’s the creak of the carriage, the lack of clean air, And at night there’s not much to be seen.
But here on the top there’s more pleasure than pain
As the mountains and mesas pass by. Above deserts and plains there are rainbows and rain, And at sunset, a campfire sky.
And when the stage driver’s not cracking his whip
Or the messenger’s waving his gun, There’s tobaccy to spit and some whiskey to sip And some tall tales to add to the fun.
I’d rather be free on the top of a stage Than entrapped in a small Pullman berth. For the friends that I’ve made and the smell of the sage Are the two finest things on God’s Earth!
Photo by Shana Wortham
PAINTED FRONTIER
How C. Michael Dudash traded the East Coast for the open West—and became one of the great visual storytellers of modern Western art, blending history, heart, and cinematic beauty on canvas.
GEORGE “CLAY” MITCHELL STORY BY
PHOTOS & ART COURTESY OF C. MICHAEL DUDASH
Michael Dudash didn’t grow up surrounded by sagebrush or saddles, but his path eventually led him to become one of the most recognized painters of the American West.
Born and raised in Mankato, Minnesota, Dudash’s earliest passions were always creative — frst came art, then music. After high school, he pursued music full-time for six years before returning to his frst love: painting.
“There was no pivotal moment that drew me to Western Art,” Dudash said. “I just grew up in a small town in Minnesota… a blue-collar guy. I read the history and stories of the West. Saw Western movies. I was in a band until I was 25, playing country blues and country music. At 26, I returned to school in Minneapolis, then went to New York for a 20-something-year career as an illustrator.”
Dudash looks back on his career as an illustrator, which provided him with training and allowed him to support his family while pursuing his dream. He described his work as an “editorial illustrator,”
allowing him to tell stories in other media, including flm and publishing. This also eventually opened doors for him into the gallery marketplace.
In 1977, he opened his frst studio in Vermont and began a distinguished career in commercial illustration. Working with top-tier clients such as Random House, NBC, Warner Bros., and Nike, Dudash became a nationally recognized illustrator with a reputation for evocative, story-driven imagery. He also taught and lectured at art schools and institutions nationwide during this time.
Among his most iconic works was the movie poster for Clint Eastwood’s hit, Pale Rider.
Even at the height of his storied illustration career, Dudash quietly explored a diferent world— painting a limited number of oils for galleries and collectors. He fully transitioned into fine art in 2002, setting his sights westward. The contemporary and older Western painters inspired him. “They illustrated the stories of superheroes in Westerns. They were fabulous.”
He started doing art and soon had a gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, carrying his work. He turned to doing live and fgurative work, which involves using a live subject as a reference for the art. Around 2005 or 2006, he did a painting, and it sold in two hours. The Art of the West magazine listed his painting as one of the best: “that dropped a neon sign in front of me from Heaven.”
He would hire photographers and work with Blackfeet, Crow, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other Native American tribes to have them model as they would have appeared in history. Dudash said it was like being on a movie set, and they would take thousands of photographs to be used as a reference.
“We’re always looking for a good reference,”
Dudash said. “I can make stuf up, but the clients and collectors have an expectation of realism that they want. It’s fun to meet these wonderful people who model for us. They’ll come with authentic knowledge of ceremony and tradition. And we’re honoring their heritage and history by keeping it alive, whether through the romance and beauty of their lives or the tougher times when they sufered.”
Over the past two decades, Dudash has become a fxture in Western art. His work has been featured in major galleries and exhibitions, including the prestigious Prix de West, Quest for the West, the C.M.
Among Dudash’s most iconic works is the original illustrated movie poster for the Clint Eastwood hit Pale Rider.
Russell Museum, the Briscoe Western Art Museum, and the Bufalo Bill Art Show and Sale. Among his many accolades are multiple “Artist’s Choice” and “Gold Medal” awards from the Cowboy Artists of America, of which he became a member in 2016 — a career highlight by his own account and in 2025, he became the president.
Michael said he feels like he’s been on another trip for the past 20 years.
“It’s been a good trip,” he said. “Living in New England, I never thought much of it as a subject matter, but I love history. I love the American West. Traveling out West, living in Idaho, working in Montana, it’s been really involved the past few years. It was something I could sink my teeth into.”
His paintings—whether of weathered cowboys, Native warriors, or sweeping frontier landscapes— are noted for their cinematic composition and emotional resonance.
He said it took a long time for Western art to be
considered serious by other artists and schools, but it has started to come into its own.
“I think it struggled in the 50s and 60s. It was a bit of a lull after World War 2. In the 1970s, some illustrators wanted to do diferent things,” Dudash explained. “My generation, the ones that grew up in the 60s and 70s, are the semi-hippie generation. We enjoyed the more natural aspects, like camping and national parks. Before, there was a focus on urban centers.
“It’s a bit of a reverse now. People are becoming reinvested in rural life. Returning to their roots and buying art that helps remind them of what we’ve been missing.”
Dudash sees Westerns as a means to convey universal themes of life and death, love, cultural clashes, and integration. His collectors are older and may have grown up on a ranch or rode horses. They yearn to recapture the romantic places in their memories as those experiences become rarer and rarer.
“It’s all part of human history and these incredible landscapes,” he continued. “People are now exiting the big urban centers, returning to the rural areas, and looking for a better way of life. We’re never going to tire of going out west. It’s Man vs. Nature and part of an incredible backdrop of human history. If the art is done well, why wouldn’t you be attracted to it? Now, we have Taylor Sheridan out there telling stories. Red Stegall has been booked for two years. I know where they shoot Yellowstone, and I’ve met Taylor Sheridan and been to the 6666 ranch. It’s a diferent twist on the Old West, but he’s putting it out there.”
Dudash’s work has been featured in Art of the West, Southwest Art, Western Art Collector, and other leading publications. Hundreds of collectors, museums, and corporations hold his paintings, including the Booth Museum of Western Art and the James Museum of Western & Wildlife Art. In 2012, he published C. Michael Dudash—Western Collection, a limited-edition book showcasing 87 of his paintings—only a small slice of a body of work that now spans more than 2,200 pieces.
“The Western Art market is really diferent from city to city,” Dudash said. “Some artists do more con-
temporary work. It’s a great career to be a Western artist. There’s the museum circuit, three or fve magazines. Collectors and galleries want more Midwestern and Western values. Family things, real cowboy code, and all that stuf. It feels like home for many of them, and it travels well.”
He continues to work from his home and studio in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where he lives with his wife, Valerie. When he’s not painting, he devotes time to playing the guitar and mandolin, his Christian ministry, and spending time with his family, still grounded by the same passions that shaped him from the beginning.
“I got a beautiful studio in Idaho and have been on this crazy art journey,” said Dudash. “I’ve done lectures, workshops, showed in Japan, and sold 150 paintings there. The world today moves quickly. If you get about a 15- to 20-year run, that’s pretty good. It’s hard to sustain. I’m 73. Still painting away and in good health. A lot of guys I knew are long gone.
“From here to eternity.”
George “Clay” Mitchell is an award-winning reporter and photographer, a founding partner of Saddlebag Dispatches, and Executive Vice President and Publisher of its partner company, Roan & Weatherford Publishing Associates.He lives in Lavaca, Arkansas, with his wife and two daughters.
Dudash working on a painting at Old Bedford in June, 2011.
ODON MONEY
AN OLE HUSSAR
A SHORT STORY
rvis Wedge’s hawk-shaped face glanced warily around The Silver Spur saloon before he began speaking to his two brothers. “It’ll be easy pickings, boys. Who needs to rob banks when those two Germans roll out of town every week in their wagons fush with money.”
The Wedge brothers had eked out their ill-gotten lot in life in Texas, mostly taking for themselves what belonged to others. A bank robbery had cost the family the life of the youngest brother, Harris, in Amarillo. The results of it had sent the remaining gang of brothers feeing for sanctuary in the Colorado Territory.
“Are you still talking about holding up the beer man and his son?” Clive Wedge, oldest of the brothers, chimed in. “Your last damn plan didn’t work out for the better. Now did it, Orvis?”
“Wasn’t my fault them Rangers got lucky. This here idea, it’s a sure thing. Ole Rudolf brews up those beer kegs out at his place at Saledo Creek. Then once a week, he and his son, Wolfgang, haul two loaded down wagons full of John Barleycorn into town and sell them at all the saloons through Silverton.”
Clint Wedge, short in stature and shorter in temper, nodded in agreement. “This is an easy buck. I hear they have hundreds of dollars of cash every trip. Them two won’t even see it coming. No danger, just ripe for the takin’.”
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Orvis said. “All we got to do is bushwhack ’em out at Mills Bridge as they ride back home. Neither one of them go heeled. Kill ’em, take the money, and skin out for Denver.”
Clive leaned in, drawing his brothers closer with the movement. “All right, we do this and it goes no
further than the three of us. I ain’t getting my neck stretched because one of y’all went and ran his mouth to a saloon girl. Both of you tend to lower your pants and get loose about the lip.”
“What you trying to say?” Clint set his glass on the table with a bang, a storm brewing in his eyes. “You think one of us talked in Amarillo before the hold-up. Just speak your piece, big brother.”
“Nobody talked,” Orvis sensed the fght between his brothers coming. “We going to do this or what?”
Clint looked away from Clive and nodded.
Clive, unwilling to let the argument go so easily, added. “Sure, but remember what I said. Keep your mouths closed.”
Having the approval of his brothers, Orvis set it all in motion. “Next Saturday, as they head home.”
The three brothers hid among the rocks and scrub brush along the approach to Mills Bridge, having arrived an hour earlier to set up the ambush before the beer men would be making their way home.
When they had arrived, Orvis laid out the plan. “Me and Clive will wait on this side of the road behind these rocks. Clint, you’ll be across the road just a little further down hiding in that mess of brush.”
Clint interrupted his brother. “Fine by me. I’d rather not be with him.” He nodded toward Clive even though it was clear who he meant by his words. The two brothers had not gotten fully past their exchange that occurred when they planned out the robbery at the saloon. “I’ll just be over there telling the scorpions about how Clive don’t trust his own kin.”
Clive, not one to back down, countered his brother’s insult. “The Good Book says in Proverbs, ‘He who guards his mouth preserves his life, but he who opens wide his lips shall have destruction.’”
“Sorry that me and Orvis aren’t as pious as you are, and Harris was. We just embraced the crooked path—ladies and sinning, drinking and gambling,” Clint spat. “You pretend to be a holy man, but here you are sitting with us, as you always have, along this dirt road to take what isn’t ours.”
Clive’s right hand drifted toward his holster, but Orvis interjected. “Now’s not the time. Both of you is brothers. Act like it. Clint, get on across the road with that shotgun and in position. We’ll let the frst wagon roll by and stop the second. You stop the frst one when it gets to the bridge.”
The men got in position for what might be a long wait under the hot sun. Orvis thought to himself that after this holdup, the brothers needed to go their own way for a little while before the bad blood that was building spilled out.
A half hour later, a single wagon came into view. Clive whispered to Orvis who was crouched next to
him, “There’s only one wagon with the younger one. Where’s the old man?”
Down the road, Clint rose slightly from behind the brush and shrugged his shoulders, confused as he took in the lone wagon also. The wagon passed by the frst outlaws and neared the bridge with no sign of a second wagon.
Orvis raised his 1866 Winchester Rife and drew a bead on Wolfgang. “I’ll wing him and then we can fnd out what is going on before we fnish him of.”
The bullet caught Wolfgang in the right shoulder and sent him careening of of the wagon. He hit the ground hard but still managed to stagger quickly to his feet and run toward the bridge. Clint, unaware that the plan had changed, jumped up and opened fre with both barrels from his shotgun on the ambushed man, peppering him with buckshot. Wolfgang crumpled back to the ground, a bloody mess.
“Dammit, Clint,” Clive yelled. “You’re so damn trigger happy. We were just shooting to wound him so he would talk. You done went and killed him. Get the money bag from his wagon.”
Clint sprinted to the wagon and after a minute of
searching called back. “No money here, no bag, no nothing. It’s just an empty wagon.”
Orvis walked to where Wolfgang had crashed onto the ground. “He’s still breathing,” he called to his brothers. Kneeling down, Orvis shook the dying man’s shoulders trying to coax information out of him before he bled out. “Where’s the money?”
Wolfgang coughed and blood few from his mouth. “Don’t have any… Second wagon load wasn’t ready. Pops is taking it tomorrow and collecting all the payments then….”
Anger brewed on Clive’s face. “I should have known better than to trust any plan you came up with. This was a waste. We are going to have to cut and run with nothing to show for it.”
Clint interjected. “Maybe not. We can fnd out where the old man keeps the money at their place. It ain’t more than a mile away. We can still ride down there and take what they have stashed there.
I’ll make him talk.” Clint patted the handle of the knife sheathed on his belt, and a dark twisted smile slithered across his face.
Orvis latched on to the idea as a way to salvage the
mess this robbery had turned into. Wolfgang’s eyes futtered a few times and then closed. Orvis gave his body a shake. “Where do y’all keep your money put up?” No answer, but the man’s eyes opened. “Where is the old man at right now?”
A bloody smile spread across Wolfgang’s face, and he coughed again. “I’m sure he heard your shots. I expect he will be along shortly to rectify things… God have mercy on your souls when he shows up.”
“That old man?” Clint scofed, “What’s he going to do, brew us up a good beer?”
“Wasn’t always a peaceful man,” Wolfgang sputtered. “Once fought with the Georgia Hussars in the war… Kennesaw Mountain… Lotta Yanks fell to his bullets and saber….” His voice trailed of as he crossed over through the veil.
Orvis looked at Clive. “Hussar? What in the hell even is that? And why do I care if he climbed some damn mountain?”
“The Hussars were horse soldiers,” Clive answered. “And he didn’t climb a mountain. He fought a battle at one. And you might outta care because the Georgia Hussars handed Sherman’s forces marching
through the South one of their only truly tactical defeats at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. Stories of the Hussars made tell that the men were demons on horseback.”
Clint laughed, not one to believe there was anyone tougher than himself out there. “Beer man, horse soldier. Makes no damn diference to me. I’ll kill him and take his money either way.”
The sound of hooves thundered on the wooden bridge and the three brothers turned to see a brown and white mare with ole Rudolf atop charging across it with a rife butted up against his shoulder. Before they could bring their guns to bear on the rider, a shot rang out and dropped Clive to the ground.
The horseman charged past, scattering the outlaws. Clint tumbled of the edge of the road into a small wash that ran alongside the road. Orvis grabbed Clive by the shoulders and pulled him the other direction behind the big rocks where they had frst hid.
Rudolf wheeled his horse around and looked back at the body of his son lying dead on the dusty road. Orvis peeked around the edge of the rock and then stepped out to fre of a shot at the man’s back. The horse instinctively danced sideways upon hearing the commotion in the rocks behind its back. The shot from Orvis struck the stock of the beer man’s rife and sent it shuddering from his grip.
Tapping his mount sharply with his heels, the rider and horse galloped down the road further away from the bridge before spinning around. Clint climbed back up on the road and watched as the rider faced of with the outlaws. Clive, bleeding from his wounded shoulder, came around from the side of the rock, pistol in hand, to stand on the side of the road.
The ole Hussar clicked at his horse and barreled back at his son’s killers. Clint brought his shotgun up, but it was too late as Rudolf dismounted while the horse was still in motion twenty feet in front of him. The smoothness at which the man had done this stopped Clint long enough for Rudolf to draw his Colt Dragoon Revolver. He fred of two rounds as he closed in on the man and dropped him dead.
Clive, who had also been caught momentarily in awe of the old man, raised his pistol and fred. The shot creased the German’s side, but quick as a rattler, he spun and shot Clive in the middle of the forehead, dead before he even hit the ground.
Orvis was in shock—in a matter of minutes he had watched both of his brothers shot dead by the
old man. He recovered what wits he could and fred of two wild shots from his Navy Colt Revolver as he bolted for cover back to the rocks. He sprinted for where his horse was tied up. Orvis slid his revolver back in the holster and climbed up on his horse. That horseman was a demon, and he intended to put many miles between himself and the carnage that had just played out.
Rudolf whistled for his horse and the well-trained mount came running. As Orvis spurred his horse up onto the road, he was shocked to see that the beer man had remounted his horse and was blocking his escape.
“It can all be over, you know. We’ve both lost people,” Orvis called out.
“I lost a good son. You lost two cowards,” the grizzled voice replied.
“You could have rode away.” Orvis went for his pistol, but it never cleared leather. A shot took him between the eyes.
An old war prayer tumbled from Rudolf’s lips, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of the death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me—” The words halted as sobs racked his body. The old Hussar had lost comrades in battle before, but never family.
Dismounting, he walked over to kneel by Wolfgang. “Guten nacht, mein Sohn.” {
THE AUTHOR
Don Money was born and raised in rural Arkansas. He spent the majority of his youth exploring the woods around their family farm or with his face buried in a Western novel. After graduating high school he joined the United States Air Force and traveled the globe as a Nuclear, Biological, Chemical Weapons Defense Specialist. After ten years in the service, Don returned to his roots in Arkansas and now teaches Language Arts to sixth graders. He holds Masters and Bachelors degrees in Education from Arkansas State University. Don is an active member of the White County Creative Writers group and enjoys writing fction across multiple genres. He has sixty short stories published in a variety of anthologies and magazines. Don resides in Beebe, Arkansas with his wife Sarah where they are the proud parents of fve children.
TWILIGHT OF THE CHIEFS
From the ashes of massacre and captivity rose a ferce, complex leader— Quanah Parker, warrior, survivor, and the last warrior chief of the Comanche tribe.
STORY BY
REGINA MCLEMORE
Quanah Parker’s unique life story was forged in tragedy. His mother, Cynthia Parker, experienced great trauma when she was only nine-years-old. After watching family members and friends be brutally assaulted and killed during the Fort Parker Massacre, in East Texas, she, her six-year-old brother and other young people were carried away by their attackers.
Author Bill Neeley, in The Last Comanche Chief, the Life and Times of Quanah Parker, ofers insight into the fate of captives. One young woman, Rachel Parker Plummer, Cynthia’s teenage cousin, captured with her, recalled their frst night as captives. After being bound tightly, the prisoners were turned on their faces where they remained for hours as they were beaten and stomped. As they continued their fve-day journey north, they were tied-up every night and only given enough food and water to sustain life. When they arrived at Grand Prairie, the Comanche split into three groups, and Rachel was separated from the Parker children.
Before she was rescued about twenty-one months later, Rachel served as a slave to a Comanche woman, who worked her constantly and often beat her. Besides doing hard chores essential to nomadic life, women captives were often sexually abused. Even though she was ransomed, Rachel never recovered her health and died a year after being brought home.
Children, on the other hand, were generally treated better, and most became assimilated in a short time, quickly learning the language and customs. For twenty-four years, Cynthia lived frst as a Comanche daughter to her adoptive family and then as a wife to Peta Nocona, a Comanche chief of the Noconie band. They had three children together, one of whom was Quanah.
In the anthology, “Indian Leaders, Oklahoma’s First Statesmen,” H. Glenn Jordan and Peter MacDonald, Jr., related that Cynthia was forcibly rescued by Texas Rangers in the Pease River Battle on December 18, 1860, and never saw her husband or sons again. Cynthia spent her last years living with her biological
family, who never understood why she mourned for her Comanche family. She escaped once but was soon recaptured by the Texas Rangers. After her daughter died from infuenza, Cynthia quit accepting food and water and died in 1871.
Meanwhile, Quanah had grown to be a strong, muscular young man and a proven warrior, earning the name, “the Eagle.” He rode with several Comanche bands before being adopted by the vengeful Kwahati band, professed enemies of the bufalo hunters. Quanah soon caught the eye of Weakeah, Chief Yellow Bear’s daughter. Unfortunately, he had competition from another warrior, Tennap, whose father was wealthy. Quanah carried Weakeah of, along with twenty-one braves, and they formed their own band, the Quahada.
Although Quanah led many raids and killed many men, he sometimes displayed unusual behavior for a ferce warrior. One captive, Mr. Butterfeld, feared the slow, painful death he expected from Quanah’s hands. Instead he was told he wouldn’t be harmed unless he tried to escape. Six months passed, and one of Quanah’s wives advised him to escape by joining deer hunts and pretending to get lost. Since they
would become accustomed to Butterfeld getting lost and coming back late, they wouldn’t search when he ran away. It worked, and Butterfeld escaped to tell of his captivity
According to 1920 interviews with Quanah’s family and friends by Texas pioneer, Olive King Dixon, Quanah was merciful to women and children. His men were told to spare them.
Even though Quanah, the man, followed his own rules, Quanah, the warrior, lived for the raid. After the Civil War, Quanah, and other Native leaders such as the Kiowa Chiefs, Satanta and Big Tree, went on a rampage across Texas and Mexico, burning dozens of homes, killing many citizens, and driving of thousands of head of horses and cattle. It was so bad that settlements like Jack County, Texas, reported a seventy-fve per cent decline in population as inhabitants fed to escape the Comanche. Inspector General Randolph Marcy observed, “This rich and beautiful section does not contain as many people as it did when I lived here eighteen years ago, and if the Indian marauders are not punished, the whole country seems to be in a fair way of becoming totally depopulated.”
In October of 1867, some 4,000 Plains Indians met
Cynthia Ann Parker, pictured with one of her three children conceived with her Comanche husband in 1860.
Quanah Parker, posing alongside with his three of his wives sometime in 1892.
with the government’s Peace Commission at Medicine Lodge in southern Kansas to create a treaty. The Commission ofered gifts and annuities in exchange for a guarantee of safe passage on transportation routes and an end to the Indian opposition to railroads and all warfare between the Indians and whites. In addition, the Comanche and Kiowa would live on a 3,000,000 acre permanent reservation and agree to become farmers and ranchers with government assistance.
Many Indians, including Quanah Parker, watched the proceedings but didn’t sign the treaty. He reportedly said, “My band is not going to live on a reservation. Tell the white chiefs that the Quahada are warriors and will surrender when the blue coats come and whip us on the Llano Estacado.”
The Treaty of Medicine Lodge was soon broken. On August 10, 1868, Colonel J.H. Leavenworth, in a letter to the Washington Chronicle, reported that the Comanche and Kiowa were raiding the Chickasaws in Indian Territory and the white settlements in Gainesville, Texas.
In the fall of 1871, Colonel Ranald Slidell Mackenzie set out with six hundred men to fnd and punish the Comanche leaders, Quanah, He Bear, Wild Horse, Bull Elk, and others. Accompanying him were Tonkawa scouts, sworn enemies of the Comanche.
After a few days, the scouts discovered some Comanche spies. They chased them, but the Comanche got away. That night Quanah and his men stampeded seventy of the army horses, including Mackenzie’s personal mount, a magnifcent gray pacer. At dawn the next day, while the soldiers were locating the missing horses, the Comanche came again, riding of with a dozen more horses. A group of soldiers pursued them into an arroyo where they were ambushed. One eye witness, Captain Carter, described Quanah’s appearance. “His face was smeared with black war paint, which gave his features a satanic appearance…. A full-length head-dress or war bonnet of eagle’s feathers, spreading out as he rode, and descending from his forehead, over head and back, to his pony’s tail, almost swept to the ground…”
Everyone shot at the fast-charging Quanah, but he was on the other side of his target, using him as a human shield. Just as Carter screamed at the man to use his six-shooter, Quanah shot him. All the soldiers would have likely been killed, but Quanah and his followers galloped away when they spied the rest of Mackenzie’s troops coming on fast.
For several days, Mackenzie tracked the Quahada only to be fooled several times by false trails. Finally, the Tonkawa led him to the trail of a large group of women and children. Just as the troops were closing in, the weather changed to a misty mixture of sleet, reducing visibility. To make things worse, Mackenzie was shot in the thigh with a barbed arrow. He continued to search for Quanah a few more days before his wound forced him to retreat.
Mackenzie did not give up and returned in the fall of 1872. This time Mackenzie found and attacked a camp of Kotsoteka and Quahada on McClellan Creek in Texas. Over two hundred teepees were destroyed with stores of meat, equipment, and clothing, 52 Comanche were killed, and 124 women and children were taken prisoner.
Perhaps as a reward, the Tonkawa were given charge of the many horses taken from the Comanche camp. That night, while the Tonkawa slept, all the horses, along with some of the army’s horses, were taken by the Comanche.
Quanah, who was away at the time of Mackenzie’s attack, continued to ride the war trail as he eluded capture on McKenzie’s stolen gray pacer. In May of
U.S. Army Colonel Ranald Slidell Mackenzie, the offcer assigned to track down and defeat Quanah and his band.
1874, Quanah called the Comanche together to have what would be their last sun dance to make medicine for themselves to battle the white man. A young medicine man, Esa-tai, persuaded Quanah and a war party of 200 to 500 warriors that his medicine would make them bullet-proof as they slaughtered the bufalo hunters and merchants of Adobe Walls in their sleep. After a two-day losing battle against the sharp-shooting bufalo hunters, the leaders held a council some distance away from Adobe Walls. While they were conferring, a long shot from the settlement struck Esatai’s horse in the forehead, completely disproving the medicine man’s claims. That night a few bands slipped away, and the next day another long-distance conference was held. It ended when one of the hunters, Billy Dixon, shot a rider from his horse. The conference ended, and so did the assault on Adobe Walls as the Indians admitted their defeat.
Undaunted, Quanah reportedly said, “I take all young men, go warpath to Texas.”
Later, in 1874, not only had McKenzie returned in full force, but several commanders joined him in an all-out assault on the warring Indians, including the Comanche, the Kiowa, and the Cheyenne. With troops attacking them from every direction, the Indians were driven to the canyon walls. Eventually, Mackenzie and Captain Gunther pinned them in Palo Duro Canyon and killed a few, but many more returned to their reservations where they surrendered. McKenzie also ordered all of the Indians’ captured horses be destroyed so their owners couldn’t steal them back.
In March and April of 1875, messengers were sent to the Comanche to persuade them to surrender. Dr. Jacob J. Sturm, a physician and interpreter, was sent, with a
Quanah Parker in full ceremonial regalia, ca. 1890.
group of Comanche, to speak with Quanah and other Comanche leaders.
Somehow Quanah and his band had escaped the recent attacks and didn’t sufer the loss of their homes, food, and horses like many others experienced. However, these experiences affected him because one day he rode to a large mesa, which he climbed. After an intense time of soul searching, he saw two signs he believed came from the Great Spirit. A wolf turned his head toward Quanah, howled, and ran toward the northeast, where Fort Sill lay. Then an eagle, an animal associated with Quanah, appeared above him and flew toward Fort Sill. Quanah obeyed the signs by agreeing to go to Fort Sill when the messengers came.
When he arrived at Fort Sill, he met with his old enemy, Mackenzie, who, learning of his connection with Cynthia Parker, took an immediate interest in Quanah. Over time, Quanah gained favor with Fort Sill ofcials and was recognized as the Chief of the Comanche. Some Comanche resented this and claimed Quanah received special favors because he had white blood. Some whites also resented his quick rise to the top and attributed it to corruption. An investigator from Washington answered these charges by saying, “If ever nature stamped a man with the seal of headship, she did in his case. Quanah would have been a leader and a governor in any circle where fate may have cast him—it is in his blood.”
In 1878, the Comanche and Kiowa were granted permission to leave the reservation to hunt bufalo. By this time, most of the bufalo had been slaughtered, and Quanah was forced to go clear to Palo Duro Canyon to fnd even a small herd. Quanah didn’t know that Charles Goodnight now claimed Palo Duro and would not be happy with a trespass on his land.
What could have been a confrontation turned into an agreeable meeting, and Goodnight overlooked the forty cattle the Indians had killed and eaten before he found them. Goodnight addressed Quanah directly, “…I don’t want to fght unless you force me…you keep order and behave yourself…protect my property and let it alone, and I’ll give you two beeves every other day until you can fnd out where the bufaloes are…”
This agreement was the beginning of a long friendship between Quanah and Goodnight. The Indians remained on the ranch about three weeks until orders came from Fort Sill for them to return.
Goodnight wrote a letter to Agent Hunt at Fort Sill in 1880, asking for permission for Quanah to come to Palo Duro Canyon to get a good Durham bull Goodnight had promised him in 1878 for breeding the “cattle which General Mackenzie gave him.” Thanks to Mackenzie and Goodnight, Quannah became a cattleman, and through Charles Goodnight, he developed strong personal friendships with the cattle barons and political fgures of the time. Quanah was criticized for earning money for the
Charles Goodnight, rancher and close friend of Quanah Parker.
tribe by leasing reservation land to cattlemen for cattle grazing. He was criticized again when one of his cattleman friends, Burk Burnett, built him a beautiful twelve-room home, which was called “Star House.”
Quanah lived happily on the reservation in his big house with his multiple wives and children until 1892, when a movement began to open reservation land for settlement. Quanah and other Indian leaders fought this proposal by meeting with the leaders of the Cherokee Commission. This commission proposed that all Comanche and Kiowas tribe members be given a 160 acre land allotment, along with a payment for the remaining land they were giving up.
Over the next several years, Quanah went to Washington many times to protest against the proposed action, but when the Rock Island Railroad joined the large number of people clamoring for land and statehood, Quanah knew he was defeated. In July 1901, 21,000 homesteaders registered at Fort Sill. The only land left to the Indians was their little 160-acre tracts and the Big Pasture reserved for the younger generation.
Quanah made good political use of the Big Pasture when he invited President Theodore Roosevelt to join him there for a wolf hunt in April of 1905. Roosevelt had a great time, killing a fve-foot rattlesnake, helping catch seventeen coyotes and wolves, and racing his
horse across the felds. Roosevelt described Quanah as “the Comanche chief, in his youth, a bitter foe of the whites, now painfully teaching his people the white man’s stony road.”
He and Quanah became fast friends. Perhaps because of his experience at the Big Pasture, Roosevelt vetoed a bill authorizing the opening of the Big Pasture for settlement.
Quanah’s last battle was with Texas over his mother’s remains. He fnally won, and on December 4, 1910, Quanah reburied his mother’s remains at Post Oak Cemetery. His last wish was to live until the marble monument was placed over his mother’s grave. Only two weeks before he died, he had watched it being put into place. He had a heart attack on a train, coming back from a visit with some Cheyenne near Harmon, Oklahoma. He held on to life until he reached his home where his last rites were administered by a Comanche medicine man on February 23, 1911. Quanah was buried beside his mother, reunited at last.
Regina McLemore is a Will Rogers Medallion Award-winning author and retired educator of Cherokee heritage. Her great, great grandmother, Susie Christie Clay, survived the Trail of Tears in 1839. Regina’s Young Adult Trilogy, Cherokee Passages, is a fctional retelling of her family’s history from the Trail of Tears down through the modern day.
In 1905, Parker invited President Theodore Roosevelt to the Great Pasture to join in a wolf hunt. Roosevelt and Quanah became fast friends. In part due to his experience, Roosevelt vetoed a bill authorizing the opening of the Big Pasture for settlement.
RYAN MICHAEL HINES RUSTLERS, BY GOD
A SHORT STORY
“For all the animals of the forest are mine, and I own the cattle on a thousand hills.”
-Psalm 50:10
“Get up,” I said. “You’re coming with me.”
He, Michael, did not comply. With my shotgun to my shoulder, wide-brimmed Stetson knocked back on my brow to aid in my aim, I guess it weren’t hard to understand why. Plus, he was tied up.
Michael stared at me from the spot on the garage foor where he lay. His lips moved, but I didn’t hear him. My hearing ain’t so good anymore.
“Say again, son?”
“Why are you here?”
Michael’s eyes were wide. Like a rank, cold backed colt’s. But his weren’t the ones that worried me. There were two men on either side of the young man. They were dressed in long shorts and socks pulled up to their knees. Bandanas around their foreheads, not their face or neck. Their eyes were pinheads, like a rattler’s as he strikes.
It was dark. There were no lights inside the dilapidated garage. A street lamp shining through the half open overhead door was the only light in the place. I was deep in the heart of East Los Angeles, a long way from home. The street was called Slauson. It was lined with tents and run-down Winnebagos. I smelled piss and fear, and I missed the ranch. I felt it calling to me. But I couldn’t go home to the cattle and horses.
Not yet.
“I think you go now, cabrón,” the biggest one
said, pulling a pistol from inside his pants. The one opposite him did the same.
A large black SUV pulled up outside. I couldn’t see through its tinted windows. I didn’t need to, though. I knew Death waited inside it.
“Get lost, old man,” the smaller of the two men said. “This one is ours. Not yours.”
Michael’s eyes were even wider now.
“I ain’t that old,” I said. “And Michael ain’t your’n and he ain’t mine either.”
The big one cocked his pistol.
“Whose is he then?” the big one asked as he pulled the trigger.
The trouble started a few months before. Actually, at the start, it weren’t trouble at all.
The ranch is out by Bishop, just of the 395, beneath the great Sierras. My wife had passed. We’d had no children. It was only me. There was too much work for one man. So, I put a help wanted ad in the paper. When Michael showed up with his pickup and two horse trailer, I was relieved. It would be so much easier on the ranch with an extra pair of hands.
“How many head of cattle you got?” he asked me.
“None,” I answered.
Michael had been confused. He pointed at the herd in the pasture by the mountain. “Whose cattle are those?”
“I just look after them. Same as this ranch.”
“You don’t own it?”
“On paper, I guess I do. But that’s not the truth of it.”
“I don’t get it.” Michael had taken his ball cap of and was scratching his head. He looked even younger without the hat on.
“The animals in the forest are mine. And I own the cattle on a thousand hills.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means,” I said as I showed Michael to the bunkhouse, “we’re just caretakers. Ain’t none of this can I take with me when I die. So, I guess ain’t none of it is really mine.”
Michael stepped inside the bunkhouse. He tossed his dufel on the bed.
“Then why do you bother with it?”
The frst few months went well. Michael was a hand. He knew how to move cattle. He could handle horses well. He even knew how to cook a little bit. I was happy to have the help. It was good not to be alone. Calving season went smoothly. Weaning went well, too. But soon after that, my neighbors began to notice something was wrong.
A horse or two of theirs would go missing in the night. That, or a few calves from almost every ranch along our stretch of 395.
“Rustlers, by God,” the neighbors said. It was probably true, I’d thought. Even though it was 2024, livestock theft was still a problem. It had gotten worse in the last few years as drugs made their way deeper into our community. Easier to steal than work to pay for your fx.
It was then that Michael’s work ethic began to suffer. He was gone almost every night, in town till late. He was grouchy in the mornings, too. I even caught him mistreating a horse, something I never thought I’d see him do. This wasn’t just any old horse, never mind how bad that would be anyway. It was my late wife’s favorite animal.
“What’s the matter with you?” I asked him that night at supper. “I can’t have you mistreat the stock. Especially, my Emily’s favorite mare.” He didn’t answer, just put on his hat as he walked out the door heading for town.
“Michael,” I asked him the next day, “what’s going on?” His eyes were glassy. His movements sluggish. We’d been deworming and ear tagging that morning. Michael was late to work. I’d already gotten the cows
up by the time he showed. All I needed him to do was catch them in the chute. But he kept missing. Cattle were getting through the headgate before I’d poured wormer or put an ear tag in.
“I’m worried about you, son.”
“I ain’t your son. And I ain’t your friend. I ain’t yours at all.”
“Michael,” I said quietly, “that’s not the point of it.”
“Screw you, old man,” he said. “I quit.”
Until then, I had been the only rancher along that stretch of road who hadn’t lost any stock. Once Michael quit me, that changed. I woke up one morning to fnd my dear departed Emily’s mare had disappeared.
I was furious.
The Sherif had no help to give. “We can call the auction barns around. But it’ll do no good. I’m sure whoever stole your mare—”
“Weren’t really mine. I guess on paper she was.”
“—either took it across state lines or sold it on the internet. Hard to track these things unless you put a chip in her. You didn’t get her microchipped, did ya?”
I hadn’t. No way I’d ever consider putting a machine inside my dead wife’s favorite animal.
The loss of that mare ate at me. The horse was the last living connection between me and my Emily. I’d started that mare under saddle for her. Fed it for her. Kept it up close to the house so that even in the last days, when Emily was almost gone, she could see her out the window frst thing. I’d sometimes carried her out so she could smell her horse, feel her, hear her. Then, when my Emily left me, I would look out
and see that mare frst thing. Walk out to see her, feel her, smell her.
Pain gave way to rage.
I drove to the old dive outside town where local degenerates hung around. I hated to think of Michael in a place like that, but if he was into the kind of trouble I believed he was, this was the place to fnd him.
It was early. The bar was closed. Jack, the owner, was asleep in the flthy trailer house parked behind.
“Wake yourself!” I hollered as I kicked his front door in. Jack reached for the sawed-of scattergun he kept by his pillow, but I wrestled it from him before he blinked the sand from his eyes.
“Where is Michael?”
“Don’t know no Michael.”
“Yes, you do. You sell him whiskey and drugs. Where is he?”
“I told you. I don’t know no—”
There was a dull crack as the butt of Jack’s scattergun hit him in the chin.
“Listen here, Jack,” I breathed, “I’ve got a pile of bull testicles as high as a mountain next to the cattle chute in my corral. You want I should add yours to it? I’ll put them way up top where the view is best.”
Turned out he had seen Michael not long ago. His truck was pullin’ that two horse trailer. He’d been headed down to see Tony, a kill buyer in the valley. Michael had tried to pick up some junk on credit, promising to pay with the money he was about to make selling an old mare to the glue factory.
My Emily’s mare.
“But Michael must think I’m as dumb as he looks. I didn’t give him no credit at all.”
“Why not?”
“Because we all know he’s in hock up to his ass with some Sureños boys down in the fatland. And they all know Tony. He doesn’t just move livestock outta that sale barn of his.”
“Thank you,” I said as I helped Jack up of the foor.
“You’re welcome,” he mumbled, all perplexed like as he watched me tuck the shotgun into the crook of my arm.
“Keepin’ this,” I said, then tipped my hat and headed for the door. “Sorry about your jaw. There was no helpin’ it.”
“Hope you get your horse back.”
“Wasn’t really mine. Ain’t none of it really mine.”
I went to see Tony at the sale barn.
“It’s not here! That mare ain’t here!” he screamed as I held him out, suspended over the side of the hayloft. I was old but still strong as an ox.
“Where is she?” I growled through gritted teeth.
“I swear, rancher. I don’t know. But your mare ain’t here.”
I pulled Tony back over the rail. Knees knocking, he collapsed to the foor.
“Ain’t really my mare.”
“Then why do you want her back so bad?”
I pondered the thought of Emily’s favorite horse on a truck headed for the border. I thought of that mare being slaughtered for dog food down in old Mexico. My face turned red. My heart became steel.
“Where’s Michael?”
“I don’t know who that is.”
I pulled out the sawed-of I got from Jack.
“Hey, now!” Tony was wailing. “Don’t shoot me!”
“Lookit, Tony. I know you don’t just sell stock outta here. You move drugs for guys down in the fatland. Michael’s been selling rustled cattle and horses to you because he owes those same men money. Now, I am only gonna ask you one more time.”
I cocked the scattergun.
“Where is Michael?”
Tony got calm, then. He sat still, quiet.
“Now, I’m not saying I know who Michael is. I’m not saying I bought this mare of yours or any other of God’s creatures of him either. I’m also not saying I know these men you’re talking about. But if I did—”
“Yeah?”
“—then I’d tell you that Michael came to see me to make a payment on the bill he owes the Sureños. But he’s been too late, on too much, for too long. They were here, waiting for him. Took him down to LA, to their place on Slauson. They’re gonna deal with him there.”
“The hell they are.”
Tony smiled then. “Oh,” he said, staring at the gun in my hand and the rage in my eyes, “I guess he’s yours, huh?”
“Ain’t none of it really mine. I’m just supposed to keep an eye on things.”
As I turned to walk away, I heard Tony move. There was the sound of his body on the hayloft foor, then the rasp of a gun clearing an ankle holster.
I spun on my bootheel, fring twice. Tony shot twice, too. He missed.
I didn’t.
“My God,” he whimpered, dropping the gun over the side of the hayloft as blood stained his shirt. “You shot me.”
“That I did.”
It was four hours from Bishop to Los Angeles. Four hours I spent thinking about the young man who took Emily’s favorite mare away. The young man who I’d shown kindness to. The young man who had betrayed my trust.
I had to hurry. Couldn’t let the Sureños deal with Michael before I got a crack at him.
As I pulled of the freeway and turned on to Slauson, I checked the shotgun. She was loaded with double aught, just like she should be.
I drove past the Sureños garage once to scope it out. Then I took the freeway north, circled back, and stopped two blocks short of Slauson. I didn’t want the rumble of my bad mufer to give me away.
East LA was dark at night. Half the street lamps didn’t work. No one went outside if they can help it. My bootheels were loud against the concrete. I didn’t care. I had changed my mind. Let them hear me comin’.
I turned the corner, shotgun at my hip. There was a lookout in front of their ramshackle spot. He pulled a gun, but too slow. I cut him down, racked another into the chamber, and kept walking.
The garage door was half open. Michael lay on the ground inside, fanked by the two Sureños. They’d been workin’ on him already. Even so, he looked more scared of me than he was of the two men that had been beating him for the last six hours.
I asked them nicely for Michael. They refused me. That’s when the black SUV pulled up to the curb with the Devil in the driver’s seat and Death ridin’ shotgun.
“Get lost, old man,” the smaller of the two Sureños said. “This one is ours. Not yours.”
“Michael ain’t your’n and he ain’t mine either.”
The big one cocked his pistol.
“Whose is he then?”
The big one’s shot caught me in the left shoulder. I let go with a couple rounds of my own. The two Sureños hadn’t even hit the concrete yet as I spun around and blasted the wire that held the overhead door half open. It slammed shut as Death and the Devil started shooting from inside the SUV.
I crawled over to Michael, ignoring the pain in my
shoulder. He tried to back away from me. We both stayed low as bullets ripped into the door, smashing into the brick wall behind us.
I pulled a knife.
“You know why I’m here?” I hollered over the roar of pistol fre.
“Please,” Michael begged. “Please. Don’t hurt me. I’m sorry.”
“This is for Emily’s mare,” I said. Michael closed his eyes as I took the knife toward him.
“Forgive me!” he screamed as I cut the rope that bound him. Michael’s eyes opened. He raised his hands in disbelief.
I spun around again, shooting back at the SUV through the garage door.
“There another way outta this place?” I asked as I reloaded.
“What?”
“Is there a back door?” I kicked one of the dead Sureños’ pistols toward Michael. He picked it up then nodded.
“Right hand corner,” he said.
We crawled toward the exit, giving fre as we went, dodging an onslaught of lead.
Once outside, we made it to my truck. I was too weak to drive. Didn’t know till just then that I’d been shot twice. Once in the shoulder. Once again in the chest. I said nothing to Michael.
“Drive, boy.”
The sole of his snakeskin Lucchese boot jammed down on the gas. The old Ford roared. The SUV tried to follow, but we made it to the freeway before they got us. We were safe there. Too many witnesses on the big blacktop.
We lost them in the LA trafc.
Michael and I didn’t speak for at least an hour. Finally, he turned to me.
“Why?” he asked.
“Ain’t none of this mine, Michael,” I said. “I’m just supposed to keep an eye on it.”
Then I felt tired and closed my eyes.
“You shot?”
“No,” I lied. “Cut myself on some glass.”
When Michael and I pulled up the drive, I heard a familiar whinny come from the pasture by the house. The sun was barely up, but it was light enough to see. That mare was back where she belonged.
“How’d you get there, ol’ girl?” I said.
“What are you talking about?” Michael asked.
“Emily’s favorite mare. I see her in the pasture. I thought you’d taken her.”
“Ain’t no horse there that I can see.”
When Michael opened up the door the cab light kicked on. It was then that he saw what kind of shape I was really in.
“Jesus. You’re dyin’.”
“Maybe.”
“Why didn’t you say?”
“Help me out to the pasture. I wanna say hello to that mare.”
“Dang it all. Ain’t no mare in that pasture. Dang. I gotta take you to the hospital.”
I shook my head. “Help me,” I said again.
Michael took my arm and led me to the fence. The sun rose over the top of the Inyo Mountains to the east, painting the valley below.
Emily’s favorite mare knickered to me. I reached out and felt her coat.
I saw her.
Smelled her.
“See,” I said. “Ain’t none of it mine. But I keep an eye on it.”
“There’s no horse here,” Michael said.
Then I had to sit down. I was too tired to stand up anymore. {
THE AUTHOR
Ryan Michael Hines is a former farrier and farm hand who went west almost a decade ago to fnd his fortune. He loves the Southland sun, but misses the mystery and majesty of the Appalachian Mountains every day. His modern-day western TV pilot Eastside Outlaws was developed under a frst look agreement with Sony Crackle. His feature adaptation of that script went on to win Best Crime Feature Screenplay at the Fifth LA Crime and Horror Film Festival. His novella, Moonshineland A Tale of Haunted Appalachia, was published in 2023 and is a novelization of his scripted podcast of the same name. You can learn more about Ryan and his writing at Ryanmhines.com.
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON: REBEL WITH RHYTHM
Songwriter, soldier, scholar, and star—Kris Kristoferson blazed his own trail from helicopter cockpits to country stages, building a lasting legacy of fearless creativity.
STORY BY
TERRY ALEXANDER
Kris Krisofferson was no one trick pony and made quite a name for himself as an American songwriter, singer, and actor. He was even one of the pioneering voices of the outlaw movement in country music. During his lifetime, Kristoferson’s infuence impacted many people.
Kristofferson was born on June 22, 1936, in Brownsville, Texas, to Mary Ann and Lars Henry Kristoferson, an Air Force General. The couple welcomed the birth of their frst child and named him Kristopher. He attended school and graduated from San Mateo High School in Texas in 1954.
At eighteen years old, Kristoferson won a short story contest sponsored by The Atlantic Monthly. His stories Gone are the Days and The Rock were published in the magazine. Kris attended Pomona College and participated in boxing, rugby, football and track and feld. He was featured in the March 1958 issue of Sports Illustrated for his achievements in college athletics.
After Kristoferson graduated from Pomona with
a Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1958, he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford. There he studied at Merton College and graduated in 1960 with a Bachelor of Philosophy Degree in English Literature.
Kris married Francis Mavia Beer in 1961, and they had two children together. He joined the army and was commissioned as a second lieutenant and received training as a helicopter pilot at Fort Rucker, Alabama. He later attended Ranger Training and was stationed in West Germany with the Eighth Infantry Division. In 1965, he was assigned to teach English Literature at West Point.
Kris had wanted a billet as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam but was assigned the teaching duties instead. The thought of lesson plans and assigned curriculum terrifed him. He made the decision to leave the Army and pursue a career in songwriting. Seeing his actions as a rejection of what they stood for, his parents disowned him. His mother didn’t speak to him for twenty-fve years.
Kristoferson moved his family to Nashville where he worked at several odd jobs while struggling for success in the music industry. He worked as a helicopter pilot for Petroleum Helicopters International. At this job, Kristoferson would work a week in Louisiana fying and writing songs and then he would return to Nashville for a week pitching his songs. He wrote “Help me Make it Through the Night” and “Bobby McGee” while on an oil platform near Lafayette. Amidst Kris’s search to fnd his place in the music industry, he and Mavia divorced in 1968.
One of Kristoferson’s more unorthodox attempts to get noticed was when he landed a helicopter on Johnny Cash’s front lawn to get the singer to look at one of his songs. Cash wasn’t home at the time, but he did look at one of Kristoferson’s songs. Johnny Cash later recorded “Sunday Morning Coming Down” in 1970. It won Song of the Year at the 1971 Country Music Association Awards. That same year Janis Joplin scored a number one hit with “Me and Bobby McGee” that she recorded on her album Pearl prior to her death. Anne Murray scored a hit with “Help Me Make It Through the Night” in 1971. The song won a Grammy Award for Song of the Year.
Kristoferson’s success in the songwriting industry was followed up with his acting debut in 1971. He appeared in The Last Movie, a flm directed by Dennis Hopper. It was flmed in Peru and was a flm about the afterefects of a movie flm crew after the flm is fnished and how the locals reacted and returned to normal. In 1972, he appeared with Gene Hackman in the movie Cisco Pike.
Kristoferson made his frst of many westerns in 1973. It was also the frst of three flms he made with director Sam Peckinpah. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, retold the legend of Billy the Kid. Kris played Billy opposite James Coburn as Pat Garrett. Several old western stars also appeared in the flm. Kris was nominated for a BAFTA for his performance.
A second marriage followed in 1973, when Kristoferson married Rita Coolidge. The couple had one child together. They won a Grammy that same year for Best Country Performance for a Duo or Group for the song “From the Bottle to the Bottom” and then won the same award in 1975 for the song “Lover Please.”
Kristofferson pictured in the early-1970s after he resigned his commission from the U.S. Army.
In 1974, Kristofferson appeared as a biker in the Sam Peckinpah contemporary western Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. The movie starred Warren Oates as a hood given a special assignment to prove that Alfredo Garcia was indeed dead. He had to transport his severed head to his boss.
Kristoferson’s frst acting accolade came when he won a Golden Globe Award for Best New Talent for his appearance with Barbara Streisand in the 1976 flm A Star is Born. The following year, he was voted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.
The last film that Kris made with Sam Peckinpah was in 1978. The movie, Convoy, costarred Ali McGraw and Ernest Borgnine. According to rumors, Peckinpah was about to get fired from the film and Kris told the producers that if they fred Sam, he was going to leave the flm. The producers reluctantly agreed to keep Sam. Peckinpah later told Kris. “You son-of-bitch, what have you done? I was out of this shit, and now I’m right back in it.”
He also divorced Rita Coolidge in 1980.
Two years later, in 1982, Kristoferson returned to music and joined Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, and Brenda Lee on the double album A Winning Hand. Kris married for the third time on February 19, 1983 when he wed Lisa Marie Meyers. They had fve children together. In 1984, he formed the singing group the Highwaymen, along with Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Waylon Jennings. The title song was the single of the year in 1985. Kristofferson was also inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame that same year.
In 1979, Kristoferson appeared as Abner Lait in the mini-series Freedom Road. Muhammed Ali made his acting debut in this feature. The series also starred Ron O’Neal and Alfrie Woodward. A former slave and union soldier became a United States Senator after the Civil War. The series didn’t fare well in the ratings.
Kris played Sherif James Averill in the 1980 flm, Heaven’s Gate. In this retelling of the Johnson County War, the sherif of a small Wyoming town tried to protect the small farmer and rancher from the large cattle barons. The movie was a box ofce fop and cost Kris his Hollywood A-list status. In fact, he was nominated for a Razzie award for his performance.
The next Kristofferson western was the 1986 TV movie, The Last Days of Frank and Jesse James. Kris starred as Jesse James with Johnny Cash playing his older brother Frank. The film also featured a cameo appearance by Willie Nelson as General Jo Shelby. He also appeared in the remake of the John Wayne classic Stagecoach in 1986. Kris played the Ringo Kid, an escapee from prison who was trying to get to Lordsburg to get revenge on the men that killed his brother. The flm also starred Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and a special appearance by Lash Larue. The movie won a Bronze Wrangler Western Heritage Award for Fictional Television Drama from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
In 1988, Kris received high praise when he appeared in the HBO TV western flm, The Tracker. Kris starred as Noble Adams, a renowned tracker who had retired and was enjoying his days with his younger wife. He was called back into service to track Red Jack Stillwell and kill him or bring him to justice.
Kristoferson followed with another TV movie
appearing with Willie Nelson in Pair of Aces. In this contemporary western, Kris played Rip Metcalf, a Texas Ranger who must team up with a thief to investigate a serial killer who was targeting cheerleaders. The movie was the fnal flm appearance of Western movie icon Lash LaRue. Kris reprised the role of Rip Metcalf in the TV movie Another Pair of Aces: Three of a Kind in 1991. Bill Bixby directed the flm which again starred Willie Nelson. In this follow up flm, a gambler, a Texas Ranger, and an FBI agent teamed up to investigate a series of vigilante murders.
The frst half of the 1990s saw more acting roles for Kris to appear in. He played Jerico Adams in Miracle in the Wilderness, a 1991 TV movie. Kristoferson appeared in the 1993 modern western movie Paper Hearts. He was back on the small screen playing a man named Destiny in the 1994 TV movie Sodbusters. The following year, Kris was the Preacher in 1995’s Pharaoh’s Army. Kris made his frst acting role as a president in the TV movie Tad in 1995. He played President Abraham Lincoln in this story of the president’s life in the White House during the Civil War and his murder by John Wilkes Booth.
The last half of the ‘90s saw Kristofferson continuing to star in movies and television. In 1996, he played Charlie Wade in the movie Lone Star. From 1997 to 1999, Kris was the narrator for the TV series Dead Man’s Gun, an anthology series that told the stories of diferent people who encountered the special weapon. Two for Texas was a TV movie Kristoferson made with Scott Bairstow in 1998, which won a Bronze Wrangler Western Heritage Award for Best Television Drama. Finally rounding out the decade, he shared the screen with Willie Nelson again in the 1999 TV movie The Long Kill. The two starred as aging gunfghters who reform their old gang to avenge the murder of a former member.
Not slowing down, Kristoferson moved into the new century with plenty of acting roles. In 2000, he played Sgt. Sam Winchester in the short flm Comanche, and followed it up in 2001 with the movie Wooly Boys, a modern-day comedy/western.
Accolades soon followed for Kris. He received the Veteran of the Year Award at the 2003 American Veterans Awards Ceremony, and he was awarded a Golden Boot for his work in Westerns that same year. Kristoferson was inducted into the Country Music
Kris Kristofferson was a multi-talented artist whose legendary career as a songwriter, singer, and actor made him one of the most enduring fgures in American entertainment.
Hall of Fame in 2004. In November 2009, he was named a BMI Icon.
Kris was back on the screen and played Sheppard Graves in the 2010 western The Last Rites of Ransom Pride. In 2014, Kris was awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award for his work in the music industry. His skills as an actor were back on display when he played President Andrew Jackson in the 2015 mini-series Texas Rising. The mini-series won a Bronze Wrangler Western Heritage Award for Best Television Drama.
Kristoferson’s screen performing career came to a close with a pair of movies. A 2016 western, Traded, and the 2017 flm Hickok. Three years later, Kris
performed his fnal concert in Fort Pierce, Florida on February 5, 2020. He retired from performing after the event.
Kris Kristoferson died at his home in Hano, Hawaii of an undisclosed cause on September 28, 2024. He was eighty-eight years old. His long career and numerous awards cemented hi, as one of the greatest songwriters, singers, and actors of our time.
Terry Alexander and his wife, Phyllis, live on a small farm near Porum, Oklahoma. They have three children, thirteen grandchildren, and four great grandchildren. If you see him at a conference, though, don’t let him convince you to take part in one of his trivia games—he’ll stump you every time.
BEASTS BEASTS
SHE WAS SO OLD
SHE WAS SO OLD
SHE COULD CALL BACK THE DAYS
SHE COULD CALL BACK THE DAYS
WHEN RUMBLING TRAINS WOULD CROSS THE LAND,
WHEN SHE WOULD SEE FROM HER CAR
WHEN RUMBLING TRAINS WOULD CROSS THE LAND, WHEN SHE WOULD SEE FROM HER CAR THE BROWN BLACK BEASTS
THE BROWN BLACK BEASTS
PUMMELING THE GROUND
PUMMELING THE GROUND
MATCHING THE THUNDER OF THE METAL BEAST BENEATH HER SEAT.
MATCHING THE THUNDER OF THE METAL BEAST BENEATH HER SEAT.
SHE SAW THEM FALL TOO,
SHE SAW THEM FALL TOO,
SILEN T LEAD FROM INVISIBLE RIFLES
SILEN T LEAD FROM INVISIBLE RIFLES
THUMPING IN TO HEAVING HIDES,
THUMPING IN TO HEAVING HIDES,
FINAL SNORTS OF LIFE RIPPLING THE GOLDEN GRASS.
FINAL SNORTS OF LIFE RIPPLING THE GOLDEN GRASS.
SHE SNUGGLED IN TO THE THICK BLACK COAT
SHE SNUGGLED IN TO THE THICK BLACK COAT
THAT WARMED HER WHILE HER FIRES WANED,
THAT WARMED HER WHILE HER FIRES WANED,
REMEMBERING HOW THE BEASTS DRIED TO WHITE, BON Y EXCLAMATION POIN TS GLIN TING IN THE NIGHT.
REMEMBERING HOW THE BEASTS DRIED TO WHITE, BON Y EXCLAMATION POIN TS GLIN TING IN THE NIGHT.
GERRY S. WOJTOWICZ
MARIKA PSALIDAS TRICK SHOOTER
A SHORT STORY
“It’s us and the buzzards, Jack. Only creatures fool enough to go wheelin’ about in this infernal noonday.”
The boy made no contrary remark, instead continuing to count boundary stones in earnest silence, as was his manner. Bill MacNair shifted his reins to one hand, beat the sand from his hat, and carried on jawing undeterred, as was his.
“I’ll tell you, they’ve got the right idea down south with their siestas. Take the shade, pour a drink, and kick up your boots until the dust quits boiling. Damn heat’s ft for naught but gambling and gunplay. Say, I’ll bet you the frst hundred dollars from my pocket you can’t shoot the tuna of that prickly pear yonder.”
Jack perked up at a chance for target practice but balked at the wager. “I don’t believe you’ve got a hundred dollars in the world, Mister MacNair, and if you did I wouldn’t take it.”
“Only joking, lad.”
Despite Bill’s long-standing eforts, the kid couldn’t tell a proper jest from a posthole. God only knew he’d dug enough of those in his thirteen years. And he’d roped colts, branded cattle, strung wire, split wood, drawn water, pitched hay, and done whatever else his taskmaster father bid him. That was what trouble came of working a boy twice as hard as a man Bill thought—it weakened his natural knack for mischief.
“You ought to learn to have a lark once in a while. On a summer like this, at your age, I’d be dallying by the docks or burglarizing my ma’s fowerbed to go court some lass. My da hardly ever got a full day’s labor out of me.”
It was without intention, but he saw by a sudden
tightness in the boy’s shoulders that he’d struck a glancing blow. Bill fxed his hat on his brow. “Come on, give ’er a try,” he said. “This morn’s shy of excitement.”
Jack drew his rife from his saddle sling. It was a sixteen-shot Henry. The brass receiver was scufed from second or third hand use but polished nearly back to glory. He took aim at the cactus from forty yards—steadied, squinted, fred. The pear fruit splattered into sweet scarlet pulp.
“Dead on,” Bill said approvingly.
Jack laid the gun across his lap. “Hey, ain’t nothing special.”
“I hope you’ll be sporting and wait until my next payday to collect. Now, what’s your count on those markers? Threescore and ten since the station?”
“Yessir.”
“Then our job is through and with time enough to beat the dinner bell. Boss’ll be glad to know he’s still richer than Solomon.”
Bill’s employer was a fint-fsted old stockman named Reuben Carrock, although few presumed to address him as anything other than Boss. Bill had cowboyed for him since before Jack was born and reckoned he’d stick with his outft until age or afiction put one of them underground. Even though he signed his checks like every pen stroke slit his veins, Carrock paid steady wages for hard work—and hard work abounded in the company of a man who owned a hundred thousand acres of ranchland north of the Río Grande and enough cattle and horses to settle it snugly.
He also owned Jack. Bill recalled the evening over a decade ago when he’d been braiding rope by
the main gate and witnessed the arrival of a young señorita, barefooted and careworn, carrying a child of three she claimed was Carrock’s son. At frst, the boss refused to entertain such an idea, but after a heated discussion to which Bill was not privy there evidently arose some begrudging acknowledgement of the boy’s parentage, and Carrock turned the woman away with a few pesos for her pains and took the boy in. His mother had christened him Juan Jacinto, which wouldn’t do, so Jack he became.
Little Jack was a lively youngster with a norteño accent in his blossoming baby talk that Carrock thoroughly whupped out of him until even the Mexican hands said he sounded like a gringo, although the man begrudged him sufcient Spanish for horse-trading. Ten subsequent years of toil on the ranch served to produce a fne Western cowpoke but not much of a boy.
Bill shrugged of his reverie as he lingered at the top of the ridge watching a fever-shimmer rise from the ivory fatlands and blur into the unclouded blue above. The trail behind them was a vast range of cracked pale earth–the terrain broken only by tangled saltgrass and exclamations of white yucca. Below, the
bluf wound around the Río far receding into summer shallows. Its banks were lined with a shock of vivid verdure where deep-rooted mesquite and tamarisk stretched their branches over the water.
Bill whistled. “Some sight, eh?”
Jack drew his pinto in a tidy turnabout alongside the older man and peered over the clif. “It looks like a painting from up here.”
“Bet you could shoot a rattler’s eye on the far riverbank.”
“That’d be too easy.”
“Too easy, ha! I’ll be damned if I don’t make you prove up to that cockalorum. Show me a shot with mettle then.”
“What do I win?”
“Your honor as a man. I’d stake a dime, but lady luck didn’t fancy me in the deal Friday last.”
Jack surveyed the landscape before him. He was quiet for a long span, motionless and unblinking save for the slow swivel of his neck like a tawny owl. His hair futtered in the wind-whirled dust. A sudden wildness seemed to overtake him, and he dismounted with his rife in hand. “All right. X marks the spot.”
At frst, Bill couldn’t read his meaning. He combed the endless expanse of earth searching for a trailhead or a broken tree limb. When his far-fung glance fnally landed upon the small pueblo of La Junta de los Ríos beyond the water. In a fash, he spied Jack’s target—a wooden cross atop the whitewashed mission in the center of town.
Bill chuckled uneasily. It was an uncharacteristically impious act from the youth, who, despite his lack of spiritual upbringing—the boss didn’t believe in a day of rest on Sundays, and Mondays through Saturdays were out of the question—always seemed to have a sort of vague reverence about him. Still, he assured himself, nothing amiss would come of it. The distance was impossible.
“You’ll catch hell from the sisters if you interrupt midday Mass,” Bill said.
Jack carefully loaded another cartridge.
“Come now, that’s a mile if it’s an inch.”
The boy settled the stock against his shoulder.
“You won’t even make it past the arroyo.”
He aimed down the sights.
“Listen, son—”
Jack fred. The bullet soared skyward, a brilliant copper arc swiftly vanishing into azure. For nearly half a minute, he remained frozen in a steely stare as the report echoed across the plateau, and then without warning he lowered his weapon, chagrined.
Bill relaxed the unconscious tension in his reins. “What’s turned your head pulling such a stunt?”
“I just thought…” Jack absently ran a hand over the lever. “If I made a shot like that, I bet even Pa’d be proud.”
“If you made that shot, you’d be Doc Holliday, Bill Hickok, and Robin of Sherwood all rolled into one. Not a soul alive could do it. No use fretting. How about you saddle up and let’s head back?”
“But I didn’t see where it landed.”
“Hey?”
“I might’ve hit my mark. It’s downhill, a clear day, and with a leading wind… there’s a chance, isn’t there?”
Bill had seen the bullet fy, and he admitted the angle of it held some promise. Still, even if a Henry could shoot that far, the odds against the target were fantastical. It was a chance in ten thousand. Less than that.
“You’ve better sense than this, lad. Why not give it up?”
“It’s my honor as a man. You said so yourself.”
“Don’t heed me. You’re just a child yet.”
Jack looked stricken, but there was a fare of tenacity behind his dismay. “Please—I’ve got to know.”
Bill, for all his good humor, wasn’t much inclined to sentiment, but the boy’s grave countenance and the blaze of the open country stirred his ever-burning bigheartedness. He turned the matter over in his mind. It would take an hour or more to descend the steep ridge to La Junta—twice that to make the climb again. They could pass through town, swing ’round the mission, see that there was nothing to see, and head back. What was the harm? Anyway, he’d be a damned dissembler if he refused the kid now after all his talk of free and easy living.
Bill mopped the back of his neck with his kerchief. “I suppose I could visit old Manuelo about that saddle he’s fxing up. Maybe stop by the cantina for a spell—no better aguardiente south of the border. Mind you, if we go, you’ll have to help me spin some story to your da. There’s a roundup on the overland paddock this eve, and he won’t abide a couple of latecomers.”
With a grin, Bill clucked his grulla into a trot. Jack watched him depart then hurriedly mounted and rode up beside him in disbelief. “You mean it? We’re going?”
“Can’t have you getting too smug, can I? Got to set the facts straight.”
“Thank you! Thank you, Mister MacNair, I know it’s a long way. It’s real good of you—”
“A long way, aye, and even longer if you don’t hush that prattle. Just keep me company.”
The two of them drifted into idle discourse as they followed the ridgeline southwest. Bill was concluding a lengthy anecdote about a pay dispute with a shipyard foreman back in Edinburgh that turned into a punch-up—’twas masculine valor what carried the day, aided by no small dose of whiskey—when the ground before him struck a slight pitch and the cairn that marked the clifside path rose into view. He faltered and swallowed hard at the sight of earth crumbling into air.
Bill was no friend to verticalities. Long gone were his boyhood days of awakening to the gold-dipped glory of a sunrise on the highland crags, and in their stead was a stretch of decades spent comfortably below sea level. As he and the boy slowed to meet the
decline, Bill swayed toward the rockwall beginning to regret his reckless benevolence.
In an attempt to distract himself from his own labored breathing, Bill glanced over at Jack who had been sighing intermittently for the past quarter-hour.
“What’s got you so lonesome?”
“Nothing. Just thinking.”
“Thinking on what?”
Jack hesitated. “Marybeth Connor.”
“That little moppet from town?”
“We got to talking during the last cattle auction. About work and such. Mostly, she cooks and launders at the boardinghouse, but Sunday’s she plays piano for the church choir—wants to get good enough to go to the women’s conservatory up in Belton.”
“Her da’s on the railway gang, you know. Family hasn’t got a penny.”
“I don’t care about that.”
“Good lad.” Bill leaned back in the saddle. “Talking’s all you got to doing I take it.”
The boy turned half around, and Bill spied a fush in his face not from the heat. “Well, we don’t know each other much yet, but I asked if she’d like to go on a walk by the river sometime.”
“So the young gentleman’s got himself a sweetheart. I’ll give you a wise word on that score—sweetness is all well and good for sport, understand, but when you’re of a mind to wed, don’t settle down with some doe-eyed dove. Best thing to do is fnd yourself a quarrelsome woman.”
“Sir?”
“A man’s like a pocket watch. He’s got to be wound up to keep ticking. Take my dear departed Moira. Together thirty years and she gave me hell every day and night. God rest her soul. I’ll never love another so well.”
Bill smiled fondly, though the boy seemed unconvinced. “Ah, you’ll learn sure enough. And how’d your Marybeth answer?”
“She told me, if I took a bath and combed my hair next time I came around she’d be pleased to see me.”
“She’s got spirit then.”
After a while, they rounded the switchback. The sheer rock face angled inward, and the upper track that held two riders abreast swerved into a trail below that forced them into single fle. Jack, on the nimbler steed, and by far the more eager party, led the way, and with the shift in position, their conversation languished before lapsing entirely. They rode along to the hollow howl of wind against limestone.
Jack seemed to slow his gait without intention and brushed a hand along the rippling layers of the clifside—rose upon russet upon amber. “Pa wants a drift fence built across the pass to Coahuila,” he said at last. His voice sailed above the sound of the river, whose distant drone from the overlook had now livened into a rumble as they neared the shores. “He says we let the herd wander too far south last winter.”
“If that man could coop steers like hens, he’d do it.” Bill listened to the steady rhythm of hoofbeats on gravel. “You ever think to cut and run?”
“When I’m grown?”
“Anytime.”
“Sure. But it don’t matter. All I’ve got is here.”
“That’s folly if ever I’ve heard it. Come on, where would you go?”
“Maybe north, maybe west. Maybe east.”
“Devil take the east. Nothing there for a man but fshing and factory smoke. Whatever the papers say, there’s a frontier yet, and it’s the place for any such soul with grit.” He risked a glance to the horizon. “Don’t count yourself beholden, not to home, nor kin, nor anyone. Hundred thousand acres isn’t much at
all. It’s a wide world.”
“Yessir,” Jack replied, but if he spoke with any faith, it was lost to the lonely breeze.
The path wound steadily down to the base of the bluf. When they fnally reached level ground, it was all Bill could do not to fall to his knees and kiss it. He and Jack traversed the riverbank to wade through a waist-high crossing and water their animals on the other side, tarrying a moment by a cluster of coyote willow to brush the lather from their horses’ fanks. They mounted again refreshed. The road to town was broad and rambling, but beast and rider alike sensed it as the fnal stretch of their journey and kept a sprightly tempo. As they passed a worn signpost at the crest of the hill, the dizzying dread that had gripped Bill earlier dropped away acre by acre across the smooth swell of the sandy steppe. The view fowed into the distant surge of an indigo-heathered mesa where heaven met homeland in the faraway.
“What about you? Where would you go?”
The question caught Bill unawares, but Jack carried an alert and expectant air.
“Well,” Bill mused, recovering himself, “I’ve just about put all my goin’ behind me.”
“You talk all the time about everywhere you’ve been and seen.”
“That’s talk. I’ve played the wild rover long enough and lived to bear the tales and scars. Now, I’ve pitched camp. No shame in it. Ranching’s a steady trade, and I don’t mind the rough work. Not good for much else.”
“That ain’t so. I bet you could do whatever you like. You’ve taught me lots.”
“Nothing you wouldn’t have taught yourself by and by and with fewer mistakes to your name. But you don’t know yet how life wears on a body. Take your cheer in that. Being young’s a grand thing—all your best years, you can look ’em square in the face and knock ’em down, one by one.” Bill slowly stretched out the ache in his wrists. “You know, you’re getting of an age to make these rides on your own. Ought to hang around the other hands more, the vaqueros and those new boys from San Angelo. They’re plenty sharp. Better company than this old fool.”
Jack sat up straight in the saddle. In stillness and shadow, he had his father’s thin angles, his low-roving gaze, but when he rode beneath a fair sky, he showed the fullness of his mother in him. His sun-blooded face set with bright black eyes that could blaze a trail through the plains quicker than daylight. He now turned them upon Bill. His voice and gaze unwavering.
“There’s nobody I’d rather have along. Nobody in the world.”
Bill let his reins slacken. He pulled down his hat before the dust stung him blind. “Best you quit that talk, lad. You’ll make a bleeding heart of me.”
The village was in sight. Bill wanted to forge onward, to leave the moment behind, but instead he found himself silently chasing after his own nerve. The pursuit lasted half a minute, and when he fnally caught his quarry he held it fast.
“Don’t believe I’ve ever told you,” he said. “Maybe it’s no place of mine, but I hope you know I’m proud.”
“You will be once we get to town. Just you wait.”
La Junta de los Ríos was tranquil when they rode
in. It’s inhabitants stayed sensibly sheltered against the withering heat of the early afternoon. As Bill and Jack crossed the lane to the town center, all was still save for a sarape swaying on a second-story clothesline and a lone mongrel dog slumbering beneath a storefront porch dreamily wagging away fies.
The mission’s silhouette cast a spectral shimmer over the road. Jack tied his horse to the hitching-post, and Bill followed. Together they squinted up at the cross.
“Hard to tell with the glare,” the boy said.
“A bullet’s tough to miss.”
“See! Up in the crux.”
“That’s just a nail. It’s got to be.”
“Too big for a nail, ain’t it?”
“You’re daft.”
“There’s something stuck in the wood, but it’s too far to make out from down here. If we got a closer look….”
The boy and the man regarded one another.
“A closer look,” Bill sighed.
Jack started rolling up his sleeves. “I’ll go, sir. I know you’re sca—tired.”
Bill glowered at him. “Oh, no, you don’t. You’re just trying to save my pride. I set the wager, and I ought to be the judge of it. I’ll get up there and see with my own two eyes, or my name isn’t William MacNair.” He charged ahead to the lower wall and clambered atop the sloping cobblestones, a fury with conquering fervor. If the kid thought he was half mad, he was half right.
His valiant endeavor was going gloriously until the grade converged with the tall stucco slab of the mission’s front face. Twenty feet straight up. Hopeless. The nearer
inlaid column beside the entry arch was his salvation if he could manage to scale it. Bill wiped his palms on his shirttail and sought a handhold along the pillar’s slender grooves, but by the time he found a chink he could use to haul himself partly up, they were slick with sweat again. He froze, clinging fercely to the post.
“Please, you don’t have to,” he heard the boy call from beneath. “Let’s just go back.”
“Too late for that,” Bill panted. He’d given his word, and at least no one else was around to see him carry out the deed.
He groped about for the fatstone cap above his head. With a grunt, he hitched an arm over the platform feeling the weight and wear of his years all too keenly. He’d nearly dragged himself up to shoulder-height when his boot slipped on a loose corner of the column, and he dropped with a lurch, tensing to catch himself on a dip in the rock just in time. The jolt knocked of his hat and sent it pinwheeling onto the street below.
“Be careful!” urged Jack.
“Aye, lad, I’d forgotten.” He pushed against the foothold and struggled to hoist himself onto the narrow ledge where he swung a leg over the upper parapet and rested prone on the brickwork—desperate to settle the thunder in his blood. A few feet above him was a gap in the wall for the hanging church bell—just spacious enough to use as a fnal step to the eaves. Climbing it by inches was an agony he couldn’t endure, but with a burst of momentum, he could surmount it and end his torture in the span of a heartbeat.
Bill maneuvered into a crouch. Tension twitched through his muscles. Drawing a bated breath he leapt to his full height, and his spirit soared with triumph when he grabbed the edge of the roof and began to pull.
The tile snapped beneath his hold.
Panic drenched him as he lost his footing. He kicked helplessly and struck swinging iron, and the deafening clangor that resounded nearly rattled him out of his skin. Bill scrabbled for a frm grip, but he couldn’t fnd a purchase on the clay, slipping rapidly downward with each desperate spasm of motion.
He heard the boy cry out in panic, and Bill knew this was it, the end of him, and a sorry one at that, Try as he might to prepare himself, every prayer he’d ever known fed from his mind, but with one last frenzied grasp he shot up an arm and hooked his fngers around the keystone at the very pinnacle of the mission, and then, sweet mercy of Heaven, he found a fnal fare of strength to claw upward and hurtle over the ledge.
The terra cotta cracked beneath him as he landed. Bill lay fat on his back against the roof. His chest heaved like a storm-tossed ship. Wrenching away with a ragged breath, he rolled onto his hands and knees and crawled atop the pedestal of the cross, reaching up to inspect a dark dent in the middle of the planks. When his vision fnally adjusted to the brightness, he stared in wonderment.
Surely it was sunstroke. Delusion.
A trick of the light.
Jack had done it.
There the shot was, dead in the crossbeam, a warped leaden lump splitting the sun-blistered paint and driving an inch deep into the piñon.
“God Almighty.”
With the bell still echoing through the streets, a throng of townsfolk had begun ambling out of shops and shacks and villas to investigate the commotion. They gathered around the mission. Their murmured attentions turned to the madman overhead.
“¿Está borracho?” one woman inquired of her neighbor supposing he was drunk.
“El pobre tonto se romperá el cuello.”
Jack smiled at the woman who worried the poor fool would break his neck.“Santa María, Madre de Dios….”
Whatever they’re saying, let them talk, Bill thought. They’d soon have plenty to discuss. He leaned over the edge of the rooftop and fxed his sights on Jack, who was waiting far below. “Jackie boy,” he declared, “you can tell ’em—tell all of ’em that they’re a witness to the greatest damned sharpshooting trick of the century!”
He expected jubilation at the news, but instead the youth was curiously composed. Jack glanced around at the inquisitive crowd. Stepping forward into the shade, he looked up at Bill once more, his manner light and easy.
“Come on down, Mister MacNair. I didn’t hit a thing. That bullet’s been there ffty years. Way back from when Mexico and the States were quarreling over who owned Texas. The padre showed me last time we rode through town. Thought I’d have a little fun keeping that fact to myself.”
He picked up Bill’s hat and slapped it across his knee. “I fooled you good!”
Bill had scarcely known the boy to so much as crack a smile, but now his eyes lit up with the spark of a roguish grin, and when laughter fnally overtook him, it broke like the dawn. {
THE AUTHOR
Marika Psalidas spent most of her youth immersed in a book or a creek, a lifestyle she aims to continue throughout adulthood. She was born just shy of hurricane country in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and over the course of various moves came to appreciate the atmospheric variety of Kansas twisters, Iowa snowstorms, and Texas heatwaves, the latter of which sparked her deep and abiding love for Western literature, flms, and music. Marika attended the University of Southern California and earned a degree in computer science, which she employs in her career as an audio engineer. Her current residence is in Sioux City, Iowa, where she is an active member of the Tri-State Writers group. In between working and writing a Western novel, she enjoys reading, campfre cooking, tending the garden, biking along riverside trails, and practicing harmonica. Although her home is in the heartlands, her heart belongs to the South.
A MAN OF TWO WORLDS
A respected Apache warrior and cousin of Geronimo, Jason Betzinez defed stereotypes and survived exile, war, and cultural upheaval to leave a powerful, frsthand legacy.
STORY BY
MICHAEL NORMAN
In 1958, ninety-eight-year-old Jason Betzinez, appeared on a nationally syndicated television show called I’ve Got a Secret. This particular episode focused on guests who were related to someone famous. Three of the four panelists failed to guess his mysterious relative. The fourth panelist, however, went on to correctly guess Betzinez’s famous family member.
Betzinez was a Chiricahua Apache born into the Bedonkohe band in 1860. He was the last surviving member of Geronimo’s Chiricahua fighters who surrendered to General Nelson Miles in September 1886, bringing about an end to the Apache Wars. Not only was Betzinez a member of that famous group, he was also a member of Geronimo’s family, a second cousin.
A year later, Betzinez met with a book publisher who agreed to publish his memoir. The book was published in 1959, just a few months before he died in a car accident at the age of one-hundred. The title of his memoir was I Fought with Geronimo.
The Early Years
Jason Betzinez born on July 4, 1860, in southeast New Mexico Territory, experienced a difcult childhood.. His father was killed when he was twelve, and his mother was captured twice by the Mexican Army and sold into slavery. Both times, however, she escaped and returned to Jason and her extended family.
Stability and safety hardly characterized Jason’s adolescent years. He and his family spent much of his youth moving from place to place, always under the threat of attack by one enemy or another. Life, even during peaceful times, required constant vigilance and the ability to pack and move quickly, even if they were camped in a beautiful place where there was ample water and plentiful game to feed hungry people. The Apache never lost sight of the fact that they were at war, not with one nation, but two, Mexico and the U.S. In I Fought with Geronimo, referring to the Apache propensity to be at war, Betzinez said, “In my time, the Apache had not yet reached the same degree of civilization as the white man…. We were almost con-
tinually fghting our enemies, and if none such were available, we fought among ourselves.”
On the Warpath with Geronimo
Because warriors were difcult to replace, Apache leaders carefully planned and executed raids, always with the goal of minimizing casualties. Two key factors in planning raids were incorporating the element of surprise and outnumbering the enemy. Rarely would an Apache war party charge headlong into a well-armed enemy that outnumbered them. The number of casualties in such an attack would have been unacceptable.
Particularly while on the warpath, Betzinez argued that petty jealousy among chiefs and bands frequently led to internal confict and hard feelings. He noted that the Apache were never able to form a strong, united confederation against their enemies because of jealousy and selfshness among the chiefs and subchiefs. Two Apache chiefs, though not necessarily the
best known, stood out to Betzinez as the best Apache leaders. They were Juh and Victorio. He praised Juh and Victorio, not only because they were held in such high regard by their people, but because both were highly capable feld generals and brilliant guerilla warfare strategists.
Throughout his memoir, Betzinez lamented the harm alcohol caused the Apache during both war and peace time. He observed, “The Apache never drinks in moderation. He keeps at it until the supply is exhausted or he is unconscious.” Often, the Apache were welcomed as friends by Mexican villagers, plied with alcohol until they were heavily intoxicated, and then slaughtered by their hosts. These “traps” happened repeatedly with alcohol always used as bait. These incidents contributed mightily toward the intense hatred the Apache felt toward the Mexican people, and they were always followed by Apache revenge raids.
The path to Apache warriorhood was arduous. All young men were required to pass a vigorous period of apprenticeship as they attempted to achieve full warrior status. From their father, or an extended family member, young boys learned how to use weapons, become physically ft, as well as how to track and hunt. Since the Apache often fought on foot, the young were required to run long distances. Betzinez was proud of his speed and endurance. This was not to say that the Apache wasn’t profcient on horseback. Some observers considered them second only to the Comanche as skilled, mounted cavalry.
As a young apprentice warrior, Betzinez acknowledged that he felt great fear and anxiety while on his early raids. He said, “I wasn’t sure that I was going to enjoy being on the warpath.”
While on raids, apprentice warriors performed duties such as guarding the camp, holding horses short distances from the fghting, cooking camp meals, and driving stolen livestock from raids back to the main Apache camp. Betzinez performed all these duties and more while raiding with Geronimo. However, nothing in his memoir provided any corroboration that he ever advanced to the status of a full-fedged warrior. By the time Geronimo surrendered for the fnal time, Betzinez would have been nearly twenty-six years of age, more than sufcient time to have completed apprenticeship training.
After a prolonged period of raiding on both sides of the border, in 1884, Geronimo surrendered and
A young Jason Betzinez probably taken while he was at Carlisle Indian School.
returned temporarily to the reservation at San Carlos. In 1885, Geronimo and a small band of followers again fed the reservation and traveled south into Mexico.
Betzinez and his mother were initially a part of that group. However, Betzinez soon became disillusioned with Geronimo in what was to be his cousin’s last fight. So, he and his mother returned to San Carlos. Geronimo surrendered for the last time in southern Arizona in September 1886.
Surrender and Confdant
After Geronimo’s celebrated surrender, approximately 550 men, women, and children were exiled to Florida as prisoners of war, Betzinez and his mother among them. Within a year, a visit from Captain Richard Pratt, Superintendent of the Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, would dramatically change Betzinez’s life. Pratt was determined to recruit a group of the Florida Apache prisoners to attend the Carlisle School.
During that initial meeting with the Apache young
people, Pratt asked for volunteers. Not surprisingly, no one volunteered. Pratt, however, unwilling to take no for an answer, eventually selected sixty-two boys and girls and thirteen young men, including Betzinez, to attend Carlisle.
Like the other conscripts, Betzinez was frightened about attending the school. The move required forced family separation to a place he’d never been. Moreover, Betzinez had never attended any school and didn’t know a word of English. He also believed that, at twenty-seven years of age, he was too old to become a school boy.
Upon arrival at the school, boys and girls were assigned to diferent dormitories. Betzinez stated that new students received a bath, haircut, and new clothing (uniforms). The students were not allowed to sing any Indian songs, nor were they permitted to speak their own native language unless they couldn’t speak English. The use of profanity was forbidden, as was the use of tobacco. Strict rules of conduct applied, and violators could receive a variety of diferent pun-
Geronimo and some of his followers taken during their imprisonment at Fort Pickens, Florida.
ishments. The atmosphere at Carlisle seemed much the same as that of any military school.
During his years at Carlisle, Betzinez developed a profound appreciation and respect for Pratt. Pratt helped to instill in him a sense of confdence and a strong work ethic. He eventually came to believe that hard work was the key to building a new life for himself despite all the sufering he and his people had experienced from their Anglo captors.
During his Carlisle years, Betzinez underwent a conversion to Christianity. He noted, “The most powerful infuence of my life at this or any other time was my introduction to the teachings of Christianity. This infuence became stronger and stronger as I came to understand English better. It changed my whole life.”
Smoke Signals & Hollywood Nonsense
Betzinez disapproved of Hollywood’s role in promoting stereotypes about the Apache, such as the use of smoke signals. Hollywood’s portrayal of smoke signals suggested they were used to communicate entire conversations. Betzinez called that complete nonsense. He clarifed: “The Apache used smoke on mountaintops mainly as signals of distress. The smoke meant there is some kind of trouble here. Come and investigate.”
Additional stereotypes propagated by Hollywood included the use of peace pipes and bows and arrows, as well as the practice of scalping one’s enemies. The
use of peace pipes was not a practice adopted by the Apache people. Further, Hollywood exaggerated the use of the bow-and-arrow as a weapon. By the time he had become a young man, the use of the bow and arrow had signifcantly declined. The Apache relied primarily on the use of rifes and handguns. Finally, regarding the practice of scalping, Betzinez stated, “The Apache did not practice the custom of scalping a fallen enemy. There may have been exceptions to this but they were very, very rare. Concerning Geronimo, I never knew him to bring in a scalp. Much nonsense has been written about this.”
Life & Legacy After Emancipation
After his departure from the Carlisle School, Betzinez agreed to return to Fort Sill, arriving in January 1900. He had become a skilled blacksmith and planned to continue his career at Fort Sill. He enlisted in the U.S. Army, and over the next 14 years, developed a thriving blacksmith business. Betzinez provided free blacksmith services for all the Fort Sill Apache. Because his skills were in high demand, it didn’t take long for him to expand his services to paying white customers.
Three overriding themes would guide the remainder of Jason Betzinez’s life after his years at the Carlisle School. The frst was his conversion to Christianity. The Carlisle School heavily infuenced the spiritual part of his life. The teachings of the Christian missionaries
Apache Indian Mission at Ft Sill, Oklahoma. Betzinez arrived here from Carlisle in 1900 and enlisted in the Army.
spoke to him in ways his Apache religious beliefs did not. Betzinez’s Christian beliefs would soon test his relations with his own people. By 1899-1900, the work of the missionaries had successfully resulted in the conversion of many of the Fort Sill Apache to Christianity. A church had been built, and regular attendance at Sunday services had grown slowly, but steadily.
Upon arrival at Fort Sill in 1900, Betzinez discovered a religious practice brought by an Apache medicine man taking root among his people, while, at the same time, undermining the work of the Christian missionaries. The practice was called the medicine dance, and it was designed to draw the Apache away from Christianity and return them to the “old ways.”
The medicine man convinced many Apache that the white man’s religion only worked for whites. Part of the medicine man’s attraction was that he claimed to have healing powers capable of curing various diseases. This appealed to the Apache people because of the terrible death toll taken by tuberculosis during their captivity.
With Sunday Christian church services in serious decline, Betzinez felt compelled to act. He pleaded repeatedly to the Fort Sill military commander, who eventually imposed new rules banning tribal gambling and the medicine dance during the cold winter months. The military commander asked Betzinez to
distribute and explain the new rules to the various small villages scattered around Fort Sill. Betzinez did what he was asked to do, despite having misgivings. He understood the paradox: refuse to follow the Christian path and alienate the missionaries or refuse to support the tribal medicine man and the medicine dance and feel the anger and resentment of his own people. Betzinez chose the Christian path.
In 1907, Betzinez met the woman who would eventually become his wife, Anna Heersma, a missionary from the Dutch Reformed Church who lived at Fort Sill and worked with the Apache people. They eventually married and remained together for the rest of their lives.
The second theme that would guide Betzinez in his later years was his strong belief in the “Protestant work ethic.” He believed the key to improving one’s lot in life was the willingness to get up each day and work hard. That’s what he did, and that’s what he expected of others. In his lifetime, he’d worked in a steel mill, farmed, and built his own blacksmith business. If he could do it, he believed other Apache could as well.
The third theme that guided Betzinez’s life was his strong opposition to the reservation system. He likened it to a welfare system that reinforced idleness and poor work habits. He believed the system would prevent the Apache people from gaining self-suf-
Native American students at the Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Geronimo and other Chiricahua prisoners resting at a water stop on the way to Ft Pickens, near Pensacola, Florida, in 1886. Naiche and Geronimo are 2d and 3d from the right in the front row.
ciency, and that independence would occur only as the result of employment and hard work.
After their prisoner of war status was removed in 1913, the Apache were given the choice to remain at Fort Sill or join the Mescalero Apache tribe in southeastern New Mexico. Betzinez disapproved of the Mescalero reservation and lobbied aggressively for the Fort Sill Apache to remain in Oklahoma. Some did remain at Fort Sill while others relocated to New Mexico.
As for Betzinez, in 1914, he chose to continue his life of independence of the Fort Sill reservation. He built his own home a short distance away— a home that he and his spouse, Anna, would live in for the remainder of their lives.
The couple both died in 1960, she on May 1, and he on November 1. They were buried together at the Beef Creek Apache cemetery in a grave adjacent to Geronimo. Betzinez remained forever proud of his Apache heritage.
In a ftting legacy to the life of Jason Betzinez, W.S. Nye wrote in the Forward to his memoir, “He braved the enmity of his own people to advocate a course of action contrary to their wishes, where he saw they were ruining themselves. He sought and gained the assistance of high U.S. ofcials to promote the welfare of the tribe.”
Author’s Note
The cultural genocide imposed on indigenous peoples in the Americas during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however well intended, was both odious and repugnant—a blight on our history. That said, if one were to choose a poster child for the forced assimilation of indigenous peoples, Jason Betzinez would be a perfect candidate. I don’t say this as a criticism of Betzinez–far from it. He rebuilt his life under the most difcult and trying circumstances.
Michael Norman is the author of fve murder mysteries, three of which are traditional stories, and two that are contemporary Western novels set in the desert of Southern Utah. His debut novel, The Commission, received a starred review and was named by Publisher’s Weekly as one of its best 100 books of 2007. His other traditional novels include, Silent Witness and Slow Burn. Michael’s contemporary Western novels have been declared by some as reminiscent of the late Tony Hillerman’s southwestern mysteries. These titles include, On Deadly Ground and Skeleton Picnic. Recently, Michael has written seven Western short stories, the frst two of which won Copper and Gold medals from the Will Rogers Medallion organization. The award winners included, “A Death of Crows” and “Lozen’s War.” “A Death of Crows” also was declared the winner of the frst and now annual Longhorn Prize from Saddlebag Dispatches magazine for best western short story of 2023. Michael currently resides in Mexico with his wife, Diane, and their pit bull, Kady.
