She thought the old man had lost his mind along with his ample hard-on as he climbed off her naked ass. He had recognized the brandy-wine birthmark that resembled a butterfly behind her left ear from 19-years before, the day he used his body to shield her from the ensuing gunfire that had killed her mother.
She was only three then and had no memory of her fucking rescuer now.
For the purpose of this tale, one man shall be called Jones and the other Smith. The two are neighbors, sharing the same property line and yet are anything but neighborly with one another.
For nearly three decades the pair have been feuding over boundary-lines, accusing the other of cutting down trees, stealing the lumber; usurping water from the other; and hunting the wild game that the other claimed belonged to them. And for years, the nearby communities expected to hear at anytime that they had finally shot it out with one or both killed in the melee.
Elk season had begun. It was still dark when word reached the other man’s encampment that the other was trespassing.
A general alarm sounded, with both Smith and Jones unknowingly acting in unison. Each man set out groups of men to scout the area and return with information, that being of the location and the number in each party.
All day, men wandered the forested grounds, the rocky ledges and crags as well as the lower scrub brush with its tall grasses in search of the other’s hunting party. Finally, and with no activity found, men from each camp returned with their lack-luster report.
Jones decided to take care of the problem himself. “I should have done this years ago,” he told himself as he chambered a round in the rifle.
Meanwhile, Smith had come to the same ugly conclusion. “I will hunt him down and shoot him like the mad-dog that he is,” he declared as he shouldered his rifle and walked out of camp.
Soon darkness befell the landscape and to make matters worse, a raging storm had built itself in along the mountains, spreading its high winds into the valleys and woods below. The weather did not dampen the hatred the men felt for one another.
Smith stood still, having heard the cracking sound of a twig breaking under foot. He pressed himself next to a thick, towering tree, certain his quarry was on the other side of it.
Jones was quicker, he stood with rifle at the ready, pressed tight against his shoulder waiting for Smith to spring upon him. Then it happened as both men moved to murder the other, a gale force wind swept over the forest, shattering trees throughout, including the one the pair stood next too.
In the ensuing moments of terror and pain, both men found themselves trapped beneath the tree, broken and sharp pieces of branch and the massive trunk, pinning arms, legs and bodies under its massive size. Broken, bleeding and angry, both men struggled to find the better advantage before slowly coming to the conclusion that he was hopelessly held tight to the earth.
For hours, they called one another names, promising that each would dispatch the other once his men came looking for and found them. It proved to be exhausting work and eventually the pair settled down and began conversing, initially about how they might effect an escape from their present situation, then to the other subject at hand.
“So, do you recall why we started fighting?” was that general topic. Neither man could remember what had begun the feud, but soon they were talking of their childhood and how they had been friend’s at one time, and eventually the silliness of their ongoing battles.
“Let’s put this stupidity to rest,” the two trapped and one time mortal enemies concluded, each vowing to help the other first, when their men came to the rescue.
Both laughed at their situation, trapped beneath a tree neither could move. “I can’t wait to see those town folks faces to see us sitting at the same diner having breakfast on some fine morning,” one said.
“And soon, too,” spoke the other. They laughed some more until the pain was to much to take.
Then they lay there in the dark, as the storm died down, listening. “I hear something. I think it’s our salvation!”
The two men cried, “Over here,” again and again in a single chorus.
“They’re close, I can hear them clearly, but I can’t see them.”
Then they froze, hearts sinking as they each looked at the other realizing, “WOLF!”
A Paiute friend called me up, wanting to show me a petroglyph that he found, but didn’t recognize. After seeing it, I must admit that I’ve never seen such an image before.
Despite having a camera-phone and a regular camera between us, neither one would work. Both were drained of their battery power even before we tried taking pictures.
Finally, I made a rough sketch of it. Have you ever seen this image, is it Paiute, Shoshone or from another tribe, and/or do you have any idea what it might represent or mean?
While doing some biographical research of a possible suspect in the case of my friend Patty Tigard’s 1976 murder, I stumbled on a June 1911 article about the ax murders of the William Hill family in Ardenwald, Oregon. The killer’s method sounded vaguely familiar, thus piquing my interest.
Call it a side-trail, a rabbit hole or a complete distraction from the task at hand, I began reading newspaper article after newspaper article until I found something useful: Paul Mueller, an immigrant from Ingolstadt, Bavaria, Germany. Trailing Mueller backwards, using these same news articles, lead me to the May 1901 murder of the J. Wesley Allen family of Shirley, Maine; killed in the same manner as the Hill family in Oregon.
Following article after article on the Allen family murders, I read a name that I’d seen before: Paul Mueller. Evidently, he’d been in the area of the Allen farm and had been chased off by Allen, who is described as being less than friendly to everyone.
In both the Hill and Allen family murders the homes and out buildings were also set ablaze. Investigators at the time believed this was done to cover possible clues in the crime.
These two crimes got me to thinking about another crime, one that has been researched and investigated by criminologists, journalist and even paranormal groups. It is the use of a found ax belonging to the victim that triggered my recollection of the Villisca, Iowa murders.
Sometime between the evening of June 10, 1912, and the early morning of June 11, 1912, the Josiah Moore family and two visiting neighbor girls were found murdered in a similar fashion as the Hills and Allen families. While there is a list of suspects in this particular murder, none were ever convicted of the crime.
As I felt I’d run the course of my little side investigation and was prepared to return to my research on Patty’s murder case, a memory popped in my mind. That thought was about the unsolved March 1922 ax murders of the Andreas Gruber family in modern-day Waidhofen, Bavaria, Germany, better known as the Hinterkaifeck Murders. Further, Mueller’s hometown of Ingolstadt shows that he lives less than 20 miles from Gruber family murders.
“Bingo!” I thought as I got up from my writing desk to do a ‘happy dance, go pee and get some more coffee.’
As I was congratulating myself on a ‘job well done,’ it was then that I saw a footnote to an article that listed the 2017 book, ‘The Man from the Train,’ by Bill James and his daughter Rachel McCarthy James. Their work shows the various connections between Mueller and 39 family murders, totaling 153 victims, going back as far as 1898, near Boston, Massachusetts.
So allow me to lick my wounds, ending with a quote from Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass,’ that leaves me feeling a little bit better about my exercise in futility, “Go on till you come to the end; then stop.”
The good news: I made it to the Reno Rodeo; the bad news: I forgot to put a battery in my camera. Add to this that I worked hard to smuggle it into the rodeo grounds.
The Reno Rodeo Association has concluded that if you have a camera with a detachable lens, then you’re a professional photographer. This cracks me up, as most cellphones have a built in camera that take far better pictures than most SLR (single lens reflex) cameras manufactured before 2015.
But then the powers that be are always smarter than the rest of us…
Anyway, I did have a device on me, a hand-me-down cellphone that isn’t used as a cellphone, but strictly for taking videos and pictures. I’m working on stitching 40 separate videos together into a short film.
A nice woman gave me a souvenir program, for free. The biggest bummer is that I’m 160-plus on the list for a commemorative belt buckle, while knowing that by day two, they’d already sold all 7,000 buckles produced.
All-in-all, it was fun, save for the firework display that I wasn’t privy too and was less than 50 feet from when touched off. I painted my britches, both coming and going.
Their plan was to set up a small camp, where they could drink some beer, grill steaks and tell stories into the wee-hours of the morning, someplace south and east of the ruins of Fort Churchill. They were Adrian Slett, Howard Philips and Keith Hammond, all native Californians, transplanted to the high desert of Northern Nevada.
Along with the usual camp routines, the trio planned to spend sometime exploring their surroundings. Each held the idea of finding some lost treasure left behind by an old miner, a homesteader or even some soul journeying eastward towards a new and better life in the Golden State.
This was the second time they’d regrouped at the set of rocks jutting up from the hard-pack sand and dried up sage brush. It was close enough to civilization for help, should it come to that and yet far enough away, that the only sound of humanity, other than themselves, were the occasional passenger aircraft speeding over head at some 30-thousand feet.
The second day, at a breakfast of scrambled eggs, burnt toast, ink-black coffee, overly-crisped bacon and under-cooked potatoes, Slett asked, “Did either of you hear whispering last night.”
Philips and Hammond shot looks at one another and responded in unison, “No.”
Hammond, quicker than Philips, added “Jinx! You owe me a coke!” And the pair laughed.
Philips saw Slett’s distressed face and asked, “So, what was it saying, this whisper, do you know?”
“No idea. Jus’ sounded like whispering.”
“Probably the wind blowing through the brush or something,” Hammond joined in.
“Yeah,” Slett smiled, “That and my imagination.”
The day progressed from there as the three companions set out to have a look around the large rock by which they were camped. Hammond had his new metal detector and was eagerly scanning the light brown earth in hopes of making a discover of something, anything, but so far nothing.
“Hey, guys,” Philips shouted, “Look at this!”
The other two hurried over to where Philips was now on his hands and knees looking beneath one of the many smaller rocks that littered the larger rock. They soon could see a slight crawl way beneath the stone and each became eager in his own way to learn what lay behind it.
Gently, they pulled some of the rock fragments away and found bare earth beneath. With a flashlight, it was realized that the hole continued beyond the one rock and possibly continued into the largest rock.
“You should go first Slett, you’re the skinniest of us.”
“Naw, I’m not too thrilled with crawling through tight spaces. I think we ought to search up top and see if we can find a way in from there.”
Soon they were climbing over the natural rock fall, looking into cracks and crevasses for a hidden entrance.
“Over here,” Philips called.
Straight down between another rock and the large rock was a two foot opening, about three feel long. It was not a certainty that the shaft under the first rock led further into a cave of some sort in the larger rock.
Without being asked, Slett slid down the side, between the rocks and climbed into the darkened hole. Hammond dropped the flashlight down to him and Slett waited for the other two to enter their newly found hole.
Once all three were on the ground, they proceeded to venture into the opening of the tunnel.
“It’s natural.”
“It’s not very wide though.”
“And look at how shallow it is.”
The shallowness, the depth of the cave was apparent by the three large bronze bells that rested near the back wall. They were burnished with a green-tint of a mouldering patina, that told them that the bells had been there for years.
“Wow, this could be worth some money.”
“Forget money, this is a great archaeological find.”
“Anyone know what ‘Voq’u’u-lo Zaa-q’ran’ means?”
They looked up at where Slett aimed the flashlight. The words were etched clearly into the obviously smoothed-out cyclopean surface of the rock face above the trio of bells.
“No idea.”
“Is it Spanish or Basque or both?”
“It looks like a warning.”
Philips picked up a fist sized rock and struck the bell nearest him. It made a very dull clanging sound, but was enough to echo about the small cave.
Small pieces of the roof dropped around the three and their newly discovered treasure. Unable to seek protection, each stood where they were and covered their heads.
The falling rocks bounced of the bells and a din continued to rumble about the cavern, bringing down more slag. Eventually, the falling rock stopped and the place grew quiet once more.
“Shit! Don’t do that again!”
“Sorry.”
“Shhh!”
The three men stood motionless, each listening and each hearing a muffled dragging noise, like damp canvass. It came from everywhere and with it roiled a foul odor that none could describe.
“Holy. Mother of..!” one cried as Slett dropped the beam of the flashlight to the ground of the cave.
The dirt and stone floor was alive with the slithering and undulating bodies of snakes, which poured from crevices in the walls and from under the bells. Without another word, the three scrambled for the mouth of the cave and scurried up the wall through the opening they’d located less than half-an-hour earlier.
“Anyone bitten?” Hammond asked breathlessly.
The other two shook their heads vigorously, indicating that they had escaped the vipers pit without being injured. They watched in frightened fascination as hordes of Great Basin Rattlesnakes spread out across the desert, disappearing into the nearby brush and rocky terrain.
By mid-afternoon, the mass of snakes had quit pouring from the cave and all of it’s many nooks and crannies, and the three men felt it safe enough to return to camp and begin carefully dismantling the site, albeit a day early. None were aware of the malevolent figure that stood high above them.
It was Zaa-q’ran, the god of death, who had been patiently awaiting re-release from his prison since the last ringing of the missing bells of San Javier. Slowly the skies began to darken as if a massive sand storm were filling the horizons.
“Anybody else’s eyes burning?”
“Now that you ask, yeah, they are.”
“Mine, too. Let’s get outta here!”
It surprised McKinnison, the speed at which his quarry could run. He’d tracked Kid Williams to the small cluster of wooden buildings along the desert hillside and he aimed to bring the murderer to justice.
McKinnison lost his man between two buildings that lead from the back of the settlement to the dusty, dirt path that served as a street. In the distance all he could hear was the tap, tap, tap of the blacksmith’s hammer.
Slowly he inched his way between the buildings, onto the boards of the walkway and towards the sound of the hammer on metal that seemed to beat to the rhythm of his own heart beat. At the blacksmith’s shop, a man stood, back to the door over hot coals, bellow pumping air to feed the fire.
The same man returned to the anvil and began tapping out the same melodic beat McKinnison had heard before. He started to move on, but paused realizing that something seemed off.
“Hands where I can see’um, Kid,” he ordered.
The would-be smitty stopped, lifting his head and glancing over his right shoulder, “What gave me away?”
“You can’t shape cold metal,” McKinnison said, “Now, hands up and move into the light of the doorway.”
His request was met with Williams spinning quick to his left, six-shooter in his right hand, flashing as it spit lead in the direction of the lawman. But McKinnison was quicker than the outlaw as a single bullet pierced the up left of his chest, the area becoming crimson immediately.
Williams did not immediately fall. Instead he stumbled into the darkness of the shop, as if hiding like a wild animal before collapsing on his back. McKinnison moved through the doorway and stood over the fallen man to look into his dead-eyes and face.
“Told ya Kid, you can’t shape cold metal,” he sighed.
My sister, Deirdre sent me two hefty boxes of personal effects that belonged to our Mom. She’s had them in storage since mom’s death in 2002.
While a bit overwhelming, I am devising a plan to archive much of it as it consists of old family pictures, newspaper clipping, postcards and such. In fact I’ve already taken the liberty to salvage the 82-year-old newspaper clipping regarding my Great-Grandma Rosa’s murder, which has never been treated right since the day it was first published.
The best I could do is clip off the ragged edges from where it was torn from the paper back in 1937, and using Elmer’s Glue-All and heavy black archival paper, glue it down and flatten out the crease where it had been fold and unfolded so much that some of the newsprint has fallen away. There are so many more clippings like the one below that need ‘T-L-C.’
Eighty-two-years! There are a number of pieces to this story that need fitting together like a jigsaw puzzle, and I have plans to write about this at a later date, but first, I have some boxes to finish going through.
The Old Blog in the Desert 