Doubtful Canon
Page 19
He sobbed. “I…promised…made a vow…I said if you weren’t killed…I’d never…never…I’d never touch whiskey again.” He hugged me tighter. “I’m sorry, Son. I…I’m….”
“I’m sorry, Pa,” I said.
Other voices grew louder, and I pulled myself away from my father’s embrace, fisted the tears from my eyes, sniffing, making myself stand and face these men bent on lynch law.
“Leave him be!” I yelled, surprised to hear Ian Spencer Henry echo my own orders. He joined me as we marched toward Whitey Grey, his hands now bound behind his back, a rope around his neck.
“He saved us!” Ian Spencer Henry said. “He stood in front of Jack, wouldn’t let Ringo kill him. Stopped Ringo from killing Jasmine, too. He saved us all!”
It was a stretch, perhaps. Or maybe not.
“Let him go!” This time my father barked the order. “You hang this man, you harm him, I will print every last one of your names in my newspaper. In every paper in the territory. You’ll be branded as murderers, just as you should have been branded when you took the law in your hands before, when you hanged Cornwall Dan and Harley King. There will be no lynching here. Let him be!”
With muffled voices, they stared.
“Let him go,” Berit Ann Allison said.
Even Miss Giddings stepped forward, demanding the release of the white-skinned man.
“Here.” Mr. Shankin pulled a handful of crumpled bills from his vest pocket. “Here’s fifty dollars, mister. Take it and be gone. Get out of our sight, out of New Mexico Territory. Turn him loose, boys.”
The rope came off, as did the bonds around his wrists, and Whitey Grey dusted himself off, pulled on his hat, and grabbed the money before Mr. Shankin or anyone could change his mind. He shoved the greenbacks into his pocket, came to Ian Spencer Henry and me, and patted our heads. “You’s good pards,” he said.
“Start walking!” one of the miners thundered.
The albino winked, and told us in a whisper, “Don’t y’all fret none. I knows where ’em centipede cars be. I’ll be fine, pards. Look me up sometime.” His eyes found the saddlebags and he picked them up, started to toss them over his shoulder. “Reckon I spent twenty years huntin’ this. So I deserve it.” He looked inside one of the pouches, squinting, pursing his lips, and reached inside. He pulled out something small, dusty—I couldn’t make it out—studying it, and then, throwing the saddlebags over his shoulder, walked to Miss Giddings and handed the battered daguerreotype to her.
“Warrant your pappy didn’t want this to fall in no Cherry Cow hands, neither,” he said. “Can’t blame ’im none. She be a right handsome woman. Takes after you.”
Tears formed in Eleora Giddings’s eyes as she stared at the faded picture.
“Mama,” she whispered as Whitey Grey, whistling some bawdy tune, walked into the desert.
We camped that night in Doubtful Cañon. Well, the bulk of the posse headed out, some opting for a grog shop over in the San Simon, most riding back to Lordsburg or Shakespeare. The two soldiers, Mr. Shankin, and our parents stayed in the rocky fort, figuring it was just as safe as the rock house, and the soldiers, their heads throbbing, were in no particular hurry to go anywhere. Well, that’s the reasons everyone gave anyway. Mostly I think they wanted to give Miss Eleora Giddings time at her father’s grave.
She stayed with us, too.
We told our story. Our parents explained how they had found us. The men Whitey Grey had waylaid along the Southern Pacific tracks had tipped them off. No one had ever found the note I had planted. They hadn’t even thought about looking in the Lady Macbeth Mine—so much for my genius, I figured. Instead of thinking we were running away for El Paso, they had believed that this crazed albino seen in the town’s saloons had kidnapped us, and the posse had left Shakespeare, vowing vengeance.
I felt weak. Our foolishness had almost gotten several people killed—including us. Even Whitey Grey had almost been lynched, which, many people in Shakespeare would later say, he should have been.
“Well,” Mrs. Allison remarked over the campfire. “No harm done.”
“Yeah,” my father agreed. So did Ian Spencer Henry’s.
Lucky we were. Under other circumstances, all of our hides would have been tanned for such transgressions.
We supped on hardtack, biscuits, beans, bacon, and salt pork, slept well, and rose early. Mr. Shankin started frying bacon and boiling coffee, while Ian Spencer Henry’s dad recounted the story we had told him, shaking his head, scoffing at our youthful stupidity for chasing gold.
“Buried treasure,” he said with a snort. “I hope you have learned your lesson.”
“Pack of lies,” Mr. Shankin agreed. “I told you as much back in my store, Jack.”
“Yes, sir,” I agreed.
“Well….” Jasmine pressed her lips together, and began nervously playing with her fingers. She kept glancing back to the pit, then at her feet. Finally with a heavy sigh, she unlaced her left shoe, pulled it off, and reached inside. What she removed sparkled in the morning sun.
Mr. Henry let out an oath, and, embarrassed, quickly apologized.
“I wasn’t going to tell anyone.” Jasmine looked at Ian Spencer Henry and me. “Except you. Later. Thought we might come back….”
“There’s more?” I blurted out, my eyes locked on the gold coin.
“All of it,” she said, and let out a giggle. “I reckon. I mean those saddlebags were full of sacks. One broke open.”
Miss Giddings scratched her head. “But….”
“I didn’t want those men to have it,” Jasmine said. “I mean, I found the bags as soon as I got down there, but Curly Bill and Ringo would have murdered us if they got their hands on that money. Maybe they would have killed us even if they didn’t. I….” Like a little girl, she shrugged.
“Down…?” Mr. Henry gulped. “Down there?”
The soldiers came over, staring at the glittering coin. Corporal Merchant whistled. My father remained silent, close to me, smiling.
“How…how much?” Mr. Shankin asked.
“Thirty thousand,” Miss Giddings replied.
Looking up, Ian Spencer Henry did a quick head count. “Ten of us. That’s three thousand dollars each. Easy to do in my head.”
“Oh….” Mr. Henry coughed. “No…I mean…that…well, the Overland Mail…that money would belong to….”
“John Butterfield’s dead,” Mrs. Allison said.
“And Wells, Fargo and Company isn’t missing that money,” her daughter added.
“More money than we’ll ever make soldierin’,” Trooper Muller said.
“But how do we get it?” asked Corporal Merchant.
“You got to go down in that hole,” Ian Spencer Henry said. “But it’s only big enough for one of us kids. That’s why Jasmine went down yesterday.” He grinned. “Can I go this time? I want to go. Please.” He paused as we gathered around the little hole, ignoring the burning bacon and the coffee boiling over. “There wasn’t no snakes down there, was there, Jasmine?”
Smiling, she shook her head. “No spiders, either.”
Mr. Shankin wet his lips. “Then let’s get it out. In a hurry. Get it out and get out of Doubtful Cañon!”
“Amen,” murmured Trooper Muller.
Mr. Shankin and Mr. Henry gathered the rope, and Ian Spencer Henry, beaming, bravely stepped forward. They slipped the rope over him, secured it beneath his armpits. “Be careful, Son,” Mr. Henry said.
“Hey!” My best friend suddenly found me. “You don’t mind if I go, do you, Jack? I mean…well….” His voice lowered. “Do you want to go?”
“You go,” I said.
“You sure it’s all right?” he asked, eyes excited once more.
I felt my father’s hand on my shoulder. “It’s fine,” I said, smiling. “Everything is just fine.”
Author’s Note
Buried treasure stories are plentiful throughout the Southwest, and the legend of John James Giddings hiding
the Overland Mail Company’s $30,000 before being overrun and killed by Apaches in Doubtful Cañon is one of them.
This much of my novel is based on fact. According to New Mexico historian Marc Simmons, Giddings and four men—three guards and the driver—came across the ruins of Stein’s Peak station and were later attacked by Apaches almost the moment they entered Doubtful Cañon. The driver and one of the guards were shot off the top, and the runaway team took off, overturning the stagecoach two miles into the cañon. What happened afterward is open to speculation.
Teamsters discovered the scene a few days later, the stagecoach riddled with bullet holes and arrows, and the remains of two men nearby. Wolves and vultures had reduced the bodies to nothing more than skeletons, one of which was believed to be that of John James Giddings. Both were buried in the cañon. The third man was never found, and thus he became my fictitious Whitey Grey, named by my then-four-year-old son.
In 1917—not in the 1880s as in this novel—Giddings’s daughter sought out the grave of her father. Two Texas ranchers helped her find the site, and eventually she put a stone marker over Giddings’s grave. Folks say it’s still there today.
John James Giddings, Born June 30, 1821. Killed by Indians April 28, 1861.
Shakespeare remains standing as a ghost town today—although a 1997 fire destroyed part of it—open to tourists on select days. Stein’s Ghost Town, right off the Southern Pacific rails, is also around for visitors along the Arizona-New Mexico border. Interstate 10 bypassed Doubtful Cañon, even more remote these days than it was in the 19th Century.
Johnny Ringo and Curly Bill Brocious did roam Shakespeare and the Doubtful Cañon area in the 1880s, so I thought they would serve well as my villains, although I don’t really think either went out looking for buried treasure in October of 1881. Their legend and infamy, of course, grew in Tombstone shortly after my story ends. The fates of both men are still debated by historians.
In addition to Simmons, I also should thank the Bureau of Land Management’s Las Cruces and Pecos districts, which oversee the Doubtful Cañon area; writers Fred Grove and Melody Groves, for sharing information about Doubtful and Stein’s Peak station; Emily Drabanski and Terry Tiedeman of New Mexico Magazine, for tracking down an old article about Doubtful; and the following books: Ghost Towns and Mining Camps of New Mexico by James E. and Barbara H. Sherman (University of Oklahoma Press, 1975); The Civil War in Apacheland: Sergeant George Hand’s Diary edited by Neil B. Carmony (High-Lonesome Books, 1996); and The Butterfield Trail in New Mexico by George Hackler (Yucca Enterprises, 2005).
The $30,000 (or $28,000, according to some sources) Giddings allegedly buried has never been found. Maybe it’s still there in Doubtful Cañon.
Or maybe…just maybe….
Johnny D. Boggs
Santa Fé, New Mexico
About the Author
Johnny D. Boggs has worked cattle, shot rapids in a canoe, hiked across mountains and deserts, traipsed around ghost towns, and spent hours poring over microfilm in library archives—all in the name of finding a good story. He’s also one of the few Western writers to have won two Spur Awards from Western Writers of America (for his novel, Camp Ford, in 2006, and his short story, “A Piano at Dead Man’s Crossing”, in 2002) and the Western Heritage Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum (for his novel, Spark on the Prairie: The Trial of the Kiowa Chiefs, in 2004). A native of South Carolina, Boggs spent almost fifteen years in Texas as a journalist at the Dallas Times Herald and Fort Worth Star-Telegram before moving to New Mexico in 1998 to concentrate full time on his novels. Author of dozens of published short stories, he has also written for more than fifty newspapers and magazines, and is a frequent contributor to Boys’ Life, New Mexico Magazine, Persimmon Hill, and True West. His Western novels cover a wide range. The Lonesome Chisholm Trail is an authentic cattle-drive story, while Lonely Trumpet is an historical novel about the first black graduate of West Point. The Despoilers and Ghost Legion are set in the Carolina backcountry during the Revolutionary War. The Big Fifty chronicles the slaughter of buffalo on the southern plains in the 1870s, while East of the Border is a comedy about the theatrical offerings of Buffalo Bill Cody, Wild Bill Hickok, and Texas Jack Omohundro, and Camp Ford tells about a Civil War baseball game between Union prisoners of war and Confederate guards. “Boggs’s narrative voice captures the old-fashioned style of the past,” Publishers Weekly said, and Booklist called him “among the best Western writers at work today.” Boggs lives with his wife Lisa and son Jack in Santa Fé. His website is www.johnnydboggs.com.
High Praise for 2008 Spur Award Winner Johnny D. Boggs!
“One of the best Western writers at work today!”
—Publishers Weekly
“Boggs…writes with a finely honed sense of character and a keen eye for detail…”
—Booklist
“Boggs is unparalleled at evoking the gritty reality of the Old West.”
—The Shootist
“A terrific writer.”
—Roundup
“Johnny D. Boggs has a keen ability to interlace historically accurate information amid a cast of descriptive characters and circumstances.”
—Cowboy Chronicle
“Boggs, one of the most dependable Western writers working today, delivers again with this charming and exciting over-the-hill adventure.”
—Booklist
Other Leisure books by Johnny D. Boggs:
NORTHFIELD
THE HART BRAND
WALK PROUD, STAND TALL
CAMP FORD
EAST OF THE BORDER
DARK VOYAGE OF THE MITTIE STEPHENS
PURGATOIRE
THE BIG FIFTY
LONELY TRUMPET
ONCE THEY WORE GRAY
THE LONESOME CHISHOLM TRAIL
Copyright
A LEISURE BOOK®
July 2009
Published by special arrangement with Golden West Literary Agency.
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Copyright © 2007 by Johnny D. Boggs
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