Only by Blood and Suffering: Regaining Lost Freedom

by LaVoy Finicum

  At last I came to a cedar tree that had a few dead branches on it. There was not enough dead wood to burn through the night but, if I could start a fire, it would give me a few hours of rest. Then, to keep from freezing, I would have to walk the rest of the night.

  I wanted to cry. The challenge of starting a fire in this deep, wet, snow was overwhelming. I had used my last road flare the night before. Taking my gloves off, I broke twigs from the tree. I pulled cedar bark from the tree trunk and shucked it in my hands to make tinder. It was damp. Everything was cold and damp.

  In a spot that I had poorly cleared the snow from, I tried to make a fire. For half an hour I struggled but could produce no flame. If only I were among pinion trees where I might find some pine gum to help get a fire started.. But I was not among pinion trees. The sweat between my shoulder blades from carrying my pack was starting to freeze. If I did not start to move again I would die from the cold.

  Summoning my remaining courage and strength, I packed myself back up. I must walk through the night. If I stopped it would be my final resting place.

  I had gone no more than a hundred yards and I stumbled again. This time I was not able to catch myself. Turning to a side so as not to fall upon the baby, I sprawled out in the snow. I struggled to my knees, my whole body trembling.

  “Oh, Dad, oh Dad, where are you?” I cried out, into the oncoming darkness.

  There was a snort of an animal from behind me and fear raced through my veins. In my mind flashed the image of the wild bull. In panic, I grabbed wildly for my fallen rifle; then a voice.

  “Easy does it, daughter.” It was the voice of my father.

  Climbing to my feet I turned to see a cowboy swing down from his horse. It was my Dad. He was here! I stumbled forward into his strong arms. Burying my face in his chest, I let go of all the emotions that I had kept locked inside me for the last dozen days. The tears and sobs came freely. Tears of joy. Tears of grief and sorrow. Tears of relief and hope.

  Hope. Hope had returned.

  Chapter 13

  DAN

  January 29th

  Morning came to my little family on the Esplanade bench of the Grand Canyon. The light rain had quit in the night but the day was still very dreary. We wrapped little Jamie up in her baby blanket and tied it closed. Jill carried her as before and we moved on.

  The trail soon came to the last steep climb, the last bench that would take us out of the canyon. It was midday when we reached the top at Indian Hollow. The going was much easier now. There were only six inches of snow on the graveled road and the mountain bikes had no trouble traveling through it. From Indian Hollow to the little town of Fredonia it was about 40 miles, most of it downhill. From Fredonia to home it was another 35 miles.

  We slowly dropped in elevation as we peddled along. It was a solemn journey and neither Jill nor I spoke, except as was needed. It was hard to explain to little Will that his sister had died. I left that to Jill. I was best able to keep my emotions in check by not talking.

  I did not push my family and took time to stop, rest and eat. I determined to break the remaining distance into two days. Before I left the tree line of the Kaibab Mountain I stopped for the night. I made camp by a small rock ledge next to two big dead pinion trees. Bedding Jill and our little boy down at the base of the ledge, I built two large fires to our front.

  I slept in short stretches and woke often to keep the big fires going. I wanted Jill and my boy to stay warm. The body of little Jamie I laid in the cold snow away from the warmth of the fire. I was grateful for Jill’s insistence that we bury her in the cemetery at the ranch. I could not imagine the hole that I felt inside of me ever healing and I knew I would need to visit her grave often.

  I threw another log on the fire and the flames crackled, sending sparks upward into the night. As I stood there warming my hands, I looked at Jill and Will bundled in their coats and sleeping. I loved my family. It wasn’t until I had children of my own that I really began to understand Dad. I knew that he loved us. We were the focus of all that he did. The ranch, the teaching, the training, and discipline, it was all for us.

  He kept telling us that the comfortable world that we were raised in would not last.

  “No country, state, town or people can run into debt without losing a corresponding amount of freedom,” he would say. “The average American doesn’t understand the difference between sound money, fractional money or fiat money.1 Nor do they understand the hidden tax of inflation and that it is by design. Most do not know how much our national debt is, nor do they care.”

  He was disgusted with the public school system and how they produced an idiot electorate. He had shown me a poll from the last election where it was determined that 70% of voters did not even know that the Constitution was the supreme law of the land. 65% could not name the three branches of government. These dismal stats were only from those that actually voted.2 It was worse among the population in general.

  All of Dad’s talk had seemed so academic. When I grew up, I tired of it, turned 18 and left home.

  I tossed another broken branch on the fire then turned to warm my backside by the flames.

  It was not academic now. My baby was dead and my wife and little boy grieved. I thought of my country and the millions of families like mine who would now, even now, be suffering. It had been so easy to keep my head in the sand and try to fit in with my neighbors. I had enjoyed the comfortable life in San Diego; paved roads and sidewalks, electric washer and drier, central A.C. and heat, not to mention satellite T.V. Then there were the movies, the restaurants and sports. Like my neighbors, I had been able to keep myself distracted.

  I turned to face the fire and warm my front side. I looked upon Jill and little Will again. A resolve rose up from below the sorrow. Standing in the light of the pinion fire, I committed. I committed that I would do all in my power to keep Jill and Will alive. I would keep them alive and I would teach them. I would teach them what my father had taught me. This country would need rebuilding and it would need people like our Founding Fathers—like my father.

  The next morning we were well down the graveled road before it was light. I guessed it to be around 10:00 A.M. when we peddled in to Fredonia. I knew this town well enough. Our schools competed against each other in sports. Years ago, it had been an up and coming town but for the last couple of decades it had been in a state of atrophy.

  At one time the town was a producing town. It had a large sawmill that shipped lumber across the nation. It had an oil refinery that employed many. It was the home base for several mining companies that mined the high grade uranium south of the town. But government had gotten involved. The environmentalists had successfully shut down the logging. The President’s Secretary of Interior had shut down the mining. The EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, had shut down the oil refinery.

  Prior to lumber, oil and mining, the town had begun as a farming community, pulling its irrigation water from Kanab Creek. Unfortunately, many of the irrigated fields had gone the way of the town’s industry. There were many retired people and many on welfare. It had been generations since the town had been a self-sustaining community.

  Entering the town from the south, I peddled north on Main Street. Even before the “first strike” there had never been a lot of cars on the main street at one time. Now, with no cars on the street, it did not look a lot different. The people I passed did. The friendliness was gone. No one waved at us as we passed. The new city building and fire station were in the center of the town. This is where it was the least friendly. The parking lot, between the fire station and city building, had five horses saddled and standing on the west end of the lot. The horses were being held at the ready by two young cowboys each holding hunting rifles.

  Open rifles in a town, major gun violations now.

  On the east side of the parking lot were two Fredonia town marshals. No longer driving federalized police trucks, they were standing by a set of bicycles holding AR-15s. The
two groups were facing off each other in an uneasy truce.

  From inside the office buildings could be heard angry words. It looked to me like some local ranchers and city officials were having issues. I was just guessing, but I’d bet one of Dad’s silver dollars that the issue had something to do with food.

  We peddled on through the town and headed to Kanab, seven miles north. Kanab was a tourist town much bigger and richer than either Orderville or Fredonia. It too had long forsaken its pioneer heritage of being self-reliant and self-sustaining.

  At four miles we crossed the Utah/Arizona state line. To the east I could see the new state prison. It was a 350 bed facility. I wondered what had become of the prisoners.

  In the next three miles we entered Kanab and passed the high school. To my astonishment, we saw two columns of soldiers in crisp new uniforms. They were marching, in a disorderly fashion, down the sidewalk toward the center of the town. Each was carrying matching M-4 rifles. 3 At the next block I had to stop and try to comprehend what I was seeing.

  In front of the Glazier’s Food King was another row of undisciplined soldiers, about 25 in number. Each one was standing guard, holding an M-4. There also were a number of them on the rooftop.

  We had stopped across the road from the grocery store. There were several dozen civilians standing around the sidewalks.

  A young man close by and about my age was leaning against a lamp post. He had on a camo ball cap and a camo hunting jacket, with an angry look on his face.

  “What’s going on here?” I asked him.

  He spit into the street, not taking his eyes off the newly uniformed soldiers across the street. “I don’t know what all is going on, but what I do know, I sure in hell don’t like.”

  In disgust, he spat again on the street and continued, “All I know is that by morning time after we lost power these goons were already here. Here and at Honey’s grocery store too. They are not soldiers; they are convicts from the prison. It’s the DHS agents that are coordinating all of it. Damn Department of Homeland Security! I knew that when our city and county started taking bailout money to help pay for law enforcement the Feds would take control.”

  I knew what he was talking about because it had been Dad’s latest rant. He talked about how the local politicians were selling out the last of the control our local law enforcement had to the federal government by accepting the bailouts.

  The sell job to the ignorant public came as usual. “We must take care of our firefighters, policemen and teachers. Because we care, we must make sure to keep our citizens safe and take care of our children.” They always threw in the children.

  The politicians never talked about the attached strings. They never talked about how every law enforcement agency that took the bailouts had to have a DHS agent to oversee it. It was an easy fix for the politicians and the citizens who depended upon a government check of some sort. No need to balance a budget, no need to cut spending. All was well.

  It was not long till each law enforcement vehicle had a small, eleven lettered, word stenciled above its name: “Federalized,” “Federalized, Fredonia City Marshall,” “Federalized, Kanab City Police,” “Federalized, Kane County Sheriff.” The BLM Rangers, the Park Rangers, and the Forest Rangers were federal from inception.

  For the first time the man looked at me.

  “Are you taking your family to the park?” He asked.

  “No,” I replied. “Why would I be taking my family to the park?”

  The man shrugged and returned his gaze to the store, “That’s where all those in town that don’t have water are being directed to go.”

  “Are you saying that some of the town has water and some of it doesn’t?” I asked.

  “Yeah, that’s right. The old part of town still has gravity flow water out of the canyons. All the new homes that are further out require pumping for their water. Some of those families are starting to camp at the park already.”

  I had seen and heard all I wanted to. “Thanks,” I said and we continued on.

  It was dusk by the time we had peddled up the dirt road and stopped at the old wood gate leading to Dad’s ranch. We had made it.

  With mixed feelings of gratitude and sorrow, I opened the gate.

  _____________________

  1. Sound money, fractional money, fiat money: Currency or bank notes that are issued can be, 1: sound money, backed 100% by gold or silver, 2: fractional money, back some fraction of gold or silver, 3: fiat money, backed by nothing but trust. History has been that every government that started on the course of fractional money have all ended at fiat money.

  2. Zogby poll 2006; 75% of Americans could name the Three Stooges and only 42% could name the three branches of government.

  3. M-4 is one of the current rifles that the military is using. It shoots the same 5.56 cartridge as the M-16 that was used in the Vietnam War and looks similar. There has been some milling and other upgrades over the M-16 which makes the M-4 more reliable. It looks the same as many of the AR-15s that shoots the .223 cartridge. The M-4 has the ability to shoot fully automatically, three round burst or semi-automatically. You can shoot the .223 cartridge in the M-4s but should only shoot the 5.56 NATO cartridges in the AR-15 if the gun is stamped 5.56.

  Chapter 14

  DAD

  February 12th

  Standing in the blowing snow, I let Cathy cry in my arms. Her body was shaking from the cold and the sobbing. I could feel something moving beneath her jacket and, at length, Cat pulled back. It was getting dark but I could see her face. Taking a glove off my hand, I wiped back her dark, wet, hair and then wiped away her tears.

  I had found her. I had found my little girl. She was not little anymore. She was a young woman, full of life and confidence. With her olive skin and dark brown hair, she looked nothing like her mother, nor the twins. She had taken hard after the Bonham side of the family. Early into Texas, some of the Bonhams had married Comanche women. Those traits had come out in Cathy’s high cheek bones and dark eyes. She had physical beauty and a fiery spirit. I knew it was that spirit that had gotten her this far.

  Cat unsnapped the top of her coat to show me something. Taking a flashlight from my coat pocket, I turned it on. A small baby with blue eyes looked up at me.

  “You and strays,” I said. “Daughter, you are always collecting strays; stray cats, stray dogs but this is the first time I’ve seen you collect a baby.”

  She couldn’t help but laugh, and there was a smile between her tears.

  Her body was still shaking and I could tell she was spent. She needed shelter, she needed warmth. Depleted physically as she was, hypothermia was not far away.

  “Can you still fork a horse, daughter?” I asked.

  “You know I can, Dad. If there is breath left in me I can fork a horse.”

  With that, I led her back to her roan that had been following my pack horse. She stopped when she saw Mom’s buckskin horse.

  She turned to me and with emotion in her voice, said, “Dad, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I didn’t get Mom. She didn’t make it.” And she started to cry again.

  Earlier this day, I had cut Cathy’s tracks in the snow. I knew they were hers because I followed them as they went in circles looking for my stash. I also could tell that there was only one set of tracks and that meant Mom had not made it. I had already known.

  “It’s okay, Cat. Don’t cry. It’s okay,” I hugged her again.

  My wife had been so successful and so busy with her work that I had only seen her once in the last year. The several years before that had not been much better. There had been the hope that after enough money had been made, enough success enjoyed, that she would slow down and we again would spend time together.

  The night after the “first strike,” while I stood on my porch, that hope had drifted away. Somehow I had known that she was never coming back. I had saddled her buckskin all the same, and came looking for her and Cat.

  “Girl, if you can fork that horse l
et’s get you into the saddle. We can talk later; right now we need to move.”

  I took her rifle from her and slid it into the empty rifle scabbard which was strapped to her saddle. Tired as she was, with the baby still bundled to her, I gave her help. I knelt by the side of her horse, giving her a knee to step up on. I hadn’t done that since she was a little girl.

  She squeezed my shoulder before grabbing the pommel and stepping up into the saddle.

  The snow was coming hard and there was a cutting wind behind it. In this deep snow, stumbling around in the dark, it was going to be hard to find shelter and wood. But I had a plan. Earlier this day, I had not been far from this spot. I had missed Cathy when I rode through here the first time. I cut her tracks close to the missed stash and then had tracked her down.

  Only several hundred yards to the west of here I had ridden by an old hogan. It had been an old fork-stick style—one where they placed several large, peeled, cedar poles with the bases in the ground and the forks upward. The bases of the poles were buried about ten feet apart in a circle with the forks leaning into the center, tepee style. The forks of the poles interlocked, holding them together. Other peeled logs where leaned against this frame, closing the circle, except on the east side. That is where the door was. The doors always faced east on a traditional hogan. It was made by planting two more poles with forks. These two poles framed the door and stood upright. From these forks, two ridge-poles ran back to the top of the circle of logs. On the top and sides of this frame work, more logs were laid. All the cracks were chinked with cedar bark and then the whole work was covered with six inches or more of clay. A tight, cozy dwelling with a little wood stove in the center and a stove pipe coming out the top.

  That was what I wanted to find. I took my compass out and got a bearing. In this dark snowy night, even being close by, one could easily miss it.