High Country Rescue Read online

  High Country

  Rescue

  Michael L. Skinner

  HIGH COUNTRY RESCUE

  Copyright © 2017 by Michael L. Skinner

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book,

  or portions thereof, in any form.

  This is a work of fiction, Names, characters, places, locales

  and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or

  are used fictitiously. And any resemblance to actual events,

  locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Photo by Jennifer Skinner

  To Patricia, my Loving Wife.

  CONTENTS

  chapter 1

  chapter 2

  chapter 3

  chapter 4

  chapter 5

  chapter 6

  chapter 7

  chapter 8

  chapter 9

  chapter 10

  chapter 11

  chapter 12

  chapter 13

  chapter 14

  chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  chapter 17

  chapter 18

  chapter 19

  chapter 20

  chapter 21

  chapter 22

  chapter 23

  chapter 24

  chapter 25

  chapter 26

  chapter 27

  chapter 28

  chapter 29

  chapter 30

  chapter 31

  chapter 1

  The Abduction

  It was late in the day Saturday and the store which had been busy most of the afternoon was empty, as it was now almost closing time. She paused as she was restocking the shelves at the back of the store. Her thoughts turned to how lonely she was here, and then back to her mother’s death and the years that followed on the ranch. She had hoped that leaving would be better than staying but was less sure with each passing day. She returned to stocking and tried to think of something else. The bell rang when someone came in the door.

  She turned and said, “Hello, can I help you.”

  As he walked toward the rear of the store, he said, “I just need to get a few things. Let’s start with a tin of hardtack from the shelf behind you.”

  She turned to get the hardtack from the shelf. Before she knew what was happening, his arm was around her neck, and his hand was over her mouth. She tried to get away, but he was too strong.

  He said, “Don’t scream. If you don’t do exactly what I tell you, your father will be killed.”

  She quit struggling, and he said, “Do you understand?”

  She nodded, and he said, “I am going to remove my hand from your mouth. If you scream, I will break your neck and kill your father.”

  He released her and turned her around to face him.

  He grabbed her by the shoulders and said, “Do as I say, and you and your father will be safe. We are going into the office, and you are going to write a note.”

  He held her tightly by the arm and almost dragged her to the office. He told her what to say, and she leaned over the desk and wrote the note. She was still trying to understand what was happening to her and what the note meant when she went black.

  When she sat the pencil down from writing the note and before she stood up, he hit her with the butt of his pistol across the back of the head. He caught her before she fell to the floor and carried her through the back door of the store. He put her in a wagon he had positioned there. He tied her hands and feet and placed a gag in her mouth, and then covered her with a blanket.

  chapter 2

  The Letter

  Dan O’Neil closed the cover on the windmill mechanism and looked over the rangeland laid out before him. The windmill sat in a shallow valley between two rocky ridges. From the top thirty feet up, he could see most of the south pasture, the fence line was just over the rise about three-quarters of a mile to the west. The bottom of the valley before him was dotted with a few large live oaks, and the rocky upslope opposite had a few cedars starting to take root. The grass in the pasture was high for this time of the year, but then with the windmill broken the cattle had stayed in the north pasture or along the river. The grass was yellow-brown from the lack of rain, but it would provide good winter grazing for the stock, and the windmill would provide the water. The windmill supplied water to a long water trough which had an overflow pipe at the other end, which runs to a stock tank in the center of the valley. The stock tank also catches the runoff from the rain, when it rains. He locked the tail of the windmill in place and ducked down to avoid it as the head swung south into the hot Texas wind. After listening to the mechanism for a few minutes to be sure that it was working smoothly, Dan lowered his canvas tool bag down to the ground with a small rope and started down the weathered ladder on the side of the wooden windmill. He paused and thought about when his father and older brother had built this windmill 20 years ago. His father had used cypress for the ladder and the windmill. He was not looking forward to the day when he would have to replace it with a new steel windmill. The weather resistance of the cypress should put that off for a few more years.

  As he reached the ground, he heard someone call to him. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Will, the young wrangler who had come to work on the ranch in June, approaching from the direction of the ranch house.

  Will dismounted and shouted, “Mr. Dan! Mr. Dan!”

  Dan said, “Slow down, what is it?”

  “There is a rider out from Fort Worth with a letter for you, and he says he was instructed to give it only to you.”

  “Who sent him?”

  “He says he is the stock boy from Walker’s Hardware Store.”

  Walking to his horse, Dan tied his tool bag on the back of the saddle and turned back to Will and said, “Will, Tom is working near the corral down at the river. Ride over and tell him to meet me at the house at seven o’clock for supper.”

  With a “Yes Sir,” Will mounted his horse and then headed east toward the river corral.

  He took his canteen from his saddle, emptied it on the ground and filled it with water from the now flowing windmill. Returning the canteen to his saddle, he mounted his horse and headed toward the ranch house. He slowly urged his horse to a trot. He chose not to speculate about the letter, but instead thought about the ranch. His great grandfather had filed the boundaries for the ranch with the Republic of Texas Land Office in 1844, and his father had fenced it in ‘88. The ranch was only a little more than seventy-two hundred acres, but it had almost a mile of frontage along the Brazos River on the east side and ran six and a quarter miles to the west. The ranch house is located on the north side of the ranch, a little more than a mile from the river, in a wide but shallow valley. The house is near the north side of the valley to protect it from the cold north wind in the winter and to be open to the south wind in summer. A spring fed creek runs behind the house on its way to the river. The current house was built in 1878 after a fire destroyed the original house. It is a simple single story, with a parlor, dining room, kitchen and four bedrooms. It has twelve-foot ceilings, large windows and a broad porch across the front and a summer kitchen out behind the house. Dan thought, ‘I never knew how good a place this was until I left.’

  Dan headed east down the valley from the windmill leaving a trail in the tall grass. He then turned north following a well-worn stock trail over the rocky ridge and down into the next small valley. Turning east he followed the valley to about a mile from the river, then turned north again up the north side of this valley. He stopped his horse at the rim of the valley overlooking the ranch house.

  Dan O’Neil was just a hair under six-foot-tall with a lean, but hard body from year
s of hard work. The sun that had tanned his skin had faded his hair to a light brown. His brown eyes seldom betrayed his thoughts.

  The ranch house sat across the valley from him with the bunkhouse, barn, and corrals to the east of the house. He checked his watch and noted that it was seven minutes before three o’clock. As he dropped over the rim of the valley toward the ranch house and his horse returned to a trot. He slowed as he approached the house and stopped at the hitch rail near the front steps of the house.

  As he dismounted, Dan handed the reins of his horse to Bob, the ranch cook.

  A young boy walked down from the porch and said, “Are you, Mr. O’Neil?”

  “Yes, I am,” he answered.

  “My name is Tim Newell, Mr. Walker asked me to deliver this letter to you personally.”

  Taking the letter, Dan said, “I appreciate you bringing it out, and I am sorry you had to wait for me. Can you wait a little longer while I read it?”

  “Mr. Walker said to wait for a message, besides it gave my horse and me a chance to rest before the ride back to town.”

  The envelope was simply addressed, Dan O’Neil. Dan stepped aside and opened the letter and read it.

  He thought for a minute, then looked up and said to Tim, “Tell Mr. Walker I will see him first thing in the morning.”

  “I will tell him.”

  Tim went over to the corral where he had left his horse by the water trough. He tightened his cinch on the saddle, mounted the horse and headed back to town.

  Dan went up the steps to the front porch. Taking a seat in one of the chairs he looked at the letter again:

  Aug. 2, 1908

  Dan,

  I need your help. Ship your high-country gear and everything else you need,

  express freight from Walker’s. William at Walker’s will have money

  for your travel expenses. Take the train to Santa Fe, then overland

  to Chama and the train to Durango, but get off at Dutchman’s siding.

  Joe will meet you there on the 10th.

  John Simms

  Dan had not known what the letter would say when he sent Will to find Tom, but he knew that it would probably take him away from the ranch. Bill Walker was a friend from the Marine Corps, and a letter that required hand delivery, would at least mean a trip to Fort Worth. But a call for help from the Colonel would take him away for a much longer time.

  He rose from the chair, placed the letter in his pocket and went around back to the summer kitchen, and upon seeing the cook, he said, “Howdy Bob.”

  Looking up from preparing his bread dough for supper Bob said, “Howdy Dan.”

  “Thanks for taking my horse earlier.”

  “Glad to help.”

  “Bob, I asked Tom to join me for supper tonight at 7:00, is that a problem?”

  “No, that’s fine. I will set the table in the dining room.”

  “Thanks, Bob, come see me after you get the boys fed.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Entering the house through the kitchen, Dan went from the kitchen into the hall that connected the bedrooms with the kitchen and the front of the house. He was using the second bedroom from the front for himself and one of the back bedrooms to store all his gear and equipment. He had taken all of his father’s personal possessions out of the front bedroom, but had not moved into the room. In the back bedroom, he had several footlockers set against the north wall and a couple of shipping crates stacked in the corner. Without hesitation, he started getting his gear together. First opening the Marine Corps footlocker, he removed a model 1905 Colt 45 caliber automatic pistol, clip, holster, and a box of ammunition and placed them on the floor. He wore a revolver occasionally when working the ranch, but usually carried only a rifle. When he did carry a revolver, it was an S&W 44 double action, but he thought he might need the firepower and capacity of the new auto. Turning to the green footlocker that contained his hunting and high-country gear, he removed his wool shirts, pants, sweaters, and long underwear. From the closet, He took out his heavy wool jacket, wool blankets, knit hat, rife cleaning kit, pistol cleaning kit and a ground cloth made of oiled deerskin. He rolled the shirts and pants inside the blankets and tied the roll with a piece of leather lacing. Then he rolled the jacket inside the ground cloth and tied it up. From his college footlocker, he removed his pocket compass and field book from his survey materials. He took a leather pack from the closet and placed the long underwear, socks, knit hats, hunting knife and compass in the pack.

  He returned to his bedroom. There he got the carpetbag from the closet and set it on the bed. He packed his everyday shirts, pants, socks, and toiletries that he would need for the train trip. Returning to the back room, he placed the carpetbag on the floor with the other gear and put the rest of his everyday clothes in the pack. He would ship the pack with his gear and take the carpetbag with him on the train. From the closet, he retrieved his high-top lace-up boots and set them with the pack. He picked up the auto pistol, removed the clip and cycled the action to be sure it was unloaded. Taking the box of cartridges, Dan filled the clip with eight rounds and returned it to the pistol. This would be the safest way to carry the pistol, since there would not be a cartridge under the firing pin, but with a cycle of the slide, the auto would feed a cartridge into the chamber and cock the hammer. He had only had the auto for about six months, but he had already run four boxes of cartridges through the pistol practicing. He had constructed a short target range, in the box canyon about a half-mile west of the house. He placed the pistol, holster and a box of cartridges in the carpetbag.

  Dan went into the parlor and sat in the wingback chair next to the window. Taking out the Colonel’s letter, he read over it again carefully. The letter was short, but it wasn’t what the letter said, that Dan was thinking about, but what it didn’t say.

  Bob came to the parlor door and said, “Dinner is ready when you are.”

  “Thanks,” Dan answered.

  A few minutes later, Tom Swanson knocked as he entered through the front door into the entry hall.

  He rose and said, “Evening Tom, how are you?”

  Stepping through the parlor door Tom, with hat in hand, said with a smile, “Fair to Midland.”

  Dan extended his hand to Tom as he said, “Let’s eat.”

  They turned and went through a pair of pocket doors into the dining room. The table was set for two with the plates set on opposite sides of the long trestle table, on the end near the kitchen. Tom and he talked about day-to-day ranch details during supper, each knowing that the more important items would come later. Supper was simple but very good, pan-fried steaks, boiled potatoes, pinto beans, and fresh bread. Bob lacked imagination in his cooking, but took pride in what he did.

  As they finished supper, Dan said, “Tom. Let’s take our coffee into the parlor and talk.”

  “Okay.”

  They rose from the table and went back to the parlor. As they entered the parlor, Dan closed the pocket doors and motioned toward a pair of chairs on either side of a small table.

  Tom asked, “Was the letter bad news?”

  “I don’t know yet, but I am going to have to leave the ranch for a while.” Dan paused, “Tom, you have been on the ranch for most of forty years, and foreman at least the last twenty-five, and my Dad’s best friend. I haven’t been here at the ranch much in the last eight years, and I am not sure how often I will be here over the next couple of years. I want you to take over the operation of the ranch and become the ranch manager.”

  Tom protested, “You don’t need to do that, I am happy with the way things are!”

  “I know you are, but this is in the best interest of the ranch. I want you to continue to draw your pay, and I will give you ten percent of any profits after the fall roundup and sale each year.”

  “Are you sure that is the way you want it?”

  “Yes, it is. You love the ranch as much as I do, and I can’t be here now to make the day to day decisions that are needed to keep it
profitable, so you will have to.”

  “You can count on me.”

  “I know I can, that’s why we are doing this. I will stop by the bank on the way out of town tomorrow and set up a Ranch Operations account and tell James Fox, the bank president, that you can draw on the account as needed.”

  “Are you leaving in the morning?”

  “I’m afraid I am, in fact, I will have to leave later tonight. The letter was from a good friend of mine from the Marines, who needs my help, and I need to be in western Colorado on the 10th. That means I have to catch the train out of Fort Worth tomorrow morning as well as go by the bank. I don’t know how long I will be gone, but I am sure it will be at least a couple of months or more. Later, if I can, I want to return to college and finish. That is why I need you to take care of the ranch.”

  “I understand. How can I reach you?”

  “Get word to Bill Walker, and he will forward it to me, and I will let you know as soon as I can where I can be reached.”

  Tom asked, “Do you want me to take you to town?”

  “I thought about it, but I think I will make better time with the bay and a packhorse. I will leave them at Jackson’s livery, and you can pick them up when you next go to town.”

  “What time do you want me to have horses ready?”

  “Two o’clock should give me enough time to get to Walker’s by seven.”

  “I will be out front at two o’clock with horses.”

  “I will see you then and thanks for being here.”

  “There is nowhere else I want to be.”

  They both rose and walked into the entry hall.

  Tom said, “Thank you for the confidence you have shown in me.”

  “No! Thank you, for being here. I wanted you to have the title to match what you are going to be doing and the authority to make your decisions stand up. Good night Tom.”