Dead Line Page 25

  Sage allowed himself to feel a moment of intense satisfaction. The three stories, taken together, would surely reverse the momentum toward a range war. He gazed around the dining room, noting that never before had he seen its patrons so animated and happy. It was clear they were relieved that they no longer had to contemplate taking up arms against their neighbors. He imagined the same relief was spreading throughout the town.

  Herman Eich was crossing the room toward him, his face also alight with pleasure. He took a seat and they ordered breakfast. As they waited, Sage again gazed around the room and finally voiced the thought that had been nagging him. “How can we ever hope to make this world a better place when so many people willingly ignore their moral compass in favor of ignorance and hate?”

  “That’s a rather weighty question for first thing in the morning,” Eich said drily.

  Sage persisted.“The sheep ranchers are standing down now they know one of their own was the bad actor. And, Siringo tells me the sheepshooters are agreeing to meet with the federal agent to talk about grazing in the Reserves. Of course, they are conditioning attending their meeting on the promise that they will not have to attend the same meeting as the sheepmen.”

  Eich chuckled. “You are not celebrating. You should. You stopped these folks from getting hurt or hurting someone,” he noted.

  Spirit crushing resignation weighed down Sage’s words as he said, “Look at them. Their hands are work worn, their dress is humble. These people have so much in common. They are decent, courageous people. Salt of the earth. Yet men and animals have died. Neighbor has taken up arms against neighbor. Where was it going to end, if we hadn’t intervened?”

  Eich’s long, gnarled finger gently circled the rim of his cup. “Recently, I read a magazine serial written by a Polish fellow named ‘Conrad’.” Eich said. “He called it Heart of Darkness.”

  “Doesn’t sound like a ripping comedy,” Sage observed.

  Eich smiled. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell you the story except to say it was about one man’s inward journey to his own soul. I think that is a journey every spirit has to make. He has to discover his own moral compass, test it for prejudice and share it with others. He has to step out bravely and be guided by that compass.”

  Sage couldn’t suppress a snort of derision. Given the range war that they’d only narrowly averted, one could only conclude that bravery of that sort was missing in a whole lot of folks. “What happened to the fellow in Conrad’s story?” he asked.

  Eich didn’t take offense, just continued his explanation, “In the end, he found light as well as dark. He realized there were points of choice between the two. And, he saw the consequences of choosing dark. He turned away.”

  “Happily ever after, huh?”

  That brought a rueful twist to Eich’s lips. “Happy? I think not. Once you have teetered on the edge, you know the abyss is always there. Waiting. There are always choices to be made until the day you die. And, you won’t always make the right choices but you have to keep trying and never become self-satisfied.”

  Sage gently rocked his cup in its saucer.“Siringo said people are like sheep, so many follow blindly. How is it that they can be led to abandon their moral values, their compassion?”

  This time, there was sadness in Eich’s dark eyes. “I guess if anyone has wailed that question at the heavens, it is my people. One can always understand the existence of a charismatic, crazed man. But, it is the persistent existence of his followers that wounds human hope. As you said, ‘neighbor against neighbor.’ Their reasons are many. Again, ultimately, it comes down to choice. The dark or the light. I fear many more mindless hordes will run amok before enough of us have plumbed and learned how to control our own ‘hearts of darkness’.”

  Sage wasn’t ready to let it go. “Sometimes, it’s hard to respect people. Even if we had spoken the truth to these folks,” he gestured around the room, “they wouldn’t have heard. Without Siringo, there would have been a range war. What hope has humanity if so many are willing to follow blindly?”

  Eich nodded, saying, “I understand. Often I have asked the question: ‘How is it that a demagogue can obtain such power?” You look at these good people and wonder why they do not see and reject manipulating appeals to their baser selves—to their fears, greed, prejudice or their need to see themselves as important.

  “My own family left eastern Europe because of the pogroms. For years, we’d lived peaceably amongst our non-Jewish neighbors. We thought some of them friends. And then, a demagogue rose up and spread his poison. Hateful words and rocks flew through our windows. Why? You ask, ‘What makes people abandon their compassion, their responsibility to think for themselves?’ I believe you and I will ponder that question our whole lives.

  “Still, I do not fear the demagogue. If no one will follow, he is powerless. No, I fear the followers themselves. Those willing to surrender their responsibility to think for themselves. Those who lack the courage to live their compassion and instead choose to surrender their will, jump on the band wagon and cause pain to others.”

  “You’re not making me feel better,” Sage said. “I am resigned to the fact that it is my lot in life to try to make a better world. That is my purpose, who I am. But it seems a foolish effort when so many are willing to act mindlessly.”

  “There is no magic answer,” replied Eich. “But there are those who grasp their moral compass firmly and consult it often. They are the hope for all of us.”

  Sage looked at the ragpicker poet. “Did you hear about the wedding?”

  “Ah, the wedding. Yes, Lucinda told me about it,” Eich said without indicating he’d noticed the abrupt change in topic.

  His words delivered a fresh hurt, yet another among the many of this morning. Sage looked down at the table, his hand fiddling with his fork, moving it from side-to-side as he said, “I just can’t picture Lucinda being happy stuck out on a ranch, in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Lucinda?” Eich queried sharply.

  The intensity of Eich’s response made Sage look up to see puzzlement, followed by realization, cross the ragpicker’s craggy face.

  “Sage, you poor fellow,” Eich said softly. “Siringo’s not marrying Lucinda Collins. He’s marrying Xenobia Brown.”

  Before he considered what he thought about that news, Sage felt tears filling his eyes. “But,” he started only to get caught up in trying to remember what had led him to such a wrong conclusion. My God, he thought, it was my fear and jealousy that twisted everything I heard.

  He stood. “I need to find her,” he declared.

  Eich reached across the table and gently tugged his forearm. “She left yesterday morning on the stagecoach to Shaniko,” he said.

  Sage didn’t sit down again. Instead, he looked at his pocket watch. “Are you heading back to Portland?”

  Eich shook his head. “I thought I’d spend some time with the Gable brothers. See a bit more of the country. Visit with our Indian and Gypsy friends if I run across them. Maybe tell them the whole story and how they helped solve two murders. It will make them feel good, I think.”

  “Forgive me Herman,” Sage said, taking paper bills from his pocket and dropping them on the table, “I have a stagecoach to catch with only a few minutes to spare.”

  Eich smiled knowingly, stood up and shook Sage’s hand. “May you travel in peace, health and joy,” he said.

  Sage ran from the hotel to Hamilton’s livery stable, reaching it just as the passengers were boarding the stagecoach. Dexter’s grizzled face lit up when he saw Sage. “Well now, Mr. Miner. Will you be traveling with us today?”

  “Yes, if I can have a minute to buy a ticket.” Sage answered. Just then a voice spoke, “Well, boyo. Why are ye leaving our fair town like the hounds are pursuing your soul?”

  Sage turned toward the familiar voice and there stood a grinning Twill who stepped forward, a young woman’s hand in his. “Before you go,” he said, “I would like to introduce my lady friend, Sama
ntha Bryce. She’s the new teacher up at the Howard schoolhouse.” Sage was surprised to see that Twill’s new friend was the young woman who’d ridden the stagecoach down Cow Canyon.

  Sage grinned and she grinned back. “Oh, Mr. Miner and I are already well acquainted,” she told Twill. He looked puzzled but shrugged it off, no doubt thinking he’d get an explanation later. “Samantha is a student of Willy Shakespeare as well,” he told Sage. “And, her school is out in the Ochocos, near where I tend the flocks.” His words made clear his intent to woo the new school marm in the months ahead.

  Sage wished them well and watched them walk down the street, Twill’s step jaunty. He’d miss the Irishman.

  Dexter told him to climb up to the driver’s seat and soon the stagecoach was rolling down Main Street, past the power plant and across Ochoco Creek. Sage was silent, musing over how swiftly his mood had shifted from downhearted to hopeful. He tried to stifle his exuberance. Just because Lucinda was returning to Portland unmarried, it didn’t mean she’d ever welcome Sage back with open arms. But, at least there was a chance.

  The stagecoach topped the small hill north of town and Dexter halted so he could take a swig from his flask. Sage twisted to take a final look at Prineville, with its sheltering rimrocks, ribbon of river, green valley floor and distant pine-clad mountains. Large birds wheeled high in a wide and pure blue sky. He felt a pang. Whether it came from the beauty of the scene or from the possibility that he was going to miss the close-knit town and its people, he couldn’t say.

  Dexter clucked the horses into action and the stagecoach gathered speed, rolling toward the ponderosa pine forest at the base of Grizzly Butte.

  THE END

  AFTERWORD

  The citizens of Crook County have been blessed with a number of avid local historians. They also have a great resource in Prineville’s Bowman Historical Museum. The contributions to this story made by these historians and the museum are too numerous to detail. It should be remembered, however, that this is a work of fiction.

  While I have tried to accurately reveal the bare bones of the forces at play in Crook County during the early 1900’s, I have altered the time line and some aspects of the locale in order to write what I hope is a compelling story. That said, all and any historical errors are attributable solely to me and no one else. Finally, the title Dead Line should probably be spelled “deadline.” Esthetics and the need to differentiate from a time deadline led to the two-word approach.

  HISTORICAL NOTES

  Smallpox in Prineville

  Prineville was quarantined for smallpox around the time of this story. A piano box was used to fumigate individuals arriving in town. The other measures included fumigating hotels and the removal of tables and chairs from saloons. A doctor did rush out from Portland to vaccinate a number of people in the Prineville area.

  The Ed Harbin in the story is based on an actual person of that name. He was, in fact, the hero of the Prineville smallpox epidemic because he did do exactly what is depicted in this story. His wood box stand, however, was situated in front of the Poindexter and not in front of the actual pest house.

  Official town records do not report that it was the brothel madam who first leapt into action when the smallpox epidemic hit Prineville. But later news articles quote residents who remember that the house of ill repute became the first pest house in town when the madam set up cots and began caring for the smallpox victims. That madam’s name was never recorded nor honored.

  A stranger to Prineville, Frank Hart, did enter the pest house to nurse the smallpox victims. A newspaper article later reported his subsequent death in La Grande, Oregon. The article reported that Hart was a Portland accountant charged with embezzlement and on the run from the law at the time of his death. No one can say whether his work in the pest house served as atonement for his wrongdoing or that it was simply a good place in which to hide out. Regardless he provided care to Prineville’s smallpox victims.

  Charlie Siringo

  Charles Siringo is the name of a cowboy who, for many years, was an agent of the country’s pre-eminent detective agency. At one point he was assigned to Central Oregon at the behest of Governor Chamberlain who wanted firsthand information about the growing range war between the cattlemen and sheepmen. That range war was averted for two reasons. First, because the sheep men did not retaliate despite great provocation. And second, because the federal government reversed itself and decided to allow grazing in the reserves. Meetings were held with both the cattle and sheep ranchers, albeit these were separate meetings. Both sides participated in deciding how to divvy up these grazing allotments and the range peace in Central Oregon became permanent around 1906.

  Siringo wrote a two books in which he laid out the nefarious activities of his former employer. In one, he relates how he intervened when his co-worker, Pat Barry, tried to frame a man for a robbery that Barry himself had committed. Siringo reported his boss did nothing. Subsequent research revealed that Barry briefly served as Portland’s chief of police in 1897.

  Illegal Events and Bad Guys

  The Forest Reserve Act pushed the sheep and cattle out of their summer range in the Cascade Mountains and threatened to do the same in the Ochoco Mountains which were customarily called the “Blue Mountains.”

  There was a Prineville land fraud scheme like the one depicted in this story. A congressman and medical doctor residing in Prineville were convicted of hiring dummy claimants to file on land in the Ochoco Mountains. The doctor served time. The congressman appealed numerous times and the case was dropped on a technicality. The congressman was not re-tried. The two were partners in a sheep ranch and had unexpectedly lost their long-held grazing lease on the military road lands. The evidence showed that they had paid the filing fees for over 100 dummy claimants in a very short period of time. The whistleblower was, indeed, the wife of the chief land agent in The Dalles. At trial, the owner of Prineville’s livery stable was one of those dummy claimants who testified for U.S. Prosecutor Francis Heney. No murders, however, were associated with this scheme, although the burning of a rival sheep ranchers’ barn was thought to have been ordered by them.

  The newspapers of that day report that the Prineville sheriff mentioned in this story, C. Sam Smith, was subsequently convicted for scheming to drive the sheep ranchers out of the area by torching their sheep camps and shearing sheds and by cutting their fences.

  In real life, a man named Asa Rayburn did work for a sheep rancher who is called “Bellingham” in this book. He left that rancher’s employ and became a gambling booster in Prineville. Rayburn was a witness for the prosecution against the rancher in a subsequent land fraud trial. There is no evidence Rayburn was murdered. He simply disappeared from history.

  The indicted sheep rancher was the called the “Sheep King of Oregon.” His attorney was initially charged with facilitating land frauds on rancher’s behalf. Later, in 1904, the rancher and his attorney were tried. Numerous witnesses testified that, with the attorney’s help, the rancher paid them to claim land as homesteaders with the understanding these false claims would be used by the rancher to add range land to his 20,000-30,000 acre sheep ranch. Both men were acquitted. One of the jurors wrote that the problem was the federal land laws which made such men desperate. This defiant act of jury nullification was based on what history has shown to be an accurate analysis of the causal factors underlying the attempted land fraud.

  The Tom Meglit in this story is based on a real person who, as an old man, was interviewed by a local reporter. The news article has him relating stories of how he dry gulched and ambushed a number of union men on behalf of mine owners in Colorado.

  A solitary tree on the prairie near Post is famous in the sheepshooter lore as the place where the Crook County sheepshooters first declared their intention of driving sheep ranching off much of Central Oregon’s open range.

  The fraud connected to the building of the Santiam road happened as described in the story. It is detailed in a book
written by a later supervisor of the Ochoco National Forest. The swindle had a devastating impact on the homesteaders who had claimed the land, only to have to abandon it after years of litigation.

  Central Oregon People and Miscellany

  The largest influx of Euro-Americans into Central Oregon came from Missouri. But, there also were immigrants from around the world. The Irish were brought as shepherds to Morrow County which, even today, has a higher per capita percentage of Irish Catholics than most other counties in the state.

  The idea of Indians selling from tipis erected at the west side of Prineville is based on reports in historical records and photographs. The Indians in the story, however, are based on a band of “renegade” Indians who called themselves the ‘Wyam.’ They refused to relinquish their land and fishing rights at the now vanished Celilo Falls. Their descendants remain on that land. Many Central Oregon Indians traveled to the Willamette Valley to pick hops, gathering meat and other edibles along the way.