Shadow Of The Wind by Mackey Hedges

Shadow Of The Wind

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Shadow Of The Wind Mackey Hedges

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Published by BookSurge 7290 B. Investment Drive Charleston, South Carolina Co-Published by Sigman Publishing Group Robert W. Sigman Copyright 2010

By Mackey Hedges All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means whatsoever, either electronically or mechanically, without the written permission from the publisher, except for brief excerpts quoted for the purpose of review.

All the characters in this work are fictional. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Cover Design by Bob Sigman Edited by Darrell Arnold and Buck Hedges Cover illustrations by Joelle Smith Contact: Sally Smith Joelle Smith Western Art Rosenbo Print Company 2660 NE HWY 20 Suite 610, PMB 302 Bend, Oregon 97701 Front Cover painting is ‘Old Friends” / Back Cover painting is "Ready to Rope" (From the collection of Joelle Smith)

All images are copyrighted" Printed and Bound in the United States of America ISBN: 1456363417 Library of Congress Cataloging-in Publication Data Hedges, Mackey, 1942 – Shadow Of The Wind novel by Mackey Hedges Please Visit us at: www.CowboyBooksandMusic.com

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To Buckaroos -

The handful of men who know the only future that life holds for them is a dirty bedroll and a worn-out saddle.

They have been around for many decades in one form or another, and they live on today; but this is especially for the buckaroos who cowboyed after Will James and before the environmental movement - A Vanishing Breed.

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Buckaroo Man

By Dave Stamey © HorseCamp Music BMI

Sleep in a bedroll of canvas The no-see-em’s feed on your ears Wind blows the dust just like buckshot And I ain’t never seen it rain much out here Smell your own sweat in the evening Wash up at the galvanized tank Nearest town’s forty miles The cook here don’t smile and all these young horses are rank But come a ti-yi-yippee yi-yo On the back of my caballo I whoopi-tie-one-on when I can My spurs they don’t ring much I never did sing much But I’m a sure enough Buckaroo Man Cold fingers stiff in the morning By noon it’s a hundred and three Five year old slicks in the canyons And never a hint of a breeze Jug-headed hollow-backed ponies Provide all with hours of grief There’s snakes in the shade, Cholla on the grade

But come a ti-yi-yippee yi-yo On the back of my caballo I whoopi-tie-one-on when I can My spurs they don’t ring much I never did sing much But I’m a sure enough Buckaroo Man

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Acknowledgements From my very first conversation in 2000, Mac Hedges has said he had a second story to tell. So, ten years later, Tap McCoy and Dean McCuen are back in Shadow Of The Wind.

Through this period, Mac has worked for a few different ranches in northern Nevada and California. I love the days when the phone rings and the first thing he says is, "Can you hear me? I am up on a ridge and not sure how good or for how long the connection will last?"

And then there are times I will try and reach Mac. The phone rings..."Mac here." Mac, it's Bob...."Wait hold on" ...and I'll hear wild hoots and calls over the phone. Then, Mac will be back and explain that he is trying to get a herd of cattle into a pen for shots or up on a truck going to a feedlot.

Gee, and I just drive to work!

Over these past years, Mac has inked out more and more of the new book.

Then about a year ago, he ended up in a Reno hospital with a broken leg.

Seems he was corralling a group of horses... and as Mac explains it, "sometimes they get playful!" Well, playful meant they kicked him. So, home he went for a months rest. His wife, Candi told him to stay out of her hair!

So, he focused full-time to writing.

Shadow Of The Wind continues the saga and adventures of Tap McCoy and Dean McCuen. And while, Tap colorfully told the story of their rollicking adventures in his voice in Last Buckaroo; it was his viewpoint. In Shadow Of

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The Wind, we get the "full story" as told by Dean and more insightful background into Deans life. Was their meeting, "by chance," or is there more to it?

Dean provides added background to many unanswered questions and expands upon the vivid character descriptions of some of our favorite characters like Ben Bird and Donny; Tenna Ray and a host of old and new characters.

Once you start... you're just are not going to want to put it down! Enjoy.

Thanks to Mac, for writing a great sequel and allowing me to share in these adventures. To his wife Candi, for relaying messages when he is, "somewhere up in the range;" to my wife, Susanne for her support and back office assistance in getting books shipped; to Bill Reynolds, Packy Smith, Larry Maurice and the people of Lone Pine, California for your help in my continuing education of Western heritage and your contributions in maintaining Western Culture.

Happy Trails

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Acknowledgement: Joelle Smith The cover of Shadow Of The Wind, is again a tribute to one of America’s greatest Western artists and sweethearts, Joelle Smith. Joelle left this world, far too early, at the age of 47. She was a big fan of Mac, his writings and Western Culture. We are very privileged to bring one of her favorite originals to the cover - "Old Friends."

A number of years ago, a mutual friend of Mac and Joelle gave her a copy of Last Buckaroo to read - she fell in love with it.

In 1999, Joelle made a trip to the Utah ranch Mac was working; spending a few days riding along and helping the outfit with branding. Later one of her more popular paintings, “Waitin’ in The Shade” came out; a portrait that captures Mac's son youngest son, Sam, waiting in the shade of his horse for his turn to rope at the branding.

I called, Joelle's mother, Sally, in early 2008 to introduce myself and talk about incorporating Joelle's art with the publishing of Last Buckaroo. She knew of Joelle's feelings for Mac's writing and generously offered Joelle's original "Reata Man" for the cover and additional illustrations for the chapters.

Sally, has again, generously contributed to Shadow Of The Wind. Joelle's original "Old Friends" is on our cover as well as 13 beautiful illustrations of horses and Western culture.

Thank You Sally...

We invite you to see the variety of Joelle's creative talent. www.JoelleSmith.com.

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AUTHOR’S DISCLAIMER

This is not a western shoot ‘em up type of cowboy story; in fact it really doesn’t have much of a plot. It is a story I wrote for my own enjoyment while I was healing up from a broken leg.

The way cattle are being run in the west is changing so fast that a lot of the old ways are being forgotten as well as the way people talk and think. I wanted to try and capture a little of this for future generations.

I make no claims to being an author. I am a buckaroo (high desert cowboy) that enjoys putting his thoughts down on paper. Because I have no formal training or education in the literary field my style drives professionals crazy.

In fact when the editor got hold of what I had written he almost had a fit.

He had more than a small amount of difficulty finding the correct spelling for many of the western slang terms that are used. However, the thing that came closest to driving him nuts was the fact that, as he said, “It is nothing more than a series of short stories strung together by a thin thread of unrelated facts!”

My answer to that was, “SO WHAT? It’s not supposed to be a novel. It’s a little bunkhouse tale about the lives of a couple of high desert buckaroos. It was written with the intent and hope of passing on information in an enjoyable manner.”

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I guess what I am trying to say is that if you are starting out to read this with the objective to criticize you are going to find plenty to work with. On the other hand if you want to get a first hand view of real western life ranging from boring to thrilling I think you will find it in these pages, at least I hope so.

Like my first book, all of the fights, brawls and bucking horse rides are real.

The characters, although fictional are in part based on the lives of actual people. Even the ranches in this story are distinctively similar to actual cattle operations I have worked on or visited. In other words “This is the

real deal� even if the names have been changed to protect the guilty.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope that you enjoy it.

Mackey Hedges

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DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my best friend, the one person that has stuck by me even when I was wrong. A person that has shared my campfires in the mountains and my isolated desert cow camps.

The person that cleaned my

cuts, bandaged my bruises and hauled me to the doctor when I had broken bones that we couldn’t handle our selves. The person that packed water from the creek and chopped wood for the fire to wash my clothes. The person that home schooled our kids, fed our leppie calves, and cried with me when we went broke. The mother of my children, my confessor, my councilor and as I said above, my best friend. The only woman in the whole world that would have put up with the life that I chose to live. I humbly dedicate this book to Candace Susan Hedges, the most unique woman that I have ever known.

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Time Table for Shadow of The Wind

1. Tap McCoy was born April 15, 1909 near Grace Lake, Idaho 2. Dean McCuen was born on Feb. 20, 1950 in Elko, Nevada 3. On April 15, 1954, Dean’s mother was buried in the McCuen Ranch cemetery, and Dean went back east to live with his Aunt and Uncle.

Dean was not quite four at the time.

4. Dean was drafted into the army on May 24, 1969. Dean was 19 years old 5. Dean was discharged from the U.S. Army on May 24, 1971, at Fort Hood, Texas 6. Dean met Tap the first part of June, 1971. Dean was 21, and Tap was 62.

7. Dean and Tap worked at the Lost Lake Pack Station from June through Oct. of 1971.

8. Dean and Tap worked for Ben Bird from the last part of Oct. 1971 through May of 1972.

9. Dean and Tap went back to work at the Lost Lake Pack Station the end of May and worked there through Sept. of 1972.

10. Dean and Tap worked for the Wilcox Ranch from Sept 1972 through April of 1973. The Imnaha Ranch straddled the Oregon/Idaho state line in the northeast corner of Oregon not too far from the Washington border.

11. Dean and Tap worked on the Flying D in South Central Oregon from May through Aug. of 1973.

12. Dean and Tap only worked for the Turkey Track Ranch in Oregon for three weeks in Aug of 1973. On August 29th, Dean almost beat Bill Anderson to death, and they left the ranch in a hurry headed south.

13. Dean and Tap went to work for the Alamo Cattle Feeders (feedlot) near Fresno from Sept. 1973 through May of 1976.

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14. In May of 1975, Dean signed Tap up for Social Security. Tap was 66 years old.

15. Dean and Tap went to work for Sam Winzlo on the Wilson Ranch in June of 1976.

16. TenaRay Winzlo was born March 13, 1959. She was 17 years old when she met Dean and Tap. Dean was 26 and Tap was 66.

17. In Oct. of 1976, Dean and Tap went to work For Dean’s Dad on the family’s MC Ranch in northern Elko County, Nevada.

18. In the winter of 1979, Dean’s dad located TenaRay at an all Indian school in Pennsylvania. It had been 3 years since Dean had last seen her.

19. June 17, 1980, Dean and TenaRay were married. She was 21, and he was 30.

20. The summer of 1984, Mackey Hedges interviewed Tap and began work on Last Buckaroo. Tap was 75. The book came out in print in the winter of 1989.

21. The spring of 1999, Tap celebrated his 90th birthday. Dean began work

on Shadow of The Wind. Dean was 49 and TenaRay was 40. Their children ranged in age from 17 to 12.

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Map of the Western United States

1. Demar, Arizona where Dean and Tap first met 2. Lost Lake Pack Station 3. Ben Bird’s Ranch 4. Wilcox Ranch on the Imnaha River 5. Flying D Ranch (Lazy J Cattle Company) 6. Turkey Track Ranch 7. Alamo Cattle Feeders (Lazy J Cattle Company) 8. Wilson Ranch 9. Fort Apache Reservation (TenaRay’s home at White River) 10. MC Ranch

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A Shoshone Winter Tale

Back in the days when animals roamed the earth like men, Coyote went hunting to find food to feed his family. He took his bow and went out into the snow. It was very cold, and the snow was deep. Coyote wanted to stay inside where it was warm, but his family had not eaten for many days, so he went out into the cold.

A little ways from his camp, he came on the tracks of Da-bo, the rabbit.

He followed the tracks until he saw where they ended at the base of a sage bush.

Coyote went round and round the bush until he saw the little spot where Da-bo’s breathe came out through the snow looking like the smoke from a small fire.

Coyote took careful aim with his bow and shot an arrow into the base of the bush just below where he saw the smoke from the rabbit’s breath.

The rabbit let out a loud scream, flipped, and flopped around in the snow smearing the white crust with his blood.

Coyote went over and told Da-bo that he was sorry he had to shoot him, but it was necessary to keep his family alive.

Rabbit knew he was dying so he forgave Coyote. He said, “Do not feel sad Coyote. Nothing lasts forever but the mountains and the sky. The rest of us go through life making no more impression on the world around us than the shadow of the wind does on the valley floor. A short time after we are gone no one will remember that we ever walked the land.”

Lom ishie da (And the Rat’s tale came off).

I am writing this so that the memory of Brian “Tap” McCoy will last a little longer than the shadow of the wind.

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Introduction to SHADOW OF THE WIND

Last week we had a party celebrating Tap McCoy's 90th birthday and the tenth anniversary of the publishing of his story Last Buckaroo. I believe that half the people in northern Nevada as well as many out-of-state friends and admirers showed up for the celebration.

Mackey Hedges, the author that helped Tap with the book, was also there. In a conversation with the writer that evening, I told him that I enjoyed the story for its accurate portrayal of ranch life, but I thought that they were stretching it a little to consider it a complete biography of a man that I had come to love like my own father. I pointed out that there were many things that Tap had related to him that had been edited from the story and even more that Tap had failed to tell him.

Later in the evening, Hedges came over to where Tap and I were entertaining a few guests and prompted the two of us to tell the group some additional adventures that we had shared. Before long, Tap and I had quite an audience as we reminisced and relived stories from our lives, both before and after we met.

After watching the obvious enjoyment that the assembled group seemed to derive from the things that they were hearing, Mackey jokingly suggested that I write my own story. Later, he told my wife that he was serious and felt that my story had the potential of becoming even more popular than his book. He promised her that if she could get me to finish it, he would help with the editing and make every attempt to get it published.

Since the party, I have been goaded by Tap, nagged by my wife and encouraged by friends to complete my version of our little Wild West tale. In the end, I came up with what I believe is a story that will be of interest to the many fans of Tap's book, Last Buckaroo.

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I started my version of this narrative by giving a brief autobiographical outline of my family's history followed by some stories from my own early life.

I did the same for Tap. I felt that this was important as it gives the reader some idea of why he and I acted and reacted the way we did to the different events that took place later on in the story.

I followed that by relating more wrecks and adventures that Tap and I shared that were either intentionally omitted from Last Buckaroo or not remembered by Tap at the time of his taped interviews.

With all that having been said, why don't you get a big cup of coffee, find a nice, comfortable chair, lean back and relax while I tell you about the west, the way it once was and now is.

Dean McCuen MC Ranch Tuscarora, Nevada

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CHAPTER 1 It was my great grandfather Thomas Bains McCuen that laid the foundation for this ranch. We know only a little about him. I know that he came from Ireland to work on the railroad. When the east and west lines met at Promontory Point, Utah in May of 1869, he jumped on the first train headed west.

I’ve been told that Thomas went all the way to the west coast before returning to the deserts of Nevada. During that time he worked at a variety of jobs ranging from mining to blacksmithing. However, he eventually ended up working for a sheep man named Taylor somewhere around Tuscarora, Nevada.

While herding his band in the foothills below the Independence Mountains he made the decision to file a homestead on a piece of ground that ran along House Creek.

The homestead in the middle of his sheep range did not make Mr. Taylor too happy. However, there appears to be little that he could do about it.

Over the next few years county court records contain a variety of minor lawsuits between the two men with all but one coming out in favor of Thomas McCuen.

I have no idea where he got the money or the animals to stock the place, but by the time that he married my great grandmother, Maria Ann Tumanello, Thomas had a respectable little spread put together. He had also built a livable, but small, two-room log cabin.

Great Granddad not only had a house built by the time he got married, but he had also built a log barn, a set of pole corrals, a smoke house and dug a root cellar in the bank of the creek where he got the dirt for the roofs of the house and barn.

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The cellar has caved in, and the corrals and smoke house have lost the battle with time but we still use the original cabin for storing salt and trace mineral. We had to jack it up a few years ago and replace the lower layer of logs as the original ones had rotted very badly. My father replaced the roof with a metal one before I was born.

Thomas’s wife, Maria Ann, had been born in New York, but her parents were both from Italy. Her father had also come west to work on the railroad but had eventually opened a grocery store in Elko.

We have an old tintype photograph of Maria Ann taken on her wedding day. She was truly a beautiful woman. How she had managed to reach the age of 26 without marrying is hard to figure out. It’s also hard to figure out why she chose or agreed to marry a poor, illiterate, Irish homesteader when she obviously could have had her choice of the more prominent, eligible, businessmen of the city.

The county records show that they were married on June 1, 1872, in the Catholic Church in Elko. The records also show that they took out an additional homestead in Maria Ann’s name less than a month later.

That homestead adjoined Great Grandpa’s on the north side and took in land along Taylor Creek. Those two pieces of deeded property gave the McCuens a total of 340 acres made up primarily of sub-irrigated creek bottoms. It also gave them the right to run as many cattle on the federal lands as they could put up hay to winter.

The County records only indicate that they were running 100 head of cattle and five horses but everyone lied about their property assessments in those days to avoid paying higher taxes. My guess is that they were probably running closer to 300 head of cattle and who knows how many horses.

The two of them had a tribe of kids, but I have no idea what the actual number was. Some of them were baptized in Elko while others seem to have

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missed out completely on the religious formalities. I say this because every year we have people show up here at the ranch claiming to be the grandchild of one of Great Grandpa and Great Grandma’s kids that we have never heard of.

Right now, as near as we can tell, they must have had at least ten children that lived to raise families of their own. And, who knows how may died in infancy.

My grandfather, Thomas Anthony McCuen was the oldest of the children, born on November 26, 1873. As was customary in those days, he inherited “the whole enchilada” when Great Grandpa passed away.

When he was young, everyone called him Tommy, but, as he got older, he came to be known as Tony. Some people referred to him as Big Tony because of his size.

I never knew him, but from what I’ve heard and have been able to put together Grandpa Tony inherited the negative traits of both the ethnic groups from which he sprang. Like many Irishmen, he seemed to like to fight, and, like a lot of Italians, he was hot headed and easily provoked. This didn’t help to make him very popular with his neighbors or the people that he had to deal with.

Although few people that actually knew him are alive today, I am told he was something of a local legend in his day. However, legend or not, if only half of the stories about him are true,

Tony must have been a tough old

codger and somewhat dangerous.

It was Grandpa Tony who built the ranch into what it now is. He bought out his neighbors when he could, fought the sheep men when he had to and drove off the homesteaders that encroached and tried to settle on what he claimed as his range.

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By the time he was forty, he had acquired several thousand acres of deeded land, had grazing rights on hundreds of thousands of acres of federal and state lands and was running around 5,000 head of mother cows. No one knows how many yearlings and two-year-old cattle he had nor is there any accurate record of the number of horses that were on the ranch But, more importantly to me was the fact that even the people that didn’t like him had to admit that Grandpa McCuen was not only a first rate cowman but was also one hell of a buckaroo.

My father said that Grandpa Tony left home to work on the neighboring Garrat and Altube Ranches when he was just a teenager. It was there that he was first exposed to the old California vaquero style of cattle work.

Grandpa seems to have been a good student learning the fundamentals of roping as well as making good bridle horses. After returning home, he continued to practice the skills that he had learned. By the time he was in his late 20s, it was said that there wasn’t a horse in Northern Nevada that he was incapable of riding, and that he could throw a variety of fancy loops and rope catches.

I don’t know if Thomas Anthony McCuen ever actually killed anyone, but I do know that there are people that, even today, claim that he did. In fact, my father has a couple of old, yellowed, newspaper articles telling of Thomas McCuen being suspected of having some involvement in two different murders.

Among the unprinted, local folk stories is the account of the time that Grandpa and a cowboy from Tennessee by the name of Jackson Hill caught a young sheepherder with a band of woollies up on Grandpa’s summer range.

One warm summer day, they are supposed to have ridden into a high mountain meadow that we call Camper’s Choice. There, they found the boy asleep by the creek while his sheep watered along its bank. Tying their

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horses some distance away, they silently walked up and grabbed the lad before he even knew they were there. Hill tied the boy’s hands behind his back, led him over to a big quaking aspen tree where he was asked his name and date of birth.

Slowly and deliberately, Grandpa Tony carved the information into the bark of the tree in sight of the wide-eyed kid. He then added the words, “Hung July 12, 1919” And, with that, they strung him up. They let him choke until his eyes bugged out and he was almost dead. Then they cut him down and told him that if he was there when they got back they would finish the job. It probably goes without saying that they never saw the young man again.

The old tree is dying now, but you can still make out the scarred carving in its gray bark: Will McGregor B. 1900 Hung July 12, 1919

Back in the days before the Taylor Grazing Act, there were a lot of tramp sheep men and free grazers roaming around the country. For the most part, these people owned no deeded land. They simply drifted their herds and flocks from one spot to another, grazing it off and then moving on.

It was during this time that Grandpa is suppose to have ridden up to a tramp sheep herder’s camp and started cussing out the man for trespassing on his range. Suddenly, the door of the sheep wagon opened and a woman appeared.

Grandpa fell all over himself apologizing for using that kind of language within hearing distance of her. The lady accepted his apology and invited him to eat with them. When dinner was over, and he was getting ready to

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leave, the woman gave Grandpa a sack of homemade bread and a couple of jars of chokecherry jam that she had put up.

After mounting his horse, he sincerely thanked the lady for the fine meal and the bread. He congratulated the herder on being lucky enough to find such a good woman to share his remote existence.

However, just before he rode off Grandpa turned his horse and faced both of them. It was at that point that he ended his farewell address by saying that if the sheep were still there when he came back that way the woman would be a widow.

Out on the most northern end of our summer range is a lone grave. It lies next to a spring that we simply call Tip’s. The story that goes with that grave is a lot more gruesome than the two previous ones.

It seems that Grandpa had filed on the spring a couple of years earlier, but a homesteader by the name of Kimbol had squatted on the water and fenced it off. When one of Grandpa’s riders came into headquarters to get supplies, he told of checking the spring. The young cowboy said that Kimbol had shown no intention of leaving when the buckaroo had told him that the cattle in that area needed the spring for water.

Grandpa immediately threw his bed on a packhorse and rode out alone to pay Mr. Kimbol a visit. It took him a day and a half to ride to the little homestead. When he got close to the spring, he worked his way around to the backside of a nearby hill. He sat on the little rise above the fenced-off area for over an hour accessing the situation.

The small spring flowed from beneath the front of a rock face. It ran down into a stock pond that Grandpa had dug. The overflow from the little pond ran out and irrigated a small meadow of about two acres before disappearing back into the thirsty desert soil.

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Grandpa saw six cows with an earmark that was not familiar to him as well as several of his own cows. The six strange cows were feeding while his cattle stood on the outside looking longingly at the water that was inside the fence.

To Grandpa’s experienced eye this indicated that the squatter probably brought his cows in each night for water. This also keep them from straying too far away.

The little cabin that had been built sat no more than 30 feet from the spring. Even from a distance, it was easy to see that the little shack was not much. It was probably less than fifteen feet square with a dirt roof.

Tony noticed there were flowers growing in front of the shack and assumed that the woman had planted them. He also saw a couple of filthy little kids playing in the dirt behind the cabin. Nearby a man grubbed weeds in a small garden patch while a woman carried a bucket of water from the seep in the rocks to irrigate the little plot.

The woman’s hair was unkempt, and sweat streaked her dusty face. The man had not shaved for a couple of days, and his gray stubble occasionally caught the reflection of the sun. His clothes had been patched in a dozen places yet, one of his knees still shown from a hole in his coveralls. The entire family was barefooted.

When he was sure that there was no one else around and that the man did not have a gun within easy reach, Grandpa rode slowly down to the gate and stood outside until Mr. Kimbol walked over to talk with him. The woman and children followed a respectful distance behind.

The whole family took in the dark complexioned, clean-shaven, long, lean rider with the big hat, white shirt and black vest. The wife thought to herself that the silver on his horse’s bit probably cost more than they would make from their labors for the entire year.

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Grandpa was not much for long speeches so he never introduced himself or went through any other form of formalities. He simply said that they had two days to get packed and be gone.

Kimbol was either brave, stupid or had never heard of my grandfather.

He immediately started woofing back at Grandpa making quite a show in front of his family. He obviously wanted to make sure that his wife knew that he wasn’t going to be intimidated by any big-time ranch owner.

The man on the shiny bay horse let Mr. Kimbol make his speech, but, when the nester was finished, Grandpa ended the meeting by quietly saying nothing more than, “You heard what I said when I got here.”

Then he turned and rode slowly back to the nearby hill where his packhorse grazed in the shade of a lava outcropping. The last the Kimbols saw of him, he was riding casually back in the direction of the ranch.

We know all of these details from reading the deposition that Kimbol’s wife and Grandpa gave to the sheriff a short time later. They’re still on record at the county courthouse in Elko.

Kimbol was smart enough to take his wife and children into town, but he was dumb enough not to also stay. They found him a couple of weeks later.

Someone had wrapped him in a blanket, soaked it in kerosene and touched a match to it. I can only imagine how agonizing his death must have been.

Grandpa was the likely suspect, but he had an ironclad alibi. He did however, pay the widow for the six cows that were left at the homestead. In addition, he bought the lady and her kid’s train tickets back east.

Later that summer, Grandpa had his men re-brand the six cows with his iron, burn the cabin, take down the fence and build a small enclosure around the lonely grave.

When my wife, TenaRay, heard this story, she had me drive her out to the spring. She asked me to help her clean up the area around the grave and

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put up the board fence in order to keep the cattle out. Then she said a prayer or whatever it’s called when Indians talk to the dead.

She explained to Mr. Kimbol’s spirit that her immediate family had nothing to do with his terrible death and promised that, if he would not harm us when we were in the area, she would come every year and care for his final resting place.

One year she had me take the kids with us and explained to them what we were doing and why. She told them that, when she and I were gone it would be their responsibility to come take care of the little spot.

I don’t think it made much of an impression on the little urchins. All they wanted to do was play in the pond and eat lunch.

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