Alice’s own writing career started in the late 1980s, writing for a column called “Conversations” in Missouri’s Suburban Journal newspapers. By the 1990s, she had expanded her portfolio to include historical non-fiction and fiction, garnering notice in several competitions.  Although a journalist by profession, Alice’s main area of interest is early 1800s western history.  She now writes Native American and other historical fiction stories, often losing herself in her research.  Alice says that unknown facets of history let themselves be known to her, and she has to investigate them further and determine if they will have their own place in her stories.

Currently she is researching a well-known Montana family for a book-length creative non-fiction project.  She remains a member of WWW as well as Western Writers of America.  I’m delighted to have Alice Trego here as my guest.

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Someday I’ll Write That Story: Becoming Lost In Research

By Alice Trego

American playwright Wilson Mizner is credited with saying, “Stealing from one is plagiarism, stealing from many is research.”

There have been numerous variations of this quote since Mizner made the remark while working in early 1900s Hollywood. However, versions of his remark in the decades before and after seem to allude to the same premise – research entails a lot of legwork, scrutiny and investigation so that authenticity is key in stories.

As a journalist, I learned early in my writing career that seeking more than two resources is a must. As a writer, I adhere to Mizner’s “philosophy” so that both my historical non-fiction and fiction have depth of history  . Consequently, I have a tendency to become lost researching history for my manuscripts. I become so engrossed in finding the nuggets of history that I forget I have to write, too. I’ve also discovered that sometimes trickles of information appear before me in the strangest scenarios. For instance, on one occasion I ordered a book from a museum gift store because I knew the material would be exemplary. This hardcover contained beautiful photos of busts and statues by a well-known western bronze sculptor, Bob Scriver. When I opened the book, I turned directly to a picture of a bust of a famous female Indian warrior. A couple of days later, I received a publication from a different museum where I have a membership, and a story featuring the same female warrior caught my eye. The article mentioned a book written about her in the early 1900s and I knew I had to search for that book and read her story. I did some research and the path led me to the Special Collections department of the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah. Needless to say, this woman has intrigued me for many years since that hardcover showed up in my mailbox. Someday I will write her story.

Aside from the many freakish ways that tidbits of history come to me, I also have various places I routinely conduct my research –

Internet Search – While it’s said that writers should use caution when researching the internet, I mainly use the world wide web as a preliminary to get an idea of what I should be looking for before I trek to the library or research on site. I’ve recently discovered two great sites that make my beginning research ideal and lead to many other resources – www.entireweb.com and www.heritage-history.com

 Libraries- I could spend hours in the library. Most city libraries are known for their wonderful children’s sections, and it’s here that I first look up the subject I want to write about. By reading a children’s book first, I learn the important facets of the topic before I delve deeper. At the university libraries, I always make sure I check out their Special Collections area because here is where the small nuggets of my research have yielded bigger nuggets of information. Besides, there is something awe-inspiring about being in the midst of a library’s Special Collections. When I had my first introduction to this collection, I had to leave all my belongings in a locker, go through the glass door entrance, and inquire about my subject. Once that process was completed, I was told to sit down at one of the tables while the researcher went into the long, archive-filled hallway to retrieve the specific book I wanted. They gave me a short stack of unprocessed yellow paper on which to write my notes and I could only use the pencil they provided. No need for white gloves, though, as the book I wanted to read was in good condition. Sometimes when I travel to the place where my story is set, I’ll take a trip to the library. I let the reference librarian know what subject I’m researching and they retrieve specific books for me. If I run out of time, I will jot down titles and authors of the books I was unable to read/skim and order them later, perhaps from www.powells.com, which specializes in rare and used books. Or I might order them from www.amazon.com or www.barnesandnoble.com

Magazines - Because I have many museum memberships, I have the privilege of receiving their publications via snail mail. Some will yield information for my stories, some will not. All the same, I save these magazines because the information contained within their slick covers is invaluable to me and I never know when a bit of history will pop up.

 Books - As a writer, I have a fondness for books. My bookshelves hold an array of books, arranged alphabetically, that I have collected through the years and are mostly about the subjects I’m passionate about– Native Americans especially. I covet my Time/Life Books titled “The Old West” wherein every detail that a historical writer wants/needs to know about the Old West is included in these wonderful books.

I have several museum and historical society memberships which afford some excellent research opportunities –

Montana Historical Society  - www.montanahistoricalsociety.org – Since I feel a kinship to the history of Montana, I joined the historical society there so I’d be able to keep abreast of all information received either by snail mail or e-mail. Now that most historical societies are preparing their archives for digital research, preliminary searches can be done online before a possible on-site visit to dig through the society’s many collections.

The Northwest Montana Historical Society (Museum at Central School) – www.yourmuseum.org – When I had the opportunity to visit Kalispell, MT to do some research, a friend of mine introduced me to staff members at the Museum at Central School. I gave them a little information about my subject, and they were able to pull folders from their attic archives.I joined the society for two years, and a benefit of that membership allowed a certain amount of research with the knowledgeable staff, one on one, as well as having a set amount of copies made for me. I came home with an abundance of information.

 Buffalo Bill Historical Center – www.bbhc.org – I’ve belonged to this icon in Cody, WY for many years. Even though I have yet to discover a special nugget of research there, their publication, Points West, is an invaluable resource for me.

 National Museum of the American Indian – www.nmai.si.edu – Because I have an affinity for Native American history, I joined NMAI in Washington, DC,.  Their slick publication yields some highly informative articles about different Native American cultures. In addition, my membership dues help maintain the museum and its many exhibits.

I am fortunate to have many resources available to me for my historical researches. I’d like to think that perhaps Mizner wasn’t fully aware that this writer of historical stories who tends to become lost in research would take his “prophetic” words to heart.

Paul’s book, Grasshoppers in Summer, was a Spur Award Finalist in 2009.  It deals with the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, which ended Red Cloud and the Lakota’s war for the Bozeman Trail.  The treaty gave Red Cloud and the Lakotas control of the Black Hills and their Powder River hunting grounds through which the Bozeman Trail ran.  But Red Cloud’s triumph proved an empty victory once the transcontinental railroad went through a year later, making the Bozeman Trail redundant.  Paul’s novel, Case File: Union Pacific, deals more directly with the TRR in that it is based on the Credit Mobilier scandal over the funds for construction of the railroad.

So, whom better to ask to do some research on the route of the transcontinental railroad than Paul Colt?

Whither A Transcontinental Railroad?

     One of the most enjoyable aspects of writing historical novels is the research. Most fiction writers have experienced some form of the phenomenon where the characters take over and move the story in some unexpected direction. Once in awhile, historical research can also take an unexpected turn.

Paul Colt

When Andi first suggested the idea of looking into the politics of choosing a route for the transcontinental railroad, I thought it sounded intriguing. It wasn’t long before I discovered a puzzle full of familiar dots with unfamiliar connections.

I’ve long had a fascination with the transcontinental railroad. In its day it was an engineering achievement of monumental proportions. It played an important part in two of my books. I thought I knew something about this chapter in our history. What I discovered in researching the route selection controversy is what seems to be another of those unexpected historical twists.

The notion of a railway to the Pacific seemed a natural progression in the nation’s manifest destiny as early as the 1840’s. The idea took root following the 1848 acquisition of western territories from Mexico and the discovery of gold in California the following year. The California gold rush in particular highlighted the need. Reaching the nation’s western-most possession could take as much as a year of dangerous overland travel or at best months by sea. As a practical matter there was no way to defend California. A Pacific railroad became a national priority. The question of what route it should take quickly emerged as a lightening rod for political controversy.

In 1853 Congress ordered a survey for the purpose of choosing the most practical and economic rail route from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. The War Department commissioned five survey parties. Three parties would proceed west from the Mississippi, exploring alternate routes through the northern plains, central plains to the Rocky Mountains and the newly acquired southwestern territories. Two parties would proceed east from northern and southern California to explore passages to join the westbound routes.

The survey teams finished their work in the fall of 1854. The War Department put forward its recommendation of the southern route preferred by Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis. Northerners in congress thought the recommendation reflected a certain regional bias. In fact, the controversy over which route to select quickly bogged down in differences over the future of slave and free-state territories.

This is where the connections between familiar dots became unfamiliar to me. I never saw the transcontinental railroad as a catalyst for the events that followed. It is possible I dozed off during that American history class in my high school junior year. It was fourth period, right after lunch in a large lecture hall so anything is possible. As I recall, for test purposes, we were more concerned with events and their dates than cause and effect. The controversy stirred up by selecting a route for the Pacific railroad drove straight at the heart of the slavery issue.

At this point it is useful to recall the Missouri Compromise of 1820. The United States had managed to maintain an uneasy balance of power in the Senate between slave and free-states until 1818 when Missouri applied for admission to the union as the twenty third state. Northern interests proposed to ban slavery in Missouri despite the presence of slave holdings in the territory. Southern interests were strongly opposed to any admission that would upset the balance of power in the Senate which protected their longstanding economic interest in the institution of slavery. The issue remained contentious until Maine applied for statehood, at which point both could be admitted, while maintaining the balance of power.

The Missouri Compromise, offered by Henry Clay at the time, sought to put the advance of slavery to rest on some more permanent basis. By its provisions, Louisiana Purchase territories west of Missouri and north of that state’s southern border would be admitted to the union as free-states. Territories south of the Missouri southern border would be admitted as slave states. The effect was to defer for a time territorial disputes over slavery. That equilibrium would necessarily be upset by the routing of a Pacific railroad. Both northern and southern interests rightly reasoned that building the Pacific railroad would spread settlement westward along the rail route and with it the territorial march to statehood.

As eastern railroads built west, they were drawn to favor a central route by

1879 map showing the final route of the TRR

commercial interests in Chicago and Mississippi River commerce concentrated in St. Louis. A central routing clearly favored formation of free-states, thereby putting an end to the Senate balance of power. With antislavery sentiment growing in the north, the south saw such a routing as an existential threat to its economic way of life. No agreement could be reached on a route for the Pacific railroad.

In 1854 Senator Stephen A. Douglas, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act, proposing creation of two western territories along with repeal of the Missouri Compromise. This created the impression in the minds of Missourians and their southern sympathizers of a return to the balance of power formula for expansion. Northern interests were not fooled. A bitter floor fight ensued. The deadlock was broken by the addition of a ‘Popular Sovereignty’ provision to the act, which allowed inhabitants of the territories to determine the slavery issue. This well intentioned bit of ‘perfectly reasonable foolishness’ enabled Douglas, with the support of President Pierce and southern interests, to pass the bill into law.

When the slavery issue reached the ballot in Kansas, Missourians poured into the state to elect a pro-slavery territorial government over the objection of Kansas residents. This prompted Kansans to elect their own antislavery government. The issue bitterly divided the new territory to the point of bloodshed. Kansas burned as a harbinger to the wider conflict to come.

My historical recollection of that period is framed around John Brown and the abolition issue. I don’t remember the Pacific railroad route contributing to the dispute. Maybe if I lived in Kansas or Missouri I might have gotten a deeper appreciation for the dispute in my American History courses, but I didn’t get that connection from mine. Either I dozed off and really deserved that B, or the connection was overlooked.

The Pacific railroad remained a dusty stack of survey maps until 1861 when the boil that became the war of secession burst. Southern legislators resigned their seats in congress and returned home. Opposition to the central Pacific route disappeared. Union Pacific and Central Pacific proposals for a transcontinental railroad were put forward and approved by Congress in 1862. The Herculean construction effort would not complete until 1869, just in time to bind the nation’s reconstruction in economic union. American commerce and defense could now traverse the continent from Atlantic to Pacific in relative safety and comfort and do so in the breathtaking span of ten days.

Once in awhile, historical research takes an unexpected turn. I’ve had the experience three times in my writing career. All three gave me an idea for a book. Do the politics surrounding the transcontinental railroad route rise to that level? Not for me. Not enough guns, gals and horses for a novel. It’s probably already been done by some serious historian. I am interested to hear what you think. Is the connection between the transcontinental rail route and the slavery issue overlooked; or is it old hat? Either way the research was interesting. Thanks Andi.

Paul Colt

As the newspaper progressed and changed so, no doubt, did its language.  Language like clothing changes with time.  I, as a woman, am no longer in need of the millinery goods advertised on the back of the article and I wouldn’t wear an organdy tunic even if it were trimmed with lace.  Nor would I talk or write in such a flowery style. Heading over to Peterson’s Magazine, the story is similar.  Peterson’s was started by the same team who published The Saturday Evening Post, although it obviously didn’t last quite so long.  It began in 1842 as a cheaper version of the popular Godey’s Lady’s Book, sort of the Mademoiselle to Vogue perhaps? My August, 1873 issue contains patterns for such essentials as a ‘Lady’s Seaside Jacket’ and a ‘Tatting Basket,’ while my August, 1878 edition has a song titled ‘Yesterday.’    “We stood amid those bow’rs,/When last I wept adieu,/ Surrounded by fair flowers,/Of many a brilliant hue…“  Paul McCartney it ain’t.  So this leads me to the question:  Why, when we are basically still speaking the same English, using the same words (more or less) are we not writing in such florid phrases?  This is not just a question of usage, of alright vs all right, or of words being employed in ways they hadn’t previously been used (I’ll buy that!), or of words no longer being spoken because they have taken on alternative meanings, e.g. “gay.” It’s a question of fashion in the use of words. We talk about the vitality of the English language, how it continues to adapt, accept new words from other languages, moderate the use of still others while continuing to ‘invent’ still more.  Yet in truth, the way we speak and write those words has somehow become pared down, the figures of speech more direct, similes and metaphors more restrained.

I’m not “weeping adieu” here to such extravagantly embellished phrases as those above, but perhaps we are losing something in going for the ‘quick fix,’ the direct approach in English usage.  Are we not losing words?  I read recently that readers no longer have time to ascertain the meaning of obscure words; they do not want to be made to feel as if they are doing homework.  Writers are competing with television, internet, video games and a host of other distractions which are not as ‘taxing’ perhaps as reading a well-written novel and can more easily be put aside as time permits.  So what effect will this have on English usage?

One further idea that struck me while strumming through the bunch of ancient newspapers in my possession was that our concerns don’t seem to have changed very much, despite the evolution of fashions in and out of language.  On the cover of London Opinion from 23 September, 1911, there is a series called ‘Whipped Topics.”  One of the topics, which I believe we would today call “News Briefs,” states, “Paris has started an anti-talking machine league…”  Sounds to me just like an anti-cell phone or anti-texting movement.   OK, so the ads are, on the whole, out-dated:  “Don’t Wear A Truss!” one screams while a section called ‘Masculine Modes’ deals with bowler hats and turn-ups (cuffs to Americans) on trousers.  Yet the one titled, ‘How I Permanently Removed My Superfluous Hair’ resonates as something still seen in women’s magazines.  And this ad for weight loss may not look modern but don’t these still appear today?  Yet listen to the language and keep in mind that these words are not considered archaic today but…would they be used in an ad?  “The Great Remedy for Corpulence:  …Corpulence is not only a disease itself, but the harbinger of others….note the improvement, not only in the diminution of weight, but in the improved appearance and vigorous and healthy feeling it imparts…It is an unsurpassed blood-purifier and has been found especially efficacious…”

When was the last time you heard someone talk about his corpulence problem or speak of something that was efficacious to his health?  Writers do often use words that they wouldn’t employ in everyday speech, and the S.A.T. English exams contain words students must learn—only to never practice them again.  Why is that?  It’s not as if the language is finite, that when new words are invented, old words must die.

So, is there a dumbing down of the English language? Are we losing words?

No, not me personally, but hopefully if you’re a reader or writer, have been to school, have any education in American Lit. whatsoever, you may recognize that line.  And no, it’s not, as my daughter suggested, from the Bible.  How about:  “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.“  Is that the romance writer’s motto?  Or one of the most famous lines in English literature? How about this one:  “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”  That might be a bit tougher since it’s a translation and, depending on which edition of the book you have—if you have piled through its 1100 pages—it may not be exactly as you remember it.  So let’s try “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…”

Whoa now, as we say in the western historical business.  That’s not only the opening paragraph, that is all one dang sentence and I haven’t even quoted it in full.    If I submitted that to my editor today I’d probably get back a request to break it into smaller sentences.   So what makes a good opening line?  Is it the short and snappy, definitely memorable “Call me Ishmael?”  Could it be the positive, highly quotable statements, offered in the middle two? Or the compelling resonance of the last?  As writers we’re told to have a fresh, new voice and, to me, voice is what makes a good hook or great first line.  Here is an opening of an equally famous book by the author of the last quotation, but I’ll bet my bottom dollar you have no idea from which of his many famous novels this comes:  “Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns….”  Now, thanks to the wonders of Google, I can’t make this into a quiz, but my own reaction is that, that opening is not as individual, not as specific to the story, as the previous ones.  While it may not exactly be a “stinker,” it lacks the distinctive voice necessary to make a great first line.  It also doesn’t set the tone of the book, give you any idea where exactly it is taking place, who the characters may be, or any sense of what, exactly, is to come.  Look at, “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” That one, brief sentence gives you a whole world of information; furthermore, it pulls you straight into the story. And, more than anything, it has a very certain voice.  It seems to me that, nowadays, writers are so keen to get straight into the action as their editors tell them, that the memorable first line has been left by the wayside.

After writing all of the above, my nephew pointed out to me that there are two websites of famous first lines: http://americanbookreview.org/100BestLines.asp  AND http://www.stylist.co.uk/life/the-best-100-opening-lines-from-books  I promise you I had not checked either of these sites nor any other prior to deciding which first lines to include here, so I was absolutely delighted to find that my five good lines scored on both sites. What surprised me, however, was that nearly half—43 to be exact, in the case of the first site—were post-1960.  While I had certainly read a good number of the modern novels, I hadn’t recalled their first lines at all.  So, was that because the older lines were drummed into me as part of education or because they were just better?

You might write to me and say that we remember the lines from classics and perhaps the truth is that we don’t write like authors of the 19^th and early 20^th Centuries.  When I asked my daughter (double degree cum laude in Music and Latin American Studies; hence, not an English major!) if she recalled any first lines, all she could come up with was “Twas the night before Christmas…”  So I’d like to know how many of you out there recognized without help any or all of the six first lines I’ve included above. If you’re a writer, I’d like to hear how much you sweat over your first line to make it a hook into the story? And I’d love to hear YOUR favorite first lines, particularly if they are more recent than these.  On or about Feb. 21st, I’ll give away one copy of Loveland (opening line:  “The clamor started at Ten o’clock when all the men were in their bunks.”) to someone who either ‘stumps’ me with a classic first line, i.e. pre-1960, I feel I should recognize, or enthralls me with a memorable post-1960 first line.  And I promise not to cheat!

Good luck!

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I’m pleased to announce that Katherine Grey has won the ebook of Loveland for totally enthralling me with the first line of Nora Robert’s Carnal Innocence.  Sincere thanks to everyone who took the time to comment and bring other great first lines, both classic and modern, to my attention and join in this conversation.

Eunice’s first story for the NIE in 2011 was a time travel story which she eventually lengthened and published as a book titled Echoes of Kansas Past.  Last year’s serial, set during WWII about a boy whose father was fighting in Germany, was titled Wishing You Home.  It went on to win third place in the Midwest Circulations Management Association contest for the NIE program, while the Kansas Press Association has underwritten the cost of making it available to schools for the 2012-13 academic year.

Eunice’s third serial, A Home for Us, will appear for the NIE program beginning Jan 22, every Tues and Thurs through Mar 15  The story concerns a boy on the orphan train, a theme she also used in one chapter of Echoes of Kansas Past where her two young protagonists are transported back in time to become riders on the Orphan Train. However, Eunice is not alone in using this part of America’s past.  Put ‘Orphan Train’ into the Amazon search engine and you will find no less than twenty pages of books, videos and even music dealing with this aspect of American history. I was therefore exceedingly pleased that Eunice agreed to write about this for my blog this month.

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America was and still is a shining beacon of hope and many have flocked to her shores. The first immigrants usually settled in the eastern cities with New York receiving the lion’s share, and especially so in the years between 1840 and 1869, when the city was inundated, creating a scarcity of jobs and housing. That, in turn, caused the breakdown of many families, and those who found themselves unable to provide for their children brought them to orphanages or abandoned them to the streets. Life was less certain in those days too, and the death of a parent or parents left still other children homeless.

One estimate gives the number of homeless children roaming the streets by the 1850s at 30,000. In 1854, Charles Loring Brace, the founder and director of the Children’s Aid Society, came up with the idea of taking those children from orphanages and city streets, and sending them out on trains to farm families in America’s heartland. Farm tables, it was said, always had room for one more.

Dubbed the Orphan Trains, those trains made scheduled stops, sending out advanced notices in fliers and in newspapers, and those who could take a child or two gathered to await their arrival.  One such flyer read:  Homes for Children Wanted. A Company of Homeless Children from the East Will Arrive at McPherson (Kansas), Friday, September 15. The notice goes on to say that these are children of both sexes, of various ages, and all well disciplined coming as they do from various orphanages.  It also stated that persons taking a child/children must be recommended by the local committee. (Their names (6 of them) are listed at the bottom of the flyer.) Furthermore, the children are to be raised as family, attending school and church and properly clothed until they are eighteen years old, and that Protestant children are to be placed in Protestant homes and Catholic children in Catholic homes. Come and see the children and hear the address by the (attending ) agents, the flyer reads. Distribution will take place at the Opera House at 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m.

Among the children who rode the Orphan Trains was Bill Ferris. He and his brother were to be sent on the train to the Midwest, but Bill got sick and the brother went alone to where, Bill did not know. The next year, Bill was among the next batch of orphans sent out on the train. In Nebraska, he stepped down off the train and waiting for him was his brother and the couple who had taken him the year before. Bill and his brother grew up in a happy, secure home.

Others weren’t so fortunate. One young girl got off a train in Kansas and lived a nightmare of abuse. Another child, “Hoot” Gibson of Missouri, lived in a Brooklyn orphanage until in 1923 at age 9, he was sent out on an Orphan Train and taken by a couple who had lost a son in WWI. They gave him the dead son’s name.  Later, placed with another family, he was given another name. When he joined the army during WWII, he took back his original name.

Some children were taken as servants or hired hands. Some prospective “parents,” especially those interested in acquiring field hands and other laborers, checked limbs and teeth as if buying a horse.  A few would-be-parents, caught up in the excitement of getting a child, thought better of it in the light of day with the actual child standing before them and backed out.

Most agents tried to keep siblings together in the same home, but often that didn’t work out. Two brothers rode the train to Texas. There they were taken into a home and both were happy until the couple decided they only wanted the little boy and so the bigger boy was sent to another home. Soon, though, that couple decided they didn’t want him either and so he was moved on again. This time, he was fortunate to be taken in by a couple with the capacity to love and understand a young boy and in time their home became his home.

Some orphanages sent people out the following year to check up on the children and if abuse was suspected or blatantly obvious, the children were removed, often to another family in the same or nearby communities.

Usually the children were accepted in the community and in the schools, but some were bullied or ignored. Even some adults admonished their children to keep away from those “foreigners.”  The children who were taunted and shunned, overworked, and ill-treated carried with them a kind of stigma and even as adults many would not acknowledge that they rode those trains. It is estimated that about 200,000 children were placed in this manner. The program ended in 1929.

Concordia, Kansas houses the Orphan Train National Museum and Research Center that documents this part of history and keeps records for those looking for family connections. Some books available on this subject are: The Orphan Trains: Placing out in America by Marilyn Holt, The Orphan Trains by Annette Fry, and Searching for a Home by Martha Nelson Vogt and Christina Vogt   For other information contact Amanda Wahlmeier, curator of the museum, at Concordia. 785-243-4471.

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ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL ORPHAN TRAIN COMPLEX, CONCORDIA, KS; Amanda Wahlmeier, curator

For more information on Eunice and her books, please go to her website at http://www.euniceboeve.net  or reach her by email at roneun@ruraltel.net

Echoes of Kansas Past:  In this illustrated chapter book, fourth grade twins, Jack and Mollie, accidentally activate their parents’ time machine.  Their first adventure in time and space is as Kanza Indians in 1620. From there they move on to meet others who in some way have shaped Kansas history, including a ghost, and a very famous horse.   Available from Amazon,  Barnes and Noble,  and the publisher at http://rowepublishingdesign.com/Echoes_of_Kansas_Past.html

Eunice’s latest adult novel is Crossed Trails:

The summer of 1877, Joshua Ryder seeking a life of solitude crosses the trail of a Nez Perce woman with a newborn baby and ends up in Virigina City, Montana. There he becomes the provider of an unlikely family and falls under the shadow of the hangman’s noose.

Crossed Trails is available at http://www.whiskeycreekpress.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=66&products_id=1017 and Amazon and Barnes and Noble

My sincere thanks to Eunice Boeve for being my guest and sharing her knowledge of this fascinating part of America’s past.

Christmas to me has always meant a beach.  Yes, you read that correctly:  a beach.  My grandmother was one of 11 children and by the time I was of school age, the surviving siblings had all moved to Florida to escape New York winters. This meant that, in order to be together for the holiday season, our immediate family was piled into a car for the three day drive from NY to Florida—the beach.

There were things that did compensate slightly for this wrench from the possibility of a white Christmas.  While I was appalled at the sight of plastic reindeer under the palm trees, I came to count the days until I could eat my way through a box of coconut patties, indulge in the sheer enjoyment of slipping one from its individual pocket wrapping and savoring the dark chocolate covering over creamy sweet coconut.   There was the spurt of juice from a fresh orange as we plunged little plastic spouts through the skin and sucked out the fluid.  And there was drifting to sleep to the quiet chatter of the elderly, punctuated by the creak of rocking chairs on the porch, before the mosquitoes sent the folks inside.  But this was not my dream Christmas.  My dream Christmas was in snow-covered hills amidst pines with horses waiting outside to take you for a sleigh ride, the Rocky Mts. as back drop—what I envisaged as a western Christmas. About as close to ‘western’ as my Christmas went was buying carved coconut heads from the Seminole Indians.

I know now that there is no typical ‘Holiday Season.’  Whether you celebrate Christmas or Chanukah or nothing at all, the sheer joy of being with family and friends is what counts the most.  I’m delighted to be sharing my blog this month with 5 fellow authors who have their own Christmas memories—the kind of western ones that I daydreamed about all those years ago.

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Award winning author Paty Jager grew up on a rural ranch in NE Oregon and now raises hay and cattle on 350 acres with her husband of thirty-three years. Always having a story in her head proved valuable—she now has fifteen published novels.

Snowshoe Christmas 

My most vivid memory happened on my twelfth Christmas. My family lived on a 200 acre ranch up a canyon of the Wallowa Mountains. When I say my family, it means my mom and dad, my dad’s parents, my two brothers, and me. Seven of us lived in an 1800’s two story farm house with a wood stove for heat and cooking and an outhouse we used when the pipes froze up.

It happened this particular year that only my dad and I were immune to a nasty flu that was going around right before Christmas. This December also happened to have one of our biggest snowfalls. It was the week before Christmas and my mom insisted we needed the Christmas tree. She didn’t trust my dad to not go out and chop down the first one he came to, so being the only other well person, I was sent out with Dad to get our tree.

Because of the huge snowfall, we only made it up the county road about a mile in the old International Scout before we had to stop and put on our snowshoes. This was my first excursion into the wild on the shoes. My brothers and I had played with them around the yard but walking out in the forest I learned there are pitfalls you can’t see.

Dad warned me not to go near the trees and stay away from bumps in the snow. Walking up to one tree to shake the snow loose to look at it, I ventured too close and found myself four feet lower than my dad. I’d fallen into a hole made by the branches of the tree catching the snow. Dad grabbed me by the back of my coat and pulled me out of the hole, once again reciting to stay away from trees.

We found what I thought would be a good tree. As I walked around the tree, my eyes on the shiny green needles, the ground fell out from under me. I landed with my bottom on a bush and my snowshoes, arms, and head pointed to the opening above me. I was cradled in the snow and a bush. I looked up. Dad peered into the hole, laughing. When he caught his breath, he reached in and pulled me out.

The tree was cut and dragged to the scout with me only falling in a hole one more time. At home, Mom deemed the tree the best ever and as the decorating began Dad told everyone how many times he had to pull me out of the snow. To this day when getting a Christmas tree is mentioned, he reminds everyone how many times I fell through the snow and he had to save me.

Gambling on an Angel      ‘The only thing Bas Slocum cares about is his saloon—until he meets an angel wearing a Temperance ribbon.’  Available on Kindle,  Nook , and  Smashwords 

http://www.patyjager.blogspot.com     http://www.patyjager.net

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Karen Casey Fitzjerrell grew up on a small ranch outside an equally small community in South Central Texas.  Karen’s writing history includes freelancing for Texas newspapers, namely the Houston Chronicle, and regional magazines from 1997 to 2002.  The Dividing Season, her first novel, is a finalist for the 2013 EPIC E-book Award, winner to  be announced in March.

Whose Christmas Tree Is It?

Christmas 1955, my mother drove my brothers, sisters and me into town to buy a Christmas tree. We were ecstatic, scurried up and down the rows of trees like a bunch of rabbits until mother announced all them were too expensive. We begged her to reconsider, but it didn’t help.

Back home, we repeated our spiel to Dad at the back steps where he sat gulping coffee. He told mother to load us back up, that we were going to get a Christmas tree.

Joy once again.

Daddy gunned his old Buick onto the highway and explained that we were going to the deep piney woods behind Uncle Bill’s house. There, we could pick out any tree we wanted and it wouldn’t cost a thing except his sweat in chopping it down.

I don’t think Daddy ever thought about the possibility that each one of his five offspring would pick a tree of their own choosing. I found a tree that was small enough I could put a star on top all by myself. My older sister wanted a tree that had more branches than mine. The youngest bawled because he didn’t understand all the fuss. The other two went in together hoping that numbers would count.

Patient as could be, Dad asked each one of us to stand next to the tree we thought was best. He circled each one without uttering a word. Curiosity was about to choke us kids. What was he doing and why? Finally, he called us to “assembly.”

He said, “Go on back to the car and wait with your mother.”

“But—” He shushed us, and said, “Get.”

We tromped back through the tangle of pine forest and sat on the bumper of the car in cool damp December air while mother practiced her harmonica music and dreamed of fame. Before long Daddy came lumbering out of the woods with the most beautiful Christmas tree ever slung over his shoulder.

He never told us which of our trees he cut down or if he picked out one himself. Typical of children, we each tried to claim it was ours. In truth, it didn’t matter a bit. The Christmas tree was perfect.

In The Dividing Season, Karen Casey Fitzjerrell celebrates the redemptive qualities of the human spirit and raises the question:  What are you willing to give up in order to calm those secret longings that beg for something more?  Available at any book store or at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.

http://www.karencaseyfitzjerrell.com      www.karencaseyfitzjerrell.blogspot.com

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Amy Hale Auker is a Texan now living in Arizona, a writer, mother, and cowboy. Her first book Rightful Place is the 2012 WILLA winner for creative non-fiction and Foreword Book Reviews’ Book of the Year for essays.  She’s never spent an eastern Christmas.

I have been pondering the idea of a western Christmas as opposed to… well, I suppose, an eastern one.

I married a working ranch cowboy when I was 19 years old and in the process, also married myself to a cowboy paycheck, a very limited budget in normal months, impossible with two small children at Christmas.   The first year I got what I asked for..a set of cast iron skillets that he didn’t hide very well on our eighty mile journey home from Wal-mart.  That’s pretty western.

For many years that cowboy cut us a cedar tree from the pasture, and we soaked it in the water trough overnight to rid its branches of ticks.  During those years our celebrations were subject to true births..two-year-old heifers standing heavy with calf in the lot.

In Christmases past, I scattered cheap decorations in every corner of the house, went to several pointless parties, overdosed on insipid music, and cried with frustration into my pillow.

On Christmas Eves of the past I was exhausted, flour-covered, pale, hair-tangled, and footsore.

But one thing we can count on in life is change–no matter where you live.  My nest is empty now; I am no  longer 19.  I cowboy for a living instead of cooking for cowboys, washing up after cowboys, listening to cowboy stories.  On this ranch, the cows graze the forest and we hope for gentle storms.  The heifers give birth among their own and we see them in the spring.

In Christmases past, the winter solstice passed me by.  This year I will stand at attention as the night closes in early, as the dark grabs the stage, as coffee and woodsmoke and cold wind and happy wrap up the year with a frigid morning, saying, “Spring WILL come again.”

Rightful Place —  words that spring from a deep intimacy with the land. Available here.          www.amyhaleauker.com

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Growing up out West, Rionna Morgan followed her love of horses to the rodeo arena and her love of English to the classroom and to writing.  She loves most of all combining the chilling edge of a knife with the sweet surrender of romance. Rionna shares her home in Missoula, Montana with her husband, her four children and the mountains outside her window.

Tumbleweed Christmas

I grew up in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. The very small shadow at the edge of the prairie. On the plains of Colorado, I learned to love to ride my horse. I learned to dance the two-step to a slow George Strait song, and I learned that the best gifts in life last forever.

When I was eight years old, my dad left Colorado and the fears and demons of the Vietnam War went with him. In those days, I had no idea what PTSD was. All I knew is that my mom cried the day he left and never again after.

I was kid. I was a little freckled faced girl with curly long red hair and a Morgan horse named Molly Jane for a best friend. We talked all the time, her and I. When December came and the first flakes of snow began to fall on the wide expanse of prairie, we started wondering about Christmas and Santa Claus.  What were we going to do for presents?

I decided to write a few poems and hide them around the house for my four brothers and two sisters…and my mom.

My mom came home Christmas Eve with a huge tumbleweed and a can of spray paint.  All of us stood on the porch, near the cistern and watched and laughed as she painted that weed a beautiful silver.  We put it in our living room and decorated it with popcorn and cranberry ropes. We sang songs, all the Christmas songs we knew and went to bed knowing that Santa would bring us beautiful things while we dreamed away the night.

In the morning, sure enough, the house smelled like a cinnamon, chocolate heaven. Our tumbleweed had presents, shiny red and green packages, bulging from beneath its branches. My mom, who worked every day, every holiday as a nurse in town, stood singing “Oh, Christmas Tree” as she stirred the melt-y fudge on the stove. And we were a family that day.

My brothers and sisters are scattered over the earth from Antarctica and back. My mother has passed on. But, looking back now at the life I had then, I never knew how cold it was that winter. I never knew that the presents we received came from the neighbors’ good deeds. I never knew what my mom sold and borrowed so she could make us Christmas dinner.  All I knew was that she was magic.  And that she made the best of all Christmas memories that day.

 Love’s Justice   “A complex and sinister plot leading to a trail of deceit and corruption in a women’s prison in Alabama, a centuries old hotel in Georgia, and a family ranch in Texas. Nothing is simple or as it seems.”  Available here                         http://rionnamorgan.com

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Eunice Boeve has lived nearly forever in a small town in Kansas, but the Montana ranch of her  childhood still calls to her.  She believes her parents, who both died too young, influenced her writing. Eunice writes historical fiction and westerns for both kids and adults.  She is a Kansas Notable Author and winner of the Donald J. Coffin Award for her book, Ride A Shadowed Trail.

 My dad did not believe in any form of farming. He used to sing the old cowboy lament: “Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie,” with his own added words; “For some dry farmer to plant corn over me.”  Dad loved horses and raised them to pack supplies for the US Forest Service to fires, lookouts, and trail crews. The closest he came to farming was raising hay for winter feed for his horses and Mom’s milk cows.  He died when we were all quite young.  We kept a couple of the horses and with them and Mom’s milk cows still needed some hay. We kids “camped out” in that hay in the barn and jumped off the chicken house roof, which was connected to the barn, into the loose hay.

One year a few weeks before Christmas, Mom’s catalog order containing our gifts arrived and Mom took out our older brother’s gift and had him hide the rest in the barn. I don’t remember ever believing in Santa. We probably couldn’t afford him. But she always gave us each a gift ordered from the catalog. I don’t recall how we knew where our brother hid those gifts. Did we spy on him through a crack in the barn door or did we watch, lying flat on the snow-covered roof of the chicken house?  All I know is we dug those gifts up and hid them again on the opposite side of the barn. How we must have giggled awaiting Christmas and likely grinned all over ourselves when big brother came in from the barn on Christmas morning empty handed and totally bewildered. What did I get that year? I don’t remember. Which leaves me to ponder: Is it more fun to deceive than to receive?  :-)

Crossed Trails:  The summer of 1877, Joshua Ryder seeking a life of solitude crosses the trail of a Nez Perce woman with a newborn baby and ends up in Virigina City, Montana. There he becomes the provider of an unlikely family and falls under the shadow of the hangman’s noose.  Available here

http://www.euniceboeve.net

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My thanks to Paty, Karen, Amy, Rionna and Eunice for taking part and, most especially, for agreeing to do the following giveaways with me:

1)  One e-copy of my book, Loveland, will be given away to a person who tells me what career Lady Alex is pursuing.  The answer can, of course, be found on this web site and must be sent to me via the Comment box on the ‘About the Author’ page.  Second prizes for all correct answers.

2) Paty Jager has a published Christmas story. Go to her blog or website; find the title and leave it and your e-mail in the comment section here. She’ll send everyone who comments a goodie plus one name will be drawn for one of her books.

3)  Karen Casey Fitzjerrell will randomly select one person to win a copy of The Dividing Season from comments left below.

4)  Amy Hale Auker will award one signed copy of Rightful Place along with a bonus gift to one person who can answer the question, what sort of jewelry does she NOT like?  Answer may be found on her website and sent to Amy  via her contact page at   www.amyhaleauker.com or via email to rightfulplace@gmail.com

5)   Rionna Morgan is giving away a copy of Love’s Justice—drop on by her blog (rionnamorgan.blogspot.com) to enter by rafflecopter.

6)  Eunice Boeve will give away two copies of Crossed Trails to the first two who visit her current blog at  http://www.euniceboeve.net ,find the kind of pie her mother used to make and e-mail her the answer at roneun@ruraltel.net along with their name and address.

Winners include Arletta Dawdy,  Heidi Thomas, Dorothy Colemen, Suzanne Johnson and Cecil Anderson.  Thanks for participating everyone, and a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!

Then something else happened.  My parents bought me a Navajo-made waterfall necklace:  seven delicate strands of liquid silver and turquoise to grace my then-youthful neck.  I thought it was the most wonderful thing I possessed (and still do possess)—and so a love affair was begun.  Native American jewelry.

The curio trade of Native American Arts in the southwest began in the 1880s when anyone with a storefront, from grocers to undertakers, started trading in native goods.  Predominantly pottery, weaving and baskets done by women, the curio trade took off when the railroad came in and with the advent of mail order catalogues.  Silversmithing was originally brought from Mexico in the 1870s when items were traded for livestock and other goods.  But the cost of the materials and the labor required to make one small item proved prohibitive for Native Americans; early pieces were most likely made by smiths of European origin, many from the Canon City, CO penitentiary.

Between 1900 and 1925, the rise in demand for southwest silver jewelry was meteoric.  Pueblo (predominantly Zuni and Santo Domingo), Hopi and Navajo men found employment in curio shops where they were trained to do the store’s own designs and used as living exhibitions, sometimes working in the store front window.   By the 1930s, silversmiths were trained at the Indian Schools.  The silver used was mostly Mexican pesos or other pure silver coins that were hand worked. In the southwest and the Rockies, the demand became almost impossible to meet and so the dealers, who controlled the entire industry, started to bring in mechanization.  In the 1930s, the first machines were used as was sheet silver which saved time for the artisan. However, it proved difficult to get a balance between saving time and putting out more products vs. the possibility of unemployment due to overproduction.  Enter the United Indian Trader Association.  UITA was formed after a bill failed to pass in Congress protecting Indian-made products.  They pressured government to prosecute curio shops advertising “Indian Made Jewelry” which was machine made, even if by Native Americans.

In 1941, the Museum of Modern Art in New York had an exhibition, “Indian Arts of the U.S.” thereby giving the curio trade an air of legitimacy above that of being just souvenirs.  Hallmarking, which started after WWII and became prevalent by the 1960s, also helped; even today, some shops still give you a certificate of authenticity with a purchase, particularly if it is not signed.  Long gone are the prices between $1.50 and $60 for a bracelet—work by certain artists has skyrocketed in price, along with the price of silver, ingots and sheet silver now being used.

Parallel to this, the Fred Harvey Company was expanding, building restaurants and hotels along the line of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway.  A man by the name of Herman Schweizer started work with the company aged 16 in 1887, managing a lunch room at Coolidge, NM.  There he sold Navajo craftwork.  Most of the jewelry he sold was pawn, but Schweizer soon found these items too heavy for tourist taste.  He had the turquoise mines in NV cut the stones thinner so that lighter weight bracelets and other items could be made. When Schweizer was eventually appointed Head of the company’s Indian Dept. to supply all their curio shops with goods, a certain style now known as ‘Fred Harvey Jewelry’ was born.  (See photo 1)

My Fred Harvey bracelet

Most are truly Native American-made since the company stopped carrying anything machine-made when those items were banned from the national parks.  My own bracelet pictured here was purchased in Jackson, WY.

It’s interesting that Schweizer found pawn jewelry disliked by the tourists since pawn these days commands excellent prices.  Generally heavier pieces made for the artisan himself, they tend to be wide with much stonework.  Last summer in Santa Fe I came upon this piece (photo 2) which I was told ‘might be pawn from the 1950s.’  It goes to show how little some of the shop owners actually know, and how careful one must be.  I loved it because of the unusual stone—rather than turquoise, it has sugilite, a purplish mineral first discovered in 1944.  Most likely the stone came down from Canada as it is not mined in the U.S.  But it was the signature that was the real give-away:

Silver and Sugilite bracelet by Kirk Smith

“Kirk Smith.”  A Navajo, Smith lived in Crown Point, NM and won many awards, but his work only started in the 1970s..  His style is singular; he favored heavy bracelets of the old pawn style, with intricate silver work and large stones. Smith passed away in a road rage accident between the time I wrote this piece and posting it. I’m honored to be able to own his work.

On the same trip, my daughter and I were going to see Mesa Verde National Park, more than thirty-five years after my first visit to New Mexico and Colorado.  We drove into nearby Cortez, CO   spotting an interesting shop on our way to lunch.  Over our meal, I told my daughter the story of the Gallup Trading Post, just as I wrote here at the beginning of this piece.  We sauntered over to the shop for a look around, greatly impressed at the variety and quality it carried.  The couple who ran the shop were very friendly and we chatted with them quite a bit, learning that this was their last summer before retirement. My daughter, Cristal, fell in love with a bracelet (photo 3) and called me over to see it.  I, too, fell in love with it and so we argued as to which one of us would buy it.  It was signed D. Reeves.  We were told the tragic story of David Reeves:  a gifted silversmith, his wife had shot him dead believing him to be cheating on her.  It was only after his death that she learned that he had been faithful all along.

Cristal and I continued our argument as to who would get the bracelet when the woman asked us to wait a moment.  She briefly left the shop and returned with a virtually identical bracelet from her own jewelry case so that we might each have one.  It was later as we were paying for these that I learned one more fact which, even as I write it now, makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

She was the woman from the Gallup Trading Post.

Our 2 bracelets by David Reeves

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Further Reading:

Batkin, Jonathon:  The Native American Curio Trade in New Mexico, Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, 2008

Paul’s creative work in western fiction gives expression, as he notes, to his life- long love of the west; his other life as President and CEO of Prism Clinical Imaging would hardly hint at this love of western culture.  Among Paul’s many accomplishments is the fact that he was the founder, designer and director of the nation’s first ATM network.   He has designed, developed and launched no less than fifteen information technology products.  However, let me tell you that I had to prod this information out of him, and it is my guess that he is equally proud of being a Western Writers of America Spur finalist in 2009 for his book, Grasshoppers in Summer.  In addition to this and his two previous novels, his recently completed Boots and Saddles– a Call to Glory, about the early career of George S. Patton, received the Marilyn Brown Novel Award, presented by Utah Valley University for excellence in unpublished work.

Paul and his wife of 42 years, Trish, live in Lake Geneva, WI.  They have two grown children and four grandchildren—their very good reason for not moving to Cody, WY.  Paul does, however, manage to get western dust on his boots when he researches his stories—whenever possible from the back of a horse.  And his choice of his pen name is an obvious nod to his longstanding love of the west.

I’m privileged to have him here  to share his theories about the death of Billy the Kid.

The Shadow of Doubt   

Paul Colt

History: A prismatic lens through which we view the past as seen by those who record it.

With all due respect to serious western historians, I have come to take my historical helpings with that proverbial grain of salt. The power of the printed word may have reached its zenith in the nineteenth century. Recorded history from the period comes down to us with the cachet of fact. But is it always? Pick an historical character or event to research and the next thing you know you’re in the middle of some unresolved controversy. I encountered the phenomenon while researching my first book, Grasshoppers in Summer. A few years and a couple more controversies later I came to the prismatic lens observation. That phenomenon leads to one of my favorite controversies.

Historians agree: Sheriff Pat Garrett killed Billy the Kid, July 14, 1881. Why? Because Pat Garrett and Pete Maxwell said he did. One hundred thirty years later questions remain. John Poe, Garrett’s deputy on the scene that night, and others question Garrett’s claim. They suggest he killed the wrong man and covered it up. Garrett was prompted to write his 1882 book The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid in response to those questions. Enter the power of the printed word. That book comes down to us today as the accepted historical account of the Kid’s death. Is Garrett’s claim proven beyond the shadow of doubt? Or is it a hastily conceived cover up?

Conspiracy theorists got a dose of encouragement in the 1930’s when Brushy Bill Roberts surfaced in Texas, claiming to be Billy the Kid. Historians were vindicated when Robert’s claim was proven a hoax. Still the controversy persists to this day. Why? Because there are contradictions, irregularities and unanswered questions that simply won’t go away.

According to Garrett, he rode out to Fort Sumner accompanied by deputies John Poe and Kip McKinney, acting on a tip the Kid was hiding in the area. They set up a watch for the Kid in an orchard on the edge of town on the night of July 14^th. Garrett’s account states that he saw someone resembling the Kid approach Pete Maxwell’s house and followed him. Poe has it that Garrett entered the Maxwell house to question Pete Maxwell before the man they believed to be the Kid arrived. By Poe’s account, Garrett left his deputies on watch outside where they were seen by the man who next entered the house. This is potentially a significant difference in the two stories. As Garrett tells it, the Kid entered Pete Maxwell’s darkened bedroom and, in Spanish, asked Maxwell the identity of the men outside. Garrett claims he recognized the Kid’s voice and shot him.

Poe’s assertion that the victim entered the Maxwell house after Garrett is intriguing for substantive reasons. According to Poe, the victim reached the Maxwell front porch and encountered the two deputies. Put yourself in the Kid’s stockings that night. (The victim wasn’t wearing shoes.) You are a wanted desperado with a death sentence hanging over your head.

Lincoln, NM:The wall in the foreground is where Billy the Kid and the Regulators ambushed and killed Lincoln County Sheriff William Brady and one of his deputies.

You encounter strangers skulking about your intended destination. Do you go inside to find out who the unknown visitors are or do you scoot back to your hidey-hole? By Garrett’s own account the Kid was too smart to take such a risk. If, by contrast, you are one of the Kid’s many friends in the area, you have no reason to fear the unidentified strangers. If your friend is hiding nearby, your instinct is to warn him of potential danger. You might go inside to find out the identity of the strangers. Then there is the matter of language.  Why inquire in Spanish? Maxwell spoke English. The Kid spoke Spanish but it wasn’t his first language. He did have a goodly number of Mexican friends in the area. Someone entered Pete Maxwell’s bedroom that night and very likely died. Was it the Kid as Garrett asserts, or one of his friends?

If the Kid was hiding in the area when the shooting occurred, he probably got word of his ‘death’ pretty quickly. In a ‘Mark Twain moment,’ he could easily have decided that an exaggerated report of his death was better than a pardon. Could he have escaped that night and later assumed some new identity? It seems possible. That, of course, is speculation. Reaching such a conclusion from here would require a good sized leap in logic if it weren’t for the rest of the story.

Following the shooting, Garrett and Maxwell took charge of the body and the events of that night and the next morning. Their actions are tainted by serious irregularities. Maxwell is reported to have written the coroner’s report and the verdict for a coroner’s inquest. The local postmaster signed the inquest verdict as foreman the following morning. The jurors never met as a group. The coroner’s report and inquest verdict were entrusted to Garrett to file at the Lincoln County Courthouse. Neither document has ever been found. A facsimile of what appears to be the inquest verdict was discovered decades later. Misspellings and the use of ‘marks’ witnessed by Pete Maxwell suggest that some of the jurors signatures may have been falsified. Is it possible Garrett ‘lost’ documents he feared wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny? The body was buried the following morning. It was not publicly displayed as was the custom with high profile outlaws in those days. No photos were taken of the body or Garrett with the body as was also the custom.

These irregularities circumstantially favor the appearance of a cover up. The Kid had a reward on his head. Garrett was not a rich man. Presumably he could have used the money. Under the circumstances you would expect him to take the customary steps to substantiate his claim. He didn’t take those steps, which probably accounts for the long delay in authorizing payment of the reward.

If Garrett killed the wrong man, he had motive enough for a cover up. He also had the notoriety, celebrity and opportunity for reward associated with having killed the most wanted outlaw in the territory.  That leads to the question why would Pete Maxwell help him? History tells us that the Kid was romantically involved with Paulita Maxwell, Pete’s younger sister. The relationship is thought to have deepened in the weeks following the Kid’s escape from the Lincoln County jail. Pete Maxwell’s motive for participating in a cover-up might have been to get the Kid out of Paulita’s life once and for all.

There are those who vigorously defend the account of the Kid’s death as told by Garrett in his book. Apart from money, which Garrett denied was his motive in writing the book, the publication seems self-serving in other respects. The power of the pen firmly established his claim on having killed the Kid. In the book, he suggests Poe and McKinney questioned the identity of the victim at the time of the shooting. He then goes on to refute that allegation. According to Poe, he initially supported Garrett’s claim. His doubts and the question of mistaken identity came later. Garrett’s recounting the events in his book more than a year after the fact seems a convenient response to Poe’s suspicion.

Did Pat Garrett kill Billy the Kid? Historians are convinced. They have Pat Garrett’s word on it. The state of New Mexico is convinced. They’ve got an iconic legend and the tourist attractions that go with it. One hundred thirty years later some of us are still troubled by the contradictions, irregularities and unanswered questions. Which leads to the ultimate question; if Garrett didn’t kill the Kid that night, what happened to him? Did he simply ride off into the sunset never to be heard from again? A plausible answer to that question is ‘Maybe he did.’ Like so much of this controversy, that supposition depends on circumstantial evidence and hearsay that came to light years later.

I’ve written a book based on Poe’s account and the loose ends Garrett and Maxwell left behind. I call it A Question of Bounty, The Shadow of Doubt. One of these days I hope to find a publisher for it. When I finished, I concluded that the controversy is one man’s word against that of another. Both cases are circumstantial. Neither case can be proven conclusively. Once again history has opened a window to the past shadowed in doubt.

Paul Colt

http://paulcolt.com

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Paul has very generously offered to give away copies of his book,                        Case File: Union Pacific, to no less than 5 lucky people who leave a comment.      And the winners chosen by Paul are:  Alice Trego, Eunice Boeve, Arletta Dawdy, Karen Casey Fitzjerrell and Alethea Williams.    Thank you Paul, and thanks to all who left comments!

When President Ulysses S. Grant suspects a  fraud worth millions of dollars involving the transcontinental railroad, he sends Marshal J.R. Chance to Wyoming to investigate. Chance joins forces with a Cheyenne woman who saves his life. Together they confront a ruthless conspiracy that will stop at nothing –including murder– in its quest to monopolize Union Pacific construction contracts and the lucrative land grants that go with them.

Ellen Liddy Watson, by kind permission of the Wyoming State Archives

and her ‘lover’ James Averell of cattle rustling and branding, and summarily took them out and hung them.  Subsequently, Bothwell and his cronies were tried but, being wealthy cattlemen and ranchers, members of the prestigious Wyoming Stockgrowers Association, they were let off.  It was left as a shameful episode in the history of Wyoming.

Even as late as 1966, Helen Huntington Smith in her book, The War on Powder River (Univ. of Nebraska Press, Lincoln), was writing from legend rather than fact and calling Watson “ a strumpet with a vocabulary to match.”  Huntington Smith was, and is, a respected writer of western lore; her book, We Pointed Them North:  the Recollections of E.C. ‘Teddy Blue’ Abbott has gone through numerous printings and is a must-have for any reader of western history.  Yet Huntington Smith, while calling the lynching “the most revolting crime in the entire annals of the West,” describes Ella as a “full-bosomed wench” who had “gone west and gone wrong.”

Here is a case of using secondary sources without checking facts.  The Cheyenne papers, which Huntington Smith had consulted, were under the thumb of the wealthy ranchers.  The stories they had printed regarding this episode were nothing more than yellow journalism at its worst.  And the Denver, Chicago and New York papers picked up the sensational stories more or less as written, thereby endowing the account with a prestige and veracity it didn’t deserve. Cheyenne had lifted the soubriquet of ‘Cattle Kate’ from earlier stories regarding a known prostitute who had a reputation as a wild woman who ran a bawdy house and was a known rustler and thief.  They pinned the name on Ellen, along with the other woman’s reputation, in order to legitimize the cattle barons’ actions.  And that is the way the story stood—until George W. Hufsmith came along.

Hufsmith, who had been born in Nebraska, brought up in Brazil, and gone back to his family’s Wyoming roots to ranch, had studied music and was a part-time composer.  He also served for six years in the state’s House of Representatives and was responsible for the formation of both the Wyoming Arts Council and what became the Grand Teton Music Festival in Jackson.  To celebrate the country’s Bicentennial, Wyoming commissioned Hufsmith to write its first grand opera—‘The Sweetwater Lynching’—and thereby started Hufsmith on a 15 year journey to uncover the truth about Cattle Kate.  The result of his findings became The Wyoming Lynching of Cattle Kate-1889 (High Plains Press, Wyoming).

Hufsmith, who sadly passed away in 2002, did thorough and exhaustive research for fifteen years tracking down records and correspondence and interviewing descendants of the families involved.  He discovered that, rather than the hard-bitten cattle rustler and paramour of ‘Cattle Kate’ that legend would have us believe, James Averell was a well-educated former soldier, a postmaster and surveyor and a justice of the peace.  Ellen Watson was certainly not a prostitute taking unbranded cattle for her favors, but helped Jim run his store and serve cooked meals.  The two were secretly married because the Homestead Act allowed for only one homestead per family.  Few couples paid attention to this, and Ella and Jim weren’t an exception; they traveled to Lander to secretly become man and wife, kept it hush, and signed for two homesteads on the Sweetwater.  And that led to a problem.

Cattle baron Albert Bothwell had been ranching on the Sweetwater using open range he did not own.  When Jim and Ella, combined, applied for homesteads on part of this range, Bothwell lost his water rights.  Ella and Jim controlled over a mile of a year-round spring called Horse Creek and, although Jim had sold Bothwell an easement to the Sweetwater, he had also built four miles of irrigation canals.  In Wyoming, to this day, water rights mean life or death and cause feuds.  Bothwell, an arrogant man full of his own self-importance, was not going to stand for this.   And so, on that fateful morning during a round-up, he gathered six of his closest friends, went over to Ella’s homestead and abducted her before continuing on to Averell’s place and forcing him into a wagon.  And the couple were lynched.

In Hufsmith’s breezy and, at times, humorous style, he goes on to recount the outlandishness of some of the theories previously put forth.  He also shows how witnesses went missing (possibly murdered), how the law was ignored in the case of the six accused, and how history has been hoodwinked by what the press of the day had written.  Hufsmith also finishes the story for us:  of the six lynch men, four sold up and left Wyoming very soon after being found innocent of the crime.  Only Bothwell and his close friend, Tom Sun, stayed on to continue to ranch.  In the case of Tom Sun, his family were still there when Hufsmith published the book in 1993.  As for Bothwell, he hung on to his ranch on the Sweetwater for twenty-odd years before retiring to California.  And then, as legend would have it, he died mad in an institution.

Whatever the truth of the matter, the lynching of Ellen Watson and James Averell proved to be a small battle in a larger war. It was a heinous crime, yes, but it was only the start of what later became the Johnson County War.

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Nancy Curtis of the esteemed High Plains Press has VERY kindly offered to award one copy of The Wyoming Lynching of Cattle Kate-1889 by George Hufsmith to one lucky reader of this blog who leaves a comment.  The winner will be chosen on Sept. 23rd.  Or, naturally, you can purchase your won copy here

Nancy has randomly selected Celia Hayes as the winner of the free book.  My sincere thanks to Nancy for donating the book, and to all of you who left comments.

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My sincere thanks to the Wyoming State Archives for supplying the above photo, and to Cindy Brown for her help.