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Short Stories & Tall Tales
The Stomping on Boot Hill
Tom Sheehan
Some members in my family think this is a love story before it’s a cowboy story. William Andrew Dickersby, called by all as Wadi, handsome as a new arrow or a new saddle, was a lonely young man working on his father’s ranch. He was 18 and never dated, never danced with a girl, spending all his time learning about the animals on the ranch, and he knew just about everything his father knew. And then, the way it sometimes happens in a story, a niece came to live on the neighboring Pumphrey ranch, the Ox-Bar-X. Her name was Winifred Alice Pumphrey who could sit a horse prettier than the sunrise on the prairie, or a prairie flower high in blossom. She answered to Winnie with a smile each time, and with each smile woke young Wadi Dickersby from a youthful slumber.
He was never the same after that rousing.
The story has circulated for years, within my family and in the legends of the place where it happened. That place is Whispering, a small town with a soft beginning and a softer finish, out along the upper Rio Grande, near the river’s beginning in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. The Rio Grande, of course, ends up in the Gulf of Mexico after a run of 1900 miles, give or take a day’s ride on horseback. In Mexico the river is called Rio Bravo del Norte, where it may never have heard about Whispering, but that doesn’t dim the story by distance from start to finish.
Once or twice in this story, over the long years, a merge in the opposing families might have been in the offing because of young hearts. This is such an entry, but we must realize it was often young and headless hearts that called for added arms, and fueled the feud.
I will finish it here, for you who have some connection yet with Whispering’s lore and legend, and though Whispering has long gone to dust, you have this chance to read a love story that grew out of murder and odd madness in the old West.
“It began with love at first glance and ended, supposedly, with a gunfight,” my grandfather Johnny Igoe always said, with a smile on his face. He’s been gone now for 70 of my 81 years, and never once lied to me, even to his 93rd birthday, which he had gained by two days. In his younger years, before he was even 20 years old, he had worked a number of places out West, after he had come west from Ireland on a crowded boat all by himself. One job was along the Rio Grande, near Whispering, between the river and the San Juan Mountains.
“A gunning for the ages, as it had long and deep routes way back to whenever and wherever the two families first broke into history.”
He raised his eyebrows at that measurement, before he added, “The Dickersby and the Pumphreys had been fighting with each other the whole time the town of Whispering was being born, each family trying to gain a bigger and stronger hold on land along the river. The two families were run from dawn to dusk by the elders of each family, Harold Dickersby and Stuart Pumphrey, both from Tennessee, but from opposite sides of one mountain, which name will not be brought back here lest a new fight breaks out.”
“Those two elders had superior talents at different ends of the scale,” he said at one telling of the tale.
“Harold Dickersby knew animals from their tales to their snouts, their wants and willies, their digs and dithers, and he knew where their strength and promise were. Stu Pumphrey, on the other hand, knew what made a man tick, all the way from birth to gun-in-hand, how they thought, what dreams they had, what end was often in store for them. The Dickersby ranch, the D-Bar-Y, was a study in grooming and care. They could raise anything from pullets to beef cattle. On the other hand, the Pumphrey spread, the Ox-Bar-X, gathered the toughest and rowdiest cow punchers ever seen in one bunk house, but what they lacked in knowledge they made up in guts and perseverance. To a man they could handle just about everything that came their way … rustlers, Indians, desperadoes, even a disease or two. Their horses weren’t as good as the ones in the Dickersby remuda, but they had twice as many under saddle. It made a difference on some days.”
“As it was, the D-Bar-Y was a model of perfection, though it had trouble expanding because of its desire for that perfection, while the Ox-Bar-X grew because of endless energy, in spite of its human misgivings. That made for jealousy, reparation, bragging, and status-fighting along the river and in the territory. Bragging rights went a long way in those days, starting in saloons, barbershops, general stores, trail heads and rail heads, odd campfires that drew strange riders looking for hot coffee, and final services for the just-dead.”
He continued to spin the yarn out as if he had been right there in the middle of everything that happened. I’ll pick it up, from memory, and bring it to where he let go of it.
One day the D-Bar-Y foreman happened to see Wadi Dickersby and Winnie Pumphrey, two secret and young lovers, out on the edge of the river, and kept it to himself. A smile crossed his face as he thought of young Wadi coming of age sooner or later and figured it was Wadi’s business. But within the hour a line rider from the Pumphrey place saw the dalliance and rushed to tell the bunk house all about it. Stu Pumphrey, hearing the cowboy talking lowly about his niece, beat the man into a corner and fired him. Then he rode out to catch the young lovers.
He didn’t find them, but went right onto the D-Bar-Y ranch looking for young Wadi Dickersby. Harold Dickersby stopped him short with a rifle barrel laid over the hitch rail and aimed at Pumphrey who had stormed onto the ranch in the same manner on a few earlier occasions. Everybody in the territory knew old man Pumphrey had the guts of a cornered rattler.
“Whoa there, Stu,” Dickersby said. “What the hell you think you’re doing, busting in here like this? Didn’t you learn anything last time it happened? This way doesn’t work at all with me.” The rifle was still pointed directly at Pumphrey, and not wavering an inch.
My grandfather noted at that point that it was like the face-off between legends, chieftains, or monolithic prairie gods, and was bound to end in blood-letting.
Pumphrey said, “That boy of yours been messing with my young niece out there on the grass. That has stopped already far as I’m concerned. I’m here to deliver that message. I catch him again with her, he’s dead.”
“I’d a soon kill you now, Stu, but I can’t see either of us getting in the way of love. We had our turn at it. Let them have theirs.”
“Not with a Dickersby. They don’t count nothing with me. Just range enemies from the word go. And you know that.” His hands were itchy at his side, like a promise trying to be made. In the saddle he sat tall and straight as a cat o’ nine tail, but not as pretty, or sedate.
“Well, Stu, you just better back that animal out of here and ride on home. I ain’t about to stop love. None of us got a right to stop love.” He waved the rifle again, but with a tempered gesture, as if the crux of a matter was at hand and needed attention.
“We can stop fences being put up or wire being cut, or rustlers at our stock, or someone setting our best grass on fire, but we can’t stop love. We do that, Stu, and the whole world stops right there in front of us. Make no mistake about that. We’ve been there ourselves, you got to admit that fact. I remember how you and Ada almost set the whole damned West on fire, and right at branding time. I sure hope you ain’t forgot all that. I haven’t. In spite of everything else, it was fun to watch. Me and Thelma watched and remembered the whole show of it.”
He almost uttered a small laugh, but waved his rifle a third time, nodded, worked up a smile as if it was a parting gift, and turned his back on the man sitting high in the saddle.
Both men knew where they stood, or sat, or walked, and knew something was in the air that should be tended to.
Stu Pumphrey horse’s hoof beats were soft as they receded from the Dickersby ranch, even as Wadi Dickersby rode in from the mountain side to the north, his mind elsewhere. He did not recognize the rider heading away from the ranch, back down along the river road.
Hours later, when Winifred Pumphrey rode up to the ranch house, her uncle screamed at her from the porch. “You been out there with that Dickersby boy again? I want that over and the sooner the better. I ain’t mixing in with no Dickersbys, you got that straight, young lady?”
Winifred was calm, straight as an arrow, and smart as a whip. Beaming with sunlight or a bouquet of prairie flowers the sun played with, she said, “I understand every word, Uncle, from the word go and the word stop. You can bet on that.”
She turned her back on him and entered the house.
That night she disappeared, not to be seen on the ranch again or in Whispering.
In the morning Wadi Dickersby was missing from the breakfast table before the dawn flash had brought its half-light. Uneasiness settled within the house.
It was not long before a young rider from town rode up to the Dickersby ranch in early light, yelling as he rode in to the ranch house. “Hey, Mr. Dickersby, I found Wadi’s horse and saddle out there on the grass. His saddle was shot right off his horse. There was blood on it when I found it on the ground. The horse was a hundred feet away chomping on green. But I didn’t see Wadi anyplace. I think something bad happened to him.”
Harold Dickersby, premonitions abounding loose in him, screamed at his foreman. “Get that whole bunk house saddled and ready to ride in five minutes. He yelled again, “In five minutes or else.” In less than a minute he had his sombrero in place and his guns at his side, even before the rider from town was able to continue.
“That ain’t all, Mr. Dickersby. I was riding out here to tell Wadi that Winifred Pumphrey has gone missing. Last night, right from her bedroom in the ranch house. One of their cowhands told me when I was riding fence for the Lanyards the other side of town. They found her horse too, out near the river crossing, and blood on the saddle, and her hat tied on it, like she had got off and was visiting.” He raised his eyebrows, and the gesture hit Dickersby right in the middle of his heart. He went down like a shot, but was conscious all the while.
“What other good news you got for me, son?” he said from the ground. “Ain’t I had enough yet?”
“The Pumphreys are getting ready to ride.”
“Is that it?”
“No, sir, not yet.”
“Well, spill it all, and now.” He was trying to raise himself from the ground before his wife got to his side.
“There’s two new graves out on boot hill. No markers, but they was made last night, and the sheriff found a note between the two graves. He said he’ll talk to both of you later, you and Stu Pumphrey.”
The agony extended through both families until they met with the sheriff in town later in the day, the Dickersbys, the Pumphreys, almost a dozen each, all looking as if they had spent the night in hell.
“I got bad news, folks,” the sheriff said. “There was a stomping out there on boot hill last night, a bloody stomping I ain’t about to measure. Bloody rocks all over the place, and blood soaked into the ground, making that place more hallowed than it’s been. Both graves have blood near them, around them, on top of them practically. They killed each other, but had some trouble doing their dying.”
“How’d you know that, sheriff?” one voice said from the restless crowd.
“From this.” He held up a note. “I’ll read it to you.”
He opened the note and began to read … “These two young people that I never met before, shot themselves right off their horses. They both took some time to die from the shots. They said they were in love forever and were going to have it forever, but that was impossible to have it here while living in Whispering. Now they have it here on boot hill and want to keep it for their own. Please don’t let anyone disturb us, they said. Our love is bigger than anything that Whispering could give us. We love you all, they said, but love each other more. Please don’t hurt the man who buries us. We dragged him in on this quite by accident. They idea came fast. We are in love forever, Wadi and Winnie”
The note was bloody and dirty from the rock found on top of it, to keep it from being blown away. The stranger who wrote the note was never found.
Shortly thereafter, markers went into place, and flowers were set by for years on birthdays and other days, until the elder Dickersbys and Pumphreys passed on and Whispering, too, began its ultimate demise.
It was 25 years later when a middle-aged couple came to visit boot hill near the dusty town of Whispering, now folding all the way inward, roofs gone, walls tumbling, the small tributary of the river gone dry, the wind blowing little dust clouds dust all day, the grass not quite so green as it had been. Five boys sat in an open wagon, wondering what was going on, until their father said, holding his wife’s hand, “Let’s go home, boys, back to Texas. This is where Mom and I first met, the closest we can find out here where everything’s fallen apart, except us.”
His wife hugged him again.
I remember once asking my grandfather how come he knew so much about this story and he only smiled at me and said he’d tell me sometime down the road. Trouble is, he got to the next crossing before I did and went down a side road on me. But he often told me that he could write and read at an early age.
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