Tom Sheehan

As Shasta Corbin, sheriff of Polatta, rode into the canyon in the heat of the day, he saw a pair of vultures high overhead floating on a thermal, which most likely had risen from the heart of the canyon. With that sight, also came a putrid odor. In one drawn breath he caught the ripe smell of death. It was a stench he’d never get used to, and recognized instantly.

Tom Sheehan

He was not a gunfighter, not a killer, not a bank robber or prairie brigand, but he was as mean looking as a cornered peccary. When he stepped off the weekly stage in Cross Roads, Utah, the only passenger, a dozen people were waiting around to see and size up new arrivals. It was a game they played calling on insight, first impressions, internal likes and dislikes, guesswork, and open curiosity that had been engineered by the imaginative bartender at the Close Call Saloon, Shank Bellbin.

Tom Sheehan

Clay Hartung’s father said, on many occasions when talk turned to the family around a campfire or at a saloon with pals, “The boy was born on a horse, as far as I know. I was away on a drive at the time and his mother never told me anything different.” He’d chuckle and always add his final word, “The lady knew her way around the horses, too. You can say he was born with saddle and reins in his blood.”

Tom Sheehan

The freighter stumbled into the De La Grasso Station in mid-July of 1876, more than 50 miles from Tuscon, blood on his arm from a flesh wound, but yelling out so everybody in the station could hear him, “I saw him! I saw him! I saw The Hawk! They was holdin’ me up, three ornery cusses, and he come out of the trees like he was a fire-eater, shootin’ off his guns and scarin’ them critters off quicker’n any fool can imagine.

Tom Sheehan

Prior strangers, leaving Boston on the eve of May 1st, 1867, heading west on a train, neither married, both in their early 20s and veterans of the Great War of the States where they met in the ranks of Company B, 2nd Battalion of the 4th Massachusetts Cavalry Regiment, Merlin Lockland and Pouvard BeLaire knew their friendship truly began aboard the steamer Western Metropolis.

Tom Sheehan

First the trail came, a rough ride at first to the river towns of Beaumont and Breadloaf, then the stagecoach line opened and that was followed in a dozen years by the railroad. People in both towns knew many in the other town, from relatives to old riding pards on the cow trail to acquaintances in the beef business. And from the first the sheriffs of both towns held up their records as the best law-controlled town on the river.

Tom Sheehan

Bearded Max, mean as a barn full of peccaries, was never seen smiling as though he was judging the whole world all at one time and finding it wanting, spoke harshly, as always, to Marshy Barrett, one of the 7-Ten hands. “Everythin’ in place, Marsh?” He said it the way boss men don’t trust any minions under their wing and are quick to place blame for all faults thereafter.

Tom Sheehan

Javer Moncton, who owned a decent-sized ranch with a decent-sized herd of cattle in Nevada foothills near the town of Jasperville, woke with a start, and recalled the sound that roused him, one that plunked at his cabin door. The first thought was an Indian arrow, but there were no follow-up cries, no ungodly threats, just silence. Besides, the Indians had been quiet in the area for half dozen years.

Tom Sheehan

Torbert “Torby” Glibstone was about the smartest young man ever to come west in a wagon, helping his grandparents to move to a piece of land they had inherited from their son when he was killed in a gunfight in Dawson, Wyoming. Torby was 15 at the time the wagon set off from Independence, Missouri, part of a large wagon train. His grandparents were both just turned 61, on the same day, which got them married in the first place like a celebration was in order, and they were game for the move west.

Tom Sheehan

Thunder and lightning pounded and slashed around the Teton peaks as though the gods were angry. Able Startooth, an Indian scout for army cavalry that had been dispatched to the area above the junction of the Uintah and Duchesne rivers in Utah when unrest among Ute Indians took place, watched from the secrecy of a cave as a half dozen Utes looked into the dark and lit skies.