LORNA: A lady of uneasy virtue who was sent to lure a man to his death for money. Her first thought was for what the money would buy in San Francisco, but she had second thoughts.
BRISCOE: A young man who was suddenly scared, suddenly realized he could die, so he got on his horse and rode away into many sunsets and sunrises, and with every one of them he remembered how easy it would have been to lose them all in exchange for a little piece of lead near his heart.
WILLIAM TELL SACKETT: A tall mountain boy who lived out the Civil War fighting for the Union; who found the great love of his life during that war and lost her almost as soon as he found her. Who rode away to the West when the war ended and drove cattle over the Bozeman Trail to Montana, a lonely man with a lost dream who found a girl alone in a cave and married her. Part of it was love and part of it was because she was lost and alone and needed taking care of, just as he was lost and alone and needed someone to watch over and care for.
All he had was a horse, a saddle, and a gun and with it all a wistful longing for something more, something he had known briefly, then lost forever.
NOLAN SACKETT: One of the so-called outlaw Sacketts from the Clinch Mountains. It was said those Clinch Mountain Sacketts were so rough they wore their clothes out from the inside first and Nolan was one of the roughest. When he heard a Sackett was up against long odds he got up in the middle of a horse and started west.
FALCON SACKETT: Onetime sea captain, adventurer, father of Orlando, and married to Gin, formerly Virginia Locklear. He was traveling by stage when he heard the news. Somebody had a Sackett treed up in the Tonto Basin country so he didn’t waste around.
ORRIN SACKETT: Politician, singer of Welsh songs, peace officer, cattleman. A handsome, smooth-talking man who was good with a gun when the situation demanded.
FLAGAN AND GALLOWAY: Brothers, cousins to Orrin, Tyrel, and Tell, cowhands, cattlemen. Two long-tall mountain boys who come when needed.
PARMALEE SACKETT: A Flatland Sackett whose home was in Grassy Cove; a Sackett with money, a sometime actor, cattleman, gambler, a man good with a gun but who preferred other methods when possible. Has property near the Highland Rim, as well.
VANCOUTER ALLEN: Forty years old, a strong, arrogant man who rode roughshod over anything that got in his way. Brutal and uncaring with women, he suddenly found himself guilty of an ugly murder and in a panic tried to cover it up and destroy the evidence. Tell Sackett was a part of that evidence and he wasn’t easy to get rid of.
CAP ROUNTREE: A salty old customer, a mountain man, trapper, cowboy, all-around western man. Dry as alkali dust and twice as bitter. A tough old mountain man who had hunted gold and fought Indians and had the scars to prove it. You will find him in THE DAYBREAKERS, SACKETT, LONELY ON THE MOUNTAIN, and others. A man to ride any river with.
DODIE ALLEN: Cut from the same pattern as Vancouter, only younger. The pattern was wrong and the time was wrong so Dodie would never get any older.
CAMP VERDE: The post was established under the name of Fort Lincoln in 1861 to protect travelers from the raids of the Apache. Under the command of Captain C. Porter of the Eighth Infantry, the fort had a force including two companies, A and D of the Eighth Infantry and one company, A, of the Sixth Cavalry. First occupied by volunteers, the post was taken over by regulars in 1866, when Porter took command.
MOGOLLON RIM: Although the name is Spanish, the pronunciation is not. Usually known in the area as the Muggyown. A bold escarpment marking the edge of the plateau, the Rim runs from a spot near Ash Fork through the Blue Range and joins the Mogollon Mountains of New Mexico. It is approximately two hundred miles long, but the heart of the Rim country lies from Strawberry across the Tonto Basin and Pleasant Valley. The canyons, mesas, and such mentioned in this story can all be found there. The Natural Bridge is a tourist attraction and the cave in which Tell Sackett took shelter is there.
It is without doubt one of the most beautiful areas in the West, with fine forests of pine, fir, and aspen and many running streams.
It is an interesting thing that the highways through the West seem always to miss the most delightful places, and those most worth seeing. One can travel through Arizona or Nevada on the highways and never realize there are such places as the White Mountain country of Arizona or many of the finest sights in Nevada. The same is true of a half dozen other western states. Highways are built where it is easiest, and such routes do not take one into the forests and the canyons except where they cannot be avoided.
GLOBE: A mining town, first settled in 1876 as a result of a silver strike, beginning as a few tents and buildings on the banks of Pinal Creek. Its most famous mine was probably the Old Dominion.
TONTO NATURAL BRIDGE: An arch of travertine some 180 feet above Pine Creek. The caves beneath are extensive and supposedly were discovered by Dave Gowan when he was trying to hide from Apaches.
PLEASANT VALLEY WAR: This area was the site of the famous Tonto Basin War, the feud between the Grahams and the Tewksburys. The fight lasted for several years and the last survivor was Jim Roberts, later marshal of Jerome and at one time of Clarkdale.
KNIGHT’S RANCH: A famous stopping place in traveling from Arizona into New Mexico. Billy the Kid was well known there.
WILD RYE: In the time of this story, a scattered settlement centering around the tiny village of Rye.
FOUR PEAKS: A wild region just south of Rye where several lost mine stories have their focal points. It was well known in the years of the Apache wars, and a number of battles were fought within a few miles.
THE SKY-LINERS
First publication: Bantam Books paperback, April 1967
Narrator: Flagan Sackett
Time Period: c. 1875–1879
When Flagan and Galloway went to Tazewell to pay off a debt their father had incurred they were not looking for trouble. They hoped to simply pay the debt and return to the West where their future seemed to lie.
They had heard stories about Black Fetchen but did not expect to meet him and were not eager for the opportunity. Neither did they like being almost run down in the street, but one thing led to another and Black Fetchen and his crowd found themselves dropping their weapons into the street and then at the behest of two strangers, singing Rock of Ages, and demonstrating to all who watched that they were not as tough as they had assumed.
Flagan and Galloway had no idea of taking any freckle-face girl west with them, not until they heard the arguments Laban Costello offered and saw the horses he was giving them, along with money enough for a roadstake.
All they wanted was to get back to the buffalo range but they did need horses. What they did not need was to ride herd on a girl who had it in mind to marry Black Fetchen.
Flagan knew very well that a freckled-face girl with romantic notions could get a man into more trouble than three lawyers could get him out of, but there was no help for it. Galloway had already made up his mind.
What Flagan and Galloway were never to realize was that when they rode into the Greenhorn country they were riding a trail blazed three hundred years before by another Sackett.
Our history as a nation and as a country is largely a family history, but succeeding generations often have little knowledge of the previous generations or their activities. Even when a genealogist has traced a family history, it still deals largely with the high spots, and few such stories recount the day-to-day lives of those involved.
Jubal Sackett went west in the 1600s and was lost to his family. Occasionally there was a rumor, but it was like a leaf blown on the wind. Jubal was gone west, and as in many such cases, after his own generation has passed on, the others occasionally wondered, but nobody thought to discover his trail.
Jubal had, they believed, found his way to the Shining Mountains, and had married an Indian girl he met en route. That much they believed, but beyond that, nothing. Each generation had its own troubles, with wars, migrations, local politics, and illness.
GREENHORN INN: A place frequented by Kit
Carson, among others, and named as was the nearby mountain for Cuerno Verde, or Greenhorn, a Comanche chief. The Inn still stands.
There are legends that fabulously rich gold mines once existed near the Spanish Peaks, near here. If such was the case, the mines and their workings have long since disappeared, and the gold was taken away to Mexico as an offering to the ancient gods of the Aztecs. Certainly the Aztecs possessed gold in great quantities and much was offered to Cortes when he first came to Mexico. No doubt little of that gold came from so far away, for there was, and is, plenty of gold in old Mexico itself. Carrying gold over such immense distances without pack animals other than man seems impossible, yet who can say?
BUZZARD ROOST RANCH: Tom Sharp settled there, building his trading post in 1870. An old Ute trail led through his ranch to the Sangre de Cristos by way of Badito and the Greenhorn country. As in my story, Sharp was one of the first to bring thoroughbred horses into the West, occasionally crossing them with wild mustangs for stamina.
BADITO: Near the opening into Huerfano Valley.
SPANISH FORT: Near Oak Creek are the ruins of an old Spanish fort built around 1820.
REYNOLDS GANG: A band of outlaws led by Jim Reynolds, who claimed they were robbing others to raise money for the Confederacy, but there is no evidence that any of the money went any further than the gang itself. There are stories that they hid most of the gold that came from the Kenosha stage holdup. Supposedly the thieves buried the gold, intending to come back after they had eluded their pursuers. (The heavy gold would of course have been a handicap in their escape.)
However, such stories probably originated in the hopeful imaginations of those who wanted to believe. Outlaws rarely let go of any gold they acquired until reaching the nearest saloon or bordello. Nor did they trust one another, and with good reason. They were all thieves.
The Reynolds gang was estimated to have included twenty-two men, any one of whom might have returned to take the buried gold for himself, as the others realized. Despite many such stories, few outlaws ever buried any loot. Indeed, when one checks the records few had much to bury. Reynolds and several of his men were captured, and en route to Fort Lyons they suddenly departed this life. There is no record of any tears being shed.
TAZEWELL: Rugged country; the area was settled about 1800, and named for Senator Henry Tazewell. The county seat of Claiborne County, Tennessee.
JUDITH COSTELLO: A daughter of the Irish Nomads, horse traders known throughout the southeastern part of the country. She was sixteen at this time and cute as a button. When Flagan and Galloway took on the job of escorting her west they got more than they expected, but Flagan had his doubts from the beginning. It did him no good, no good at all to doubt. Even though he dodged and sidestepped, he couldn’t get away, and maybe her grandfather knew it all the time.
BLACK FETCHEN: Came from somewhere up near Sinking Creek but the family had moved in from elsewhere. A handsome scoundrel with brothers and cousins who rode together for all the wrong reasons, but a daring, dangerous man, just the sort who might catch the eye of an impressionable young girl.
EVAN HAWKES: A cattle drover, a tall, spare-built man with reddish gray hair, who bore some resemblance to Andrew Jackson.
BAT MASTERSON: He was born William Barclay Masterson in Iroquois County, Illinois. He moved further west as a teenager, grading for the railroad, then hunting buffalo. He was involved in the Battle of Adobe Walls, when several hundred Kiowa and Comanche Indians attacked that trading post, was briefly a deputy marshal, and later was elected sheriff of Ford County, Kansas.
His first gun battle was with Sergeant King, who objected when Molly, whom King considered his girlfriend, paid attention to Bat Masterson. King opened fire on Bat and Molly threw herself in front of Bat, taking the bullet meant for him. Molly was killed, but Bat killed King.
Later when two troublemakers killed his brother Ed, who was deputy marshal, Masterson killed both men in the gun battle that followed.
Masterson was to engage in one more gun battle when he went to the aid of his brother Jim back in Dodge. As he left the train, he was attacked, and he shot and wounded Al Undegraf. His other activities in Colorado and Tombstone have no place here. As a peace officer or gambler he visited Trinidad, Creede, Silverton, and Denver, to name but a few. At times he served as referee for prizefights and eventually lived the last twenty-five of his years as a sportswriter in New York for the old Morning Telegraph. He died at the typewriter there. Some years ago I interviewed Louella Parsons, the Hollywood columnist, on Bat. She had worked for the Telegraph, and Bat had often advised and guided her in her first months on the paper. He had also been a friend of Teddy Roosevelt, who knew many of the old-time frontiersmen and enjoyed their company.
WYATT EARP: A deputy marshal in Dodge City, an officer in various other places, a buffalo hunter, occasional gambler. A man well-known on the frontier, Wyatt Earp was a controversial figure. When years have passed and the evidence is conflicting I have established my own rules for judging men: I judge them by who their friends were. By and large Wyatt’s friends were on the side of the angels. His enemies usually ended up in jail or were killed by peace officers. Pony Deal and Ike Clanton, for example, were killed resisting arrest in eastern Arizona.
All men and women, no matter what their time, have their enemies and detractors. Wyatt has been overpraised by some, viciously attacked by others. In Tombstone the opinions one got depended very much on the political stance of those involved. The Earps were Republican, and Johnny Behan was a Democrat. That Johnny was friendly to the outlaw faction has never been denied. Another element was that Wyatt won the affections of the lady in whom Johnny Behan was interested.
Despite what the movies say, the only shooting in which Wyatt was involved in Dodge was when a drunken cowboy rode down the street shooting wildly. A couple of his bullets came through the walls where Eddie Foy was on stage performing, Foy dropped to the stage. Wyatt and another officer yelled at the man to halt, and when he did not, they both fired. One of them killed him.
THE LADY GAY: A saloon, dance hall, and gambling house operated in Dodge City at the time of my story and for several years before and after.
In writing my stories I try to present as accurate a background as possible. The stories may be fiction, the settings are not. In such situations as are presented in this story, Earp and Masterson would undoubtedly have appeared in their actual capacity, as I have had them do. Masterson’s as well as Earp’s reactions are typical both of their characters and the times.
BOB WRIGHT: Mayor of Dodge City, trader in buffalo hides. Prominent local businessman.
CHALK BEESON: Part-owner of one of Dodge City’s first saloons, occasionally a city official, a man with many friends, few enemies.
LARNIE CAGLE: A young man who thought he was good with a gun. He didn’t live long enough to find out he wasn’t.
TORY FETCHEN: One of the clan from the mountains. He went into a dark barn with the notion of killing a Sackett. It was a darkness from which he never emerged.
COLBY RAFIN: A cousin of the Fetchens who rode with them, rode from Tennessee to a pass in the Colorado mountains. He reached the pass with James Black Fetchen but he did not leave it. Neither did Fetchen.
KYLE SHORE: A good cowboy turned into an occasional gun-for-hire fighter in cattle wars. A tough but loyal man.
BURR FETCHEN: One of the Tennessee Fetchens who rode west with his brother James Black Fetchen. Involved in the killing of Laban Costello.
RUSS MENARD: A gunman-outlaw working with the Fetchens. He bought a lead ticket to wherever he was going that night on the Muleshoe. He died game, but he died.
MOSS REARDON: A tough old survivor, who survived once again.
LADDER WALKER: A top-hand in any outfit.
TIREY FETCHEN: He had been one of the Reynolds gang, or so it was believed. Killed in Colorado, fighting with the Sacketts.
Three of the Fetchen outfit pulled out for Tennessee, deciding that following
James Black Fetchen was leading them into trouble.
Many of the old trading posts are gone. Several of these survived briefly, then vanished, leaving nothing behind. Towns began and were abandoned. Indian attacks, local disagreements and the changing fortunes of those living there led to some sites being abandoned. Some left to prosper in other areas, some simply drifted away to be lost in gold and silver camps that sprang up overnight and vanished when the rich ore played out.
The story told in THE SKY-LINERS is simple enough. Two young men agree to escort a young lady to the home of her father in Colorado. What happens after develops as a result of the personalities involved, the country itself, and the circumstances that attended their travel through it.
The period of exploration was past, and so was most of the Indian fighting. The country was beginning to settle down into communities that would become towns, and towns that were on the verge of becoming cities.
The law had arrived but was mostly occupied in keeping the peace in towns. What happened outside the populated areas was something else, and a man was expected to take care of himself.
Feuds or fighting such as I’ve described in this story actually happened. The best known are probably the Lincoln County War in New Mexico in which Billy the Kid was involved, the Tonto Basin War in Arizona, and the Johnson County War in Wyoming. There were dozens of others. These included the fighting between the Regulators and the Moderators in Texas, as well as the Sutton-Taylor feud, the sheep and cattle wars, and fights over land, mining claims, and rights-of-way for roads or railroads.
Such fights continue to this day, only they have moved from the gun battle to the court room, but are no less viciously fought. Yet as recently as when I was sixteen, a neighbor was killed in a fight over a waterhole in Arizona, and another, somewhat later, was killed over another waterhole in Oregon.
The men who settled the West were a hardy lot, as were their women, and they did not accept being pushed around either by people, events, or even the elements.
Once, on a television show, I was asked what particular quality western men and women possessed. I probably said something about courage, but on the way home (when one always thinks of what should have been said) I knew my reply should have been “Character, character and dignity.”
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