Haunted Heartland

by Michael Norman

  The route followed the Oregon-California trail across northern Kansas then snaked along the Platte River in Nebraska, and on west by way of Fort Kearney, Scotts Bluff, Fort Laramie, South Pass, Fort Bridger, and Salt Lake City. The trail crossed Nevada and the Sierra Nevada mountains and ended at Sacramento. River steamers on the Sacramento River then carried the mail westward on to San Francisco.

  At relay stations, set up about every ten to fifteen miles apart along the route, the rider cried “WHOOP!” as he galloped in on clouds of dust and switched to a waiting fresh pony. At every third station a new rider took over. The men rode day and night, through searing heat and deepest snow, for the mail had to go through.

  The Pony Express lasted only eighteen months, but in that short time it changed boys into men and created instant heroes.

  William F. Cody, Buffalo Bill, was only fifteen years old when he signed on as a rider. Galloping into his home station once at the end of his ride, he learned there was no one to take his place. Without a second thought, young Cody rode on, finishing the 322-mile trip alone. His sister Julia later wrote, “They sayed [sic] he was . . . the lightest and swiftest rider, and he seemed to understand the Country.”

  Another of Cody’s rides is notable for a different reason. He was entrusted with a large sum of money destined for California. Cash was rarely transported, but in this case it was unavoidable. At any rate, rumors flew that bandits knew there would be cash for the taking and planned to ambush the rider. Cody, realizing he would be helpless in the face of a gang of armed men, devised a simple plan. He placed the money under the saddle, hidden in the blanket that lay between the leather and the horse’s skin. The saddlebag, which he stuffed with blank paper, was in plain sight.

  In changing mounts at relay stations, Cody carefully placed the blanket-ful of money under the new saddle. On the last lap of his trip the bandits waylaid him. Cody handed over the saddlebag and galloped off, the blanket-ful of money arriving sometime later in Sacramento safely intact.

  The weather was another potential danger riders faced. Twenty-year-old Thomas Owen King lost his way in blinding snow. Coaxing his pony through drifts as high as his stirrups, he eventually found the trail and reached his next station.

  Nick Wilson, at eighteen, was caught in early May 1860 in a conflict that blazed across Utah Territory between the Paiutes and the white settlers they were determined to drive out. Wilson was nearly killed when a barbed arrow pierced his skull above his left eye. Although he survived, Wilson carried the ugly scar for the rest of his life and usually wore a hat to hide it.

  One of the youngest riders may have been the bravest. Billy Tate was an orphan and only fourteen years old when the Paiute war broke out. A dozen warriors charged after him on one of his Pony Express rides, driving him behind a rock. Friends found the youngster’s body pierced by a number of arrows. Seven of his attackers lay dead before him.

  While these daring riders faced the dangers of the long trail westward, the telegraph and the railroad were pushing back the frontier. By October 1861, the thin wires of the telegraph began flashing messages to the West Coast, and the need for the horsemen on their spirited ponies was gone.

  With the demise of the Pony Express, many of the old stations fell to ruin. But the Hollenberg Station, also known as the Cottonwood Pony Express Station, survived the caprices of weather and time. Located 123 miles west of St. Joseph, it occupied part of a ranch owned by Gerat Henry Hollenberg. He had built the station in 1858 originally to serve travelers on the Oregon and California Trails. The building housed a store, tavern, post office, and living quarters for the station keeper and his family on the ground floor. Overland stagecoach drivers and later Pony Express horsemen stayed in a second-floor sleeping loft. Fresh mounts for the riders were kept in a stable that could house a hundred head of horse or oxen. Countless wagon trains stopped at the Hollenberg Station for food and clothing, feed for the animals, and various supplies for the long westward journey. The station also serviced the Butterfield Overland Mail route.

  In 1869 Hollenberg founded the nearby town of Hanover and later won election to the Kansas legislature. Residents of Hanover had a leading role in preserving the Hollenberg Station. In 1941 the Kansas legislature appropriated funds for the purchase of the structure and seven acres of land. The building, now a state historical park, has been restored and operates as a museum. It has never been moved and retains its original dimensions.

  Some visitors to Hollenberg Station swear they hear whispered conversations and experience a sudden, cold breeze inside the building every time the door swings open.

  Other visitors claim that the Pony Express riders and their mounts still travel the worn, familiar trails. Near quiet stretches of highway late at night, people tell of hearing pounding hooves and a faint Hallooo! as something passes them like the wind. Could it be an orphaned teenage Pony Express rider spurring his phantom horse on to the next station?

  A Dog’s Tale

  Dodge City

  The late Franc Shor was an associate editor of National Geographic Magazine. As such, he specialized in reporting from and photographing some of the most isolated places on earth. When Shor died at the age of sixty in 1974, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas called him “the most traveled man I have ever met.”

  Shor’s was a world of people, places, and confirmed information. He had very little if any interest in the ambiguous world of psychic phenomena. But a compelling incident one summer left him with questions he never thought he would be asking.

  Shor’s mother and other relatives lived in Dodge City, Kansas, while he himself was raised by his grandmother in Cimarron, Kansas.

  His grandmother was an antique buff especially fond of Meissen porcelains that she had collected over the years. The delicate figurines fascinated little Frankie, his family nickname. His favorite was of a small child dressed in a smock, patting a dog that stood on its hind legs. Whenever his Aunt Ethel came from Dodge City to visit, she would tease her nephew by insisting that the figure in the smock was a girl. “There’s little Frankie wearing a dress,” she would say; Shor vigorously protested.

  When Shor’s grandmother died many years later, she left the porcelain collection to Franc’s Aunt Ethel. Sometime later, Ethel died and willed the porcelains to her nephew, who was by now living and working in Washington, DC. After attending Ethel’s funeral, he went back to her house. Ethel’s husband had set out the china, and Shor readied it for shipment home.

  While inventorying the pieces, Shor discovered his favorite one missing, the girl in the smock petting the dog. He searched the house and on a shelf in a corner of the basement found this figurine. Unfortunately, the tail had been broken off. He could not find it anywhere in the house. Sentimentally attached to the little statue, he decided to keep it anyway and took it for storage to his mother’s home. Later he would arrange to have a ceramist craft a new tail.

  Back in Washington, Shor became immersed in his work and forgot all about the broken porcelain figure until his mother died in June 1964. At her Dodge City funeral he remembered the figurine. It was still at her house. This time he took it home with him, sans tail.

  A week after his return, he awoke suddenly late one night. In the center of his bedroom stood his Aunt Ethel, warm and lifelike in a loose-fitting, silk dress that he had often seen her wearing. Shor was wide awake, certain that he was not dreaming.

  Aunt Ethel looked directly at him and smiled.

  She said, “Why don’t you look under the piano?”

  Puzzled by the remark, Shor asked his aunt to repeat what she had said. She did and then added, “Frankie’s little statue.”

  “I decided that I needed some strong coffee. In fact, I consumed two potfuls before dressing and going to the office that morning.”

  All day long Shor pondered the episode. Why had Aunt Ethel not retrieved the dog’s tail herself at some point when she was still alive if she knew where it was? Had she died before she could reveal
the location to anyone and now, after death, wanted to get that information to her nephew? Preposterous, Shor thought. He had no answers, but he had a plan.

  That night Shor telephoned his sister, Camilla Haviland, a probate judge in Dodge City, and asked her if there was a piano in his Aunt Ethel’s old house.

  Haviland said there happened to be an old player piano in the basement. After Shor related the night’s incident, his sister offered to take a look.

  Two weeks later Haviland telephoned her brother. A housekeeper had found the dog’s tail intact under the piano, just where Shor’s Aunt Ethel had told him it would be.

  The Cursed Knife

  Topeka

  Jane Armbruster was uneasy. Even though her husband, Peter, locked the antique bowie knife they had just bought in a strongbox in the bedroom closet and hid the key in the false bottom of a bureau drawer, that still did not seem sufficient protection. The knife was a rare find, but what really worried Jane was the disturbing encounter they had as they left the auction.

  The auction took place not far from their Topeka home. The bidding had been intense. Many people admired the long, silver blade and the exquisitely carved handle inlaid with semiprecious stones. The knife gleamed in the afternoon sun, an almost electrical glow glancing off the blade. It looked as if it had never been used, but with a bowie knife nearly one hundred years old that seemed impossible.

  The Armbrusters’ bid was highest of the six people seeking the knife. As they left with their treasure, a swarthy young man with ebony hair and dark, penetrating eyes came up to Peter.

  “Mister,” he began, “I’d like to buy that knife from you. I’ll offer you a fair price.”

  Peter shook his head.

  “If you really wanted the knife, you should have kept bidding.”

  “I’m short of money just now,” the stranger insisted as he walked along beside the couple.

  “If you give me the knife today, I promise I’ll pay you double what you just paid. That seems fair to me.”

  Peter had never seen him before. The couple knew most of the regular auction attendees around Topeka, and this nervous young man was not among them.

  “But if I give you the knife,” Peter countered, “how do I know I’ll ever see you again?”

  “I’ll give you what money I have.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out a fifty-dollar bill. “I’ll get the rest of it from, er, my parents.”

  He sounded desperate and continued his pleading.

  “Mister, that knife is special to my family!”

  And then the young man added the words Jane Armbruster would never forget: “That knife can bring riches and pleasure . . . or misery and death.”

  Peter laughed. “So that’s it! A bowie knife with an authentic curse! I suppose you’ll tell me next that you’re its immortal guardian. No sir! You can’t buy it at any price!”

  Peter took Jane by the arm and stayed close to her until they reached their car.

  “You’ll regret this day!” the young man shouted after them, waving his fist. “I’ll get that knife one way or another! It will bring you only death!”

  Jane Armbruster shrank against the car seat as those last words pounded through the window. Peter did not appear overly upset at the stranger’s threats of harm, but he did worry that the man might follow them and try to steal the knife.

  Armbruster locked it in a strongbox that night along with several other valuable possessions. There it remained for nearly two years.

  On occasion Peter would remind his wife that nothing terrible had happened to them in all that time.

  “That nonsense about a curse was just that creep’s way of trying to get the knife at half what I paid,” Peter chided her.

  Jane almost believed him.

  She had nearly forgotten the knife and the curse until she awoke early one morning to her husband gasping and shaking beside her. She reached out to him. There was a quick intake of air and he fell silent. Peter was dead of a heart attack.

  About a month later, Jane was at a scheduled appointment with her own doctor. They ended up discussing Peter’s sudden death. He thought a moment, and then said that Peter’s death was so sudden it was as if someone had plunged a knife into his heart.

  Jane shuddered at the words. A knife—the bowie knife and its curse.

  She felt sick. She rushed home, anxious and agitated, remembering the words of that angry young man: “I’ll get that knife one way or another! It will bring you only death!”

  Jane had not been near the strongbox since her husband’s death. She found the key in its hiding place and opened the box. Peter’s old silver money clip was inside along with a few old coins and other small objects. But that was it. The cursed bowie knife had vanished.

  Elizabeth Polly

  Fort Hays

  A merciless sun flattened the land from horizon to horizon as Ephraim Polly pushed his team westward. His hard, brown hands held the reins loosely, and half moons of sweat darkened the armpits of his shirt.

  Beside him on the wagon seat sat his wife, Elizabeth, her back as straight as a newly driven fence post. Her wide, blue bonnet scarcely shielded her face from the sun and the hot wind that pushed dust up under the wagon wheels.

  But Elizabeth never complained. She loved Ephraim deeply. She also understood him. He was a thoughtful man, but not shrewd. He wanted to give his wife the better things in life but did not know how to seize an opportunity. In her heart, Elizabeth knew she would always be the wife of a “drummer” peddling wagonloads of candies, tobacco, sewing kits, and other necessities to soldiers in lonely outposts along the Smoky Hill River trail and bringing news of the wider world along with the wares.

  For Elizabeth Polly, that was enough.

  At sunset, on this scorching day in 1867, the Pollys reached Fort Hays, in western Kansas. Elizabeth did not know that her travels with Ephraim were over. She would never leave the fort.

  While the couple was at Fort Hays, a deadly cholera epidemic struck. Neither history nor legend recounts what happened to Ephraim Polly, but it is documented that Elizabeth volunteered to help the one doctor at the fort. She was not a trained nurse, but she was kind and brought hope to the sick and comfort to the dying.

  Through the long, hot days she worked in the sick ward doing what she could to ease the suffering around her. She packed flannel cloths and hot bottles around the sick to help them retain body heat; she provided sips of barley water and beef tea to those able to drink. And she held the hand of more than one frightened child in the last hours of their lives.

  Sometimes for an hour or two in the early evening, Elizabeth left the wardroom and walked to a hilltop a couple of miles southwest of the fort. There, alone under the vast sky, she welcomed the wind combing her hair and billowing her long skirts as she listened to the meadowlarks singing in the bluestem grasses far below. These peaceful moments renewed her strength. Then, in the fading light, she returned to the stench of sickness and the certainty of approaching death.

  Elizabeth Polly ministered to the sick for many weeks. No one ever knew much about her; she was a quiet woman who did not even say where she was from. To the soldiers of Fort Hays, she was an angel of mercy.

  Tragically the woman who spent so much time comforting others contracted the dreaded disease. As she herself lay dying, she asked if she could please be buried atop her beloved hill. She was assured that her wish would be granted.

  Elizabeth Polly was given a full-dress military funeral in the fall of 1867, her body taken to the hilltop by a horse-drawn ambulance. Major Gibbs, the fort commandant, assisted in the burial service.

  For years after Elizabeth Polly’s death, local residents referred to her burial spot as the “Lonely Grave.” Nearly inaccessible except on foot or by horse, the grave was rarely visited. From time to time a wooden cross appeared at the site, put up by a Boy Scout troop from Hays City. Then, in the 1960s, a group of citizens erected an obelisk on Elizabeth’s hill. It was a fitting memorial to th
is selfless pioneer woman who rested there.

  Or does she?

  Fifty years after Elizabeth Polly’s death, a sequence of peculiar events seemed to indicate that she may leave her lonely grave to walk the hill that she so loved.

  Dawn was just breaking over the prairie on an April day in 1917 when John Schmidt, a western Kansas farmer, rode out to his pasture. It was his custom to go each morning to drive the cows the few hundred yards from the pasture back to his barn for milking. His dog trotted along at his side. Schmidt had ridden about halfway across the pasture when he noticed a woman afoot some distance away.

  He saw first her light-colored, old-fashioned bonnet in the predawn light, and then, as the sky brightened, her ankle-length, blue gingham dress. She was quite tall, Schmidt figured, but he could not see her face very well, hidden as it was by her bonnet. She had the steady stride of a purposeful woman.

  Schmidt had never seen her before; of that he was certain. To be out here, she would have to be one of the women from the Fort Hays Normal School perhaps, or from town, but her route perplexed him. She had come from the direction of old Fort Hays and was headed southwest. In that direction lay nothing but an abandoned one-room shack and about a quarter of a mile from that, the grave of Elizabeth Polly.

  Schmidt cupped his hand to his mouth and called to her. She neither turned her head nor broke her stride.

  Suddenly his dog yelped and took off for home, tail between its legs. Schmidt yelled after it but at that moment his horse reared.

  The dog kept running, but Schmidt was able to drive the pony close enough to the lady in blue to have touched her with the tip of his horsewhip. But she seemed oblivious to him. Irked by her indifference, Schmidt circled widely around and went on after the cows.

  His whole family was waiting when Schmidt got back to the house. Because he was only a short distance across the field, they had seen the woman and all that had happened. They had not taken their eyes off the strange woman. His wife said she had gone into the old shack near the top of Lonely Grave Hill.