Leaving Yuma
Page 32
If you’re wondering what Ed Davenport and Del Buchman were up to when they cached their munitions at the escarpment, your guess would be as good as mine. I’d always assumed Davenport had another buyer lined up somewhere, but I don’t know who it was, or where they were supposed to meet. Unless you’ve run across something I haven’t, I suppose that’s a mystery that will never be solved. Not that I’ve ever tried.
After saying good bye to Abby Davenport, I hopped a Southern Pacific freight train heading east. It wasn’t the first train I ever hoboed, having left Holbrook the same way in ’87. You might think my circumstances dire, but they weren’t. I still had the semi-auto Selma Metzler had given me—and no, I didn’t go see her before leaving Yuma that last time—and I also had my pardon, only partially burned when Old Toad had used it to light his cigar that day on the Río Concepción. Both Del’s signature and the governor’s were still legible, and I had the document checked by an attorney a few years later just to reassure myself that it was legal. It is, and I’ve got it locked away in a fireproof safe right now, if some government official runs across this transcript and wants to see it.
I left the S.P. at Tucson, then hitched a ride south in a Model A Ford that had been cut down into a delivery truck. The driver was hauling a load of oranges to Nogales, where I used to outfit from, back in my smuggling days. And if you’re wondering, h— – yeah, I talked him into letting me get behind the wheel. The novelty of operating a motor vehicle had long since worn off for him, but it never has for me.
In Nogales I looked up a man named Esteban Rivera, who ran a small livery down in the Mexican part of town where I used to stable my horse and burros. His jaw just about hit the floor when I walked in, but I told him he didn’t have anything to worry about. Esteban had sold my stock when I was sentenced to a twelve-year stretch in Yuma, and I don’t guess he’d heard of my release. Not many folks had at that time. Anyway, he figured I’d come back for the money he’d gotten for my animals and all the gear, the pack saddles and panniers and such, but that wasn’t why I was there.
“You keep that money,” I told him. “Use it to repair your stable wall.”
He looked puzzled by my suggestion, and followed at a distance as I walked to the rear wall where I used to store my goods before taking them south into Mexico. Using a grubbing hoe, I tore out a section of adobe until I came to a metal box buried inside. I’d put it there late one night after Esteban had gone home to his wife and kids, then hidden the repaired wall behind a broken pack saddle until the mud dried. Inside the box was a fully loaded snub-nosed revolver, a leather poke containing $200 in gold and silver coins, and a bank book wrapped in oilcloth. Wishing Esteban a long and prosperous life, I walked over to the Central Bank of Nogales and withdrew my entire savings—more than $8,000 that I took in small bills.
I got a shave and a bath and a better set of duds than the one Gruder had sold me, and was on my way to the Grand Hotel, one of the better establishments in town at the time, when I saw the guy I’d hitched the ride south with. He was cranking on the Ford’s engine like he was just about cranked out, sweat-soaked and gasping but too bull-headed to quit or try to think the problem through. I asked if he was having trouble, and received a reply vicious enough to strike sparks off a stone fence.
“Want to sell it?” I asked.
He paused, leaning against the radiator to keep from falling over, and glared at me for probably a full minute. “Yeah, I’ll sell the son-of-a-b——, if you’re dumb enough to want it.”
“I want it,” I said simply
I ended up forking over $300 for the modified Ford. It seemed like a heck of a deal to me, although Ford would introduce its Model T to the public the following year for less new than what I paid for the Model A used. Still, I never regretted buying the A. Truth is, I wish I still had it.
Instead of getting a room at the Grand, I got an outfit for camping—a tent and blankets and cooking gear—plus four five-gallon cans of gasoline and a gallon of motor oil and some basic tools—a set of wrenches, screwdrivers, and pliers, that kind of stuff. After strapping everything down in the A’s bed, I went to a grocery and bought enough food to last me a week. I left the A where it was while I did my shopping, and, when I got back, I started fiddling with the various knobs and gears and levers as I’d seen Spence and Abby do. I had the auto running on the sixth crank, while the guy I bought it from stood in the door of a nearby saloon shooting daggers my way.
Not sure of the legality of my pardon at the time, I decided not to hang around Arizona. I followed the old Butterfield Stage route east to Silver City, New Mexico Territory, then turned north. I motored through Albuquerque and Santa Fe, then over Raton Pass into Trinidad, Colorado. I just kept driving, moving from place to place and seeing the sights—Pike’s Peak and Yellowstone National Park and the site where Custer and his men were wiped out by the Sioux. I went east and saw Chicago and St. Louis and New Orleans, then wound back north in the face of autumn. Winter caught me in Davenport. I’ve been here ever since.
End Transcript
The Rallying Point
by Bill Macklin
Great Plains Racing Journal
Vol. 10, No. 6, 1955
Rarely have I faced these pages with the degree of melancholy I feel today, having just learned from my good friend, Jason Terhoure, that the automotive world lost one of its pioneers yesterday. James “J.T.” Latham, 82, was killed when his souped-up 1953 Ford Coupe, “Fast Fawn”, lost control on the second turn at the Three Hills Race Track outside of Moline, Illinois, on May 17th.
Latham, of Davenport, Iowa, was racing on a closed track when witnesses said it appeared as if the steering mechanism on his recently rebuilt coupe suddenly locked up about halfway through the second bend of the famed “Moline S” and spun into the fence. Terhoure, who witnessed the accident along with other automotive specialists and racing fans, told me that Latham was taken to the hospital in Moline, where he was pronounced dead at 3:30 p.m.
For those of you who never had the pleasure of meeting J.T., be assured that his reputation as a “gentleman on the track and a rascal off of it” was well-deserved. Latham and his wife, Barbara May, were famous for their off-tracks hijinks, and were frequent hosts of after-race “shindigs” at their home south of Davenport. Although J.T. had quit racing professionally many years ago, he still liked to take a fast car onto the track when possible.
The Lathams were prominent figures on the racing scene across the Upper Midwest, and were co-owners of Yuma Racing, of Davenport, a manufacturer of high-end racing components, including the Yuma-Five Camshaft™, which was popular some years back. Latham, through Yuma Racing, was the sponsor of the Three Hills Three Hundred, held annually on the third weekend of September.
J.T. retired from Yuma Racing in 1954, after the untimely death of his wife to cancer. The business was taken over by Latham’s children, including son “Fast Jimmy” Latham, last year’s winner of the Three Hills Three Hundred and a prominent member of the NASCAR racing circuit.
A full feature on Yuma Racing, J.T., and Barbara May will appear in the next issue of The Journal. Cards and condolences to the family—son Jimmy, and daughters Clare, Rebecca, and Erin—may be sent to the Yuma Racing facility in Davenport.
R.I.P., Old Friend
About The Author
Michael Zimmer grew up on a small Colorado horse ranch, and began to break and train horses for spending money while still in high school. An American history enthusiast from a very early age, he has done extensive research on the Old West. His personal library contains over two thousand volumes covering that area west of the Mississippi from the late 1700s to the early decades of the 20th Century. In addition to perusing first-hand accounts from the period, Zimmer is also a firm believer in field interpretation. He’s made it a point to master many of the skills used by our forefathers, and can start a campfire with flint and steel, gather, prep
are, and survive on natural foods found in the wilderness, and has built and slept in shelters as diverse as bark lodges and snow caves. He has done horseback treks using 19th Century tack, gear, and guidelines. Zimmer is the author of ten Western novels, and his work has been praised by Library Journal and Booklist, as well as other Western writers. Jory Sherman, author of Grass Kingdom, writes: “He [Zimmer] takes you back in time to an exciting era in U.S. history so vividly that the reader will feel as if he has been over the old trails, trapped the shining streams, and gazed in wonder at the awesome grandeur of the Rocky Mountains. Here is a writer to welcome into the ranks of the very best novelists of today or anytime in the history of literature.” And Richard S. Wheeler, author of Goldfield, has said of Zimmer’s fourth novel, Fandango (1996): “One of the best mountain man novels ever written.” Zimmer lives in Utah with his wife Vanessa and two dogs. His website is www.michael-zimmer.com.