| Black Mountain Lady |
Jay
Dyck
Dyck
Diary of a Goatherder 24 February 1980
Yesterday I went down to Brown's to give them some letters to mail. It took me some
time to get over Boulder Creek.
The Browns were blue. Danny had flat tires; Stella had lost her glasses; Jim had chicken
pox. Lisa seemed okay except for the depressing effect of living with the others. I didn't
stay long.
Today I put a little organization into the compost heap. I am getting eager to start
gardening. The old garden is erupting in onions.
We also did some rearranging in the goat pen today. We laid pallets down to keep them
out of the mud. We removed the old feeder which is a large cumbersome affair which is
hard to clean and tends to collect droppings and water. We substituted an old, simple,
wooden trough and several split tires in which to feed them their treats.
The rain stopped today, and the afternoon was quite nice. We did laundry and hung it on
the line.
Fugitive Creek is so big that it would be difficult to cross. And more rain, a new storm, is
expected by midnight.
Yesterday I went down to Brown's to give them some letters to mail. It took me some
time to get over Boulder Creek.
The Browns were blue. Danny had flat tires; Stella had lost her glasses; Jim had chicken
pox. Lisa seemed okay except for the depressing effect of living with the others. I didn't
stay long.
Today I put a little organization into the compost heap. I am getting eager to start
gardening. The old garden is erupting in onions.
We also did some rearranging in the goat pen today. We laid pallets down to keep them
out of the mud. We removed the old feeder which is a large cumbersome affair which is
hard to clean and tends to collect droppings and water. We substituted an old, simple,
wooden trough and several split tires in which to feed them their treats.
The rain stopped today, and the afternoon was quite nice. We did laundry and hung it on
the line.
Fugitive Creek is so big that it would be difficult to cross. And more rain, a new storm, is
expected by midnight.
| Chapter Thirty-three SMUG HYPOCRISY |
Perhaps smug hypocrisy was the only way to convincingly wear the halo of serenity, the only way to avoid
finally losing patience with the temptations. The events of that snowy night in nineteen thirty-seven, and then
again, with a twist, on a misty spring afternoon a quarter century later, put the resilience of the functional
family to the test. Like a spring it gave and flexed. The very lives and beings of the members experienced
pressure, distortion, twisting.
This was the crucible that was Vikor's nest. Still, his upbringing was different from that of his mother's.
Cat was raised by a mother who had abandoned witchcraft, to give it a name that will (hopefully) not be seen
again in this tale. What follows is a list of alternative appellations, and why each falls short. The first, already
abandoned, is far too dangerous. It still stirs the hearts of other congregations to thoughts of evil, hurt, wrong
and punishment.
The way, just that, is a beautiful second choice. But nobody abandons the way, though at times we may think
it of ourselves or be thought so by others. When we look back at how we have arrived, each of us sees his or
her own way, after all.
Next comes the path. This warm and cozy metaphor has been used before, to describe or to define adherence
to a code, a clue or a discipline, a faith, a form or a formula that makes a way easy, safe, certain and familiar.
To explain this to Vikor, for instance, one might refer to the trampled paving of the herds of bovine clones,
who find on their beaten paths some or all of the above prizes that opiate their lives.
The same shyness prevails with terms like the road, the faith, the commitment, the sisterhood (or
brotherhood), the mysteries, the secret, the salvation or the devotion; each of these pins itself down, slices
itself away from a part of the whole.
Yet at least those nouns have meanings. The next level would include all of the meaningless (as metaphors)
names such as the church, the religion, the scriptures, the cult, the temple, the commandments, the rules or
the prophecies. None of these, when found in this context, can be used to compare the activity (or inactivity) to
any but another of the same. Even salvation (that poor little word with its heavy burden) can be used to label
the real physical release of a being from anything, quicksand to fleas. But what do you point to as an example
of a church?
If we really grovel, we can step down into another list, a long, achingly long, and boring list. This would be the
list of actual names of churches, religions, scriptures cults and so on. The only difference is that, when asked to
define or explain by concrete example, the native is now limited to pointing only at the name, and all that it
implies, itself.
Who ever hears a Baptist say, well, you know what Catholic or Buddhist is? Baptist is sort of like that. Kind of
like Mormon or Muslim, you know?
Who really cares beyond that? Who wants to step down into the morass of schism and inquisition? By then it
almost seems as though we are back where we started, back where we started but on the wrong side of the
maze line, blocked into a dead-end, a you-can't-get-there-from-here kind of dilemma.
We have no choice but to go back up. Up here in the heady regions where mystical pursuits are groped at with
words like path and way, we can look again for a thing to call that which Andrea Clare Devlin abandoned.
The thing that she tossed into the night was physical enough, a crystal. Perhaps that is a symbol, as well as a
tool, for we have expressions like crystal clear. Who would not want the truth, for instance, to be crystal clear?
Oh, but anything that easy to ask is a cheap shot. After all, crystal clear is a way of saying that nothing is in
the foreground to obstruct the vision. Thus the sublime function of the crystal, to be an eye, an opening, an
aperture through which to peek, a whorl in the vortex of illusion.
finally losing patience with the temptations. The events of that snowy night in nineteen thirty-seven, and then
again, with a twist, on a misty spring afternoon a quarter century later, put the resilience of the functional
family to the test. Like a spring it gave and flexed. The very lives and beings of the members experienced
pressure, distortion, twisting.
This was the crucible that was Vikor's nest. Still, his upbringing was different from that of his mother's.
Cat was raised by a mother who had abandoned witchcraft, to give it a name that will (hopefully) not be seen
again in this tale. What follows is a list of alternative appellations, and why each falls short. The first, already
abandoned, is far too dangerous. It still stirs the hearts of other congregations to thoughts of evil, hurt, wrong
and punishment.
The way, just that, is a beautiful second choice. But nobody abandons the way, though at times we may think
it of ourselves or be thought so by others. When we look back at how we have arrived, each of us sees his or
her own way, after all.
Next comes the path. This warm and cozy metaphor has been used before, to describe or to define adherence
to a code, a clue or a discipline, a faith, a form or a formula that makes a way easy, safe, certain and familiar.
To explain this to Vikor, for instance, one might refer to the trampled paving of the herds of bovine clones,
who find on their beaten paths some or all of the above prizes that opiate their lives.
The same shyness prevails with terms like the road, the faith, the commitment, the sisterhood (or
brotherhood), the mysteries, the secret, the salvation or the devotion; each of these pins itself down, slices
itself away from a part of the whole.
Yet at least those nouns have meanings. The next level would include all of the meaningless (as metaphors)
names such as the church, the religion, the scriptures, the cult, the temple, the commandments, the rules or
the prophecies. None of these, when found in this context, can be used to compare the activity (or inactivity) to
any but another of the same. Even salvation (that poor little word with its heavy burden) can be used to label
the real physical release of a being from anything, quicksand to fleas. But what do you point to as an example
of a church?
If we really grovel, we can step down into another list, a long, achingly long, and boring list. This would be the
list of actual names of churches, religions, scriptures cults and so on. The only difference is that, when asked to
define or explain by concrete example, the native is now limited to pointing only at the name, and all that it
implies, itself.
Who ever hears a Baptist say, well, you know what Catholic or Buddhist is? Baptist is sort of like that. Kind of
like Mormon or Muslim, you know?
Who really cares beyond that? Who wants to step down into the morass of schism and inquisition? By then it
almost seems as though we are back where we started, back where we started but on the wrong side of the
maze line, blocked into a dead-end, a you-can't-get-there-from-here kind of dilemma.
We have no choice but to go back up. Up here in the heady regions where mystical pursuits are groped at with
words like path and way, we can look again for a thing to call that which Andrea Clare Devlin abandoned.
The thing that she tossed into the night was physical enough, a crystal. Perhaps that is a symbol, as well as a
tool, for we have expressions like crystal clear. Who would not want the truth, for instance, to be crystal clear?
Oh, but anything that easy to ask is a cheap shot. After all, crystal clear is a way of saying that nothing is in
the foreground to obstruct the vision. Thus the sublime function of the crystal, to be an eye, an opening, an
aperture through which to peek, a whorl in the vortex of illusion.
| * * * |
Diary of a Goatherder 25 February 1980
I started work on a new garden yesterday. By today I had finished fencing it with heavy plastic
roofing that I had salvaged in Alpine. It makes a perfectly rabbit-proof fence and a windbreak too,
which is very useful here. Also I'm busy terracing the garden with bricks, dividing it into level beds and
paths. Meanwhile, I have a flat of lettuce started.
Today we let the kids out on the pasture with their mamas. They loved that, but one of Amy's buck
kids fell sick and died by dark. It rained all afternoon, and in the evening, with thunder and lightning.
The kids had taken to huddling in Judy's doghouse to escape the rain. We wondered if conditions in
there, from a health point of view, might not be worse than outside. In other words, in the doghouse
with eight kids, probably hot, with insufficient ventilation, would it weaken the kids and encourage
respiratory disorders? So we removed the doghouse.
It seems cruel, but this whole project is in the nature of an experiment, to breed goats that can
withstand the rigors of nature. It is inevitable that there will be losses. The survivors will strengthen
the future herd.
Tonight as I came down to the shack I checked on the goats. Three more of the kids were down, not
dead, but sprawling in the helpless attitude that tends to precede that event. Oh, well.
I started work on a new garden yesterday. By today I had finished fencing it with heavy plastic
roofing that I had salvaged in Alpine. It makes a perfectly rabbit-proof fence and a windbreak too,
which is very useful here. Also I'm busy terracing the garden with bricks, dividing it into level beds and
paths. Meanwhile, I have a flat of lettuce started.
Today we let the kids out on the pasture with their mamas. They loved that, but one of Amy's buck
kids fell sick and died by dark. It rained all afternoon, and in the evening, with thunder and lightning.
The kids had taken to huddling in Judy's doghouse to escape the rain. We wondered if conditions in
there, from a health point of view, might not be worse than outside. In other words, in the doghouse
with eight kids, probably hot, with insufficient ventilation, would it weaken the kids and encourage
respiratory disorders? So we removed the doghouse.
It seems cruel, but this whole project is in the nature of an experiment, to breed goats that can
withstand the rigors of nature. It is inevitable that there will be losses. The survivors will strengthen
the future herd.
Tonight as I came down to the shack I checked on the goats. Three more of the kids were down, not
dead, but sprawling in the helpless attitude that tends to precede that event. Oh, well.
| * * * |
One morning in autumn, Donna Schultz got on the school bus bursting with mystery. "Come on," she said to
Wendy Ward, who already was on board. "C'mon," she said, gesturing to indicate that Wendy should join her
in the back of the bus, away from the ears of Geoff, the driver, and the handful of other junior high school
students who were clustered toward the front. "I've got something to tell you."
Wendy gathered her books and followed her girlfriend to the back of the bus, her own eyes gleaming with
anticipation of juicy gossip. Donna would not have acted as she did, were there not something pretty special to
be divulged.
"Johnny and Bob," began Donna, referring to the two imprudent young men who had been trading sexual
favors with them in back of the bean fields and underneath the Shaw Valley bridge.
"What about them?" Wendy Ward was all ears.
"You'll never guess who they are."
"Who? Tell me!" Wendy screamed in a whisper.
Donna held her fingers across her lips in a shush. Couching her voice in the low tones of conspiracy, she said,
"Do you remember about three years ago, when there was that fire out by Black Mountain, and that fireman
got shot?"
"Sure," said Wendy. "My dad was still living with us then, and he was a volunteer on that crew. Why? Do you
mean Bob and Johnny…?"
"Wait. Wait. Were you guys out here yet back in forty-five?"
"Unh, unh. We didn't come out till I was nine, I think."
"That's right. That's okay. You know who Murphy's are?"
"Murphy's?"
"Yeah. You know, like Murphy's pasture? The bus goes right across it on El Camino…"
"Oh, yeah, Murphy's! I don't know any of them, but I know who you mean."
"Okay, good. You don't know any of them 'cause there ain't anyone to know except fogies; but they used to
have a daughter."
"What do you mean, 'used to?' Did she get…?"
"Just wait! I'm telling you."
"Keep going." The two girls hunched together on the rear seat of the big yellow bus and unraveled the news
about old tragedies.
"Okay. I think her name was Maggie," said Donna Schultz. "I heard my parents talking about it. Anyways,
this Maggie… their daughter… she used to hang around with Carol Gallagher. Know who the Gallagher's are?"
"They live over by Rousten's?"
"Yeah, but way back in on that road; you can't even see their house from El Camino. Carol was their
daughter; she must be about thirty now."
"What do you mean, 'was their daughter?' Did she get ki…?"
"No! Shut up! I'm telling it.
"It's funny you say that though," 'cause I guess even her folks haven't seen her in years, but they say she's
still around, or maybe she's back from being off somewhere else."
"What do you mean?"
"Okay, listen. As near as I can get it, back in forty-five… what's that, about eight years ago?… it was right
after that war got over… anyhow, it seems like there was this big shootout, out by Black Mountain."
"Wow!" said Wendy. "You mean like police?"
"No. It was all over before the cops even got there. But there was like four guys dead, and also this Maggie
Murphy."
"Dead?"
Donna nodded. "Shot through the back of the head with a forty-four."
"Sheesh!" exclaimed Wendy, although her idea of what precisely a 'forty-four' may have been was not very
precise. She knew that it had probably not been a pretty sight.
"So anyhow, these guys are all dead; Maggie Murphy's dead. These guys' truck is just sitting there, and
nobody else is around. Maggie had been out walking with Carol Gallagher, but she's nowhere to be found. They
look all around, in the brush and stuff, like maybe she's dead too, but they never find her."
Donna paused so that her friend could insert another "Sheesh!" Then she went on with the melodrama.
"So then, next thing you know, these two guys who work for Heinz don't show up for work, and guess what
their names are?"
"Johnny and Bob?"
"Uh huh."
"Sheesh!" The school bus had made a couple of more pickups as it made its way through Carmel Valley. It
had gone through Weldy's Corners and was just now pulling up to load another contingent of students from in
front of the Driftwood Market. By now it had become too crowded on board for the girls to continue their
conversation in privacy. Donna elected to table the rest of it until a more opportune moment.
That time came at the school itself when the two miscreants crept away from their physical education class to
smoke cigarettes under the bleachers.
"Tell me more," urged Wendy Ward. "Are we fucking around with a couple of murderers?" That possibility
seemed only to add spice to the imagination of the young slut.
"Nobody knows for sure," replied Donna.
"You mean nobody knows for sure that we're fucking them?" returned her friend. The two of them dissolved
into giggles.
"No," said Donna Schultz, after she had caught her breath. "Nobody knows for sure if they are the killers.
They were wanted for questioning. They still are.
"All they found from searching the whole area was a place where it looked like somebody had been camping
or something, and they found a bunch of bloody bandages."
"Bloody bandages?"
"Yeah. So they were thinking, maybe somebody was wounded. They didn't know what to think. You know
Marilyn Fiero?"
"Isn't she Heinz' daughter?"
"Yeah, but back then she was married to this guy named Al Wells. He got killed in a head-on collision up on
Torrey Pines grade one night. Then later on she married this Fiero guy.
"But, anyhow, Bob, if he is the same Bob, is her nephew."
"Oh, really?"
"Really. Bob Cabler. And they were both working for Heinz, stringing fence and stuff, and Bob was living
down at Marilyn's stables and feeding the horses and cleaning stalls and stuff. Same place where we went and
rode before, you know?"
"Yeah. I remember. Marilyn is a really nice person."
"Yeah," agreed Donna. "They questioned her a whole bunch back then, trying to get some leads. The cops
figured that all of it was tied together, you know, but they never found anything."
"How strange!"
"Yeah. The cops thought that Marilyn Wells was hiding something for a while."
"Really? Why?"
"I'm not real sure. I guess because she was Bob's aunt, and they figured she might know something. What I
heard was that ol' Murphy wouldn't let it rest; he kept pushing the sheriffs to keep the case open. He's really
rich, you know. He wanted to find out who killed his daughter.
"He said if he ever caught him he would beat him to death with a stick."
"I can't blame him."
"Yeah, but he's an asshole is what I heard.
"Anyhow, except for all the bloody bandages and stuff, they never find anything else. Oh, yeah, there was this
thing about Marilyn Wells' horse."
"What was that?"
"Well, the guys were on horses. It turns out that Johnny had been riding a horse that Marilyn owned that
day. I think they said that his own horse had died of colic or something."
"Who was telling you all this?"
"Nobody was telling me. I just heard my parents talking about all this last night with some friends who were
up from San Diego. Wanted them to know what a wild west country we live in here, you know?"
"Uh huh," said Wendy. "Pretty wild up here." Wendy Ward's voice dripped with innuendo during the last
remark, and the girls again enjoyed a fit of giggles. "So they never found them?" she asked.
"No. But after a few months Marilyn's horse turned up back at her stables."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Murphy was over there, and I guess he really knows horses. He spotted it, and he went crazy. See, he
figured that Johnny, who is a half-breed, had killed his daughter and all those guys, and maybe Bob and Carol
too. He figured he just went some kind of Indian nuts, crazy, you know.
"So he gets the cops back out there again. Marilyn had hired this Mexican to replace Bob; had him living in
the stables to feed the horses and stuff. I guess the sheriffs beat the shit out of him, trying to see if he knew
anything."
"Can't blame them for that," said Wendy without sympathy.
"Yeah, but Marilyn and Heinz didn't like that. It was their Mexican, you know. They're pretty rich too, so
they practically get into this feud with Murphy. I think the families still don't talk to each other."
"I think I heard something about that before, about a feud."
"Yeah. So, nobody admits nothing about where the horse came from, where it had been. Nothing. No Bob, no
Johnny, no Carol Gallagher, doodly-squat."
"Then what about the fire?" asked Wendy Ward. The two young ladies were sitting cross-legged under the
bleachers. From afar they could hear the sounds of the rest of their class playing volleyball. Each of them lit a
new cigarette, and the tale went on.
"I was getting to that," said Donna. "The fire. That was like in nineteen fifty?"
"I think so."
"Yeah. So there's this big brush fire, and the fire marshal, he gets a report that there's some people out in
this area that they already had cordoned off so they could just let it burn. You know how they do that? Like
they were figuring they would just let it burn up to Black Mountain Road, and then they would stop it there.
"But then someone says there's some people down in that patch. So, the fire's coming pretty quick, so the fire
marshal, he sends three guys down there to help these people get out of that area.
"Next thing he knows, two of these guys are back, and they are scared shitless." Donna Schultz was relating
this as though she gained a wry satisfaction from retelling what she had overheard. "They tell the marshal that
it was real smoky, and that they found a woman with a little girl stumbling around out there in the brush."
"Holy shit!"
"Yeah, like these people are really close to getting burned alive. So, one of these guys was out in front. They
were working their way through some nasty shit, so it was kind of slow. So, the first guy, he gets to this
woman, and he starts to help her up the slope through the brush.
"Next thing the other two guys see a couple of men come into view. One of them is leading a horse. The horse
is going crazy; it's like a pack horse. So, before they know it, one of these guys pulls out a gun and shoots the
fireman!"
"Just like that?"
"Just like that. Boom, he dead."
"Fuck!"
"Really. So these other two guys hotfoot it back up the hill."
"They didn't want to get shot."
"Really. Firemen never do." Again there was the callous attitude.
"What happened to the people?" Wendy wanted to know. "The ones who shot them, and the woman and the
kid?"
Donna shrugged. "They disappeared. After the fire they searched, like for bones and buckles and stuff."
"Gross!" Wendy shivered.
"But they didn't find anything, and they still figure they got away."
"If it was our Bob and Johnny, I guess they did get away," was Wendy's comment.
Donna went on. "What they did find was the ruins of a house."
"A house?"
"Yeah. They never figured out whose house it had been. Just some squatters; nobody even knew it was there.
Been there a long time, too.
"They also found the bullet lodged in the fireman. They had some way of telling that it came from the same
gun that had killed Maggie Murphy five years before."
Wendy smiled with the intrigue, the mystery and adventure of it all. To think that she and her friend, fifteen
years of age, were having romantic encounters with notorious killers. It was just too juicy.
Donna Schultz had more to tell. "One more thing," she said. She paused for dramatic effect, took a long drag
on her cigarette, and slowly blew the smoke, watching it as it twisted its way upward through the bleachers over
their heads and dissipated against the blue of the sky.
"What's that?"
"Ol' man Murphy offered a ten thousand dollar reward for any information leading to the capture of Johnny
Stream and Bob Cabler. The offer is still good."
Wendy Ward, who already was on board. "C'mon," she said, gesturing to indicate that Wendy should join her
in the back of the bus, away from the ears of Geoff, the driver, and the handful of other junior high school
students who were clustered toward the front. "I've got something to tell you."
Wendy gathered her books and followed her girlfriend to the back of the bus, her own eyes gleaming with
anticipation of juicy gossip. Donna would not have acted as she did, were there not something pretty special to
be divulged.
"Johnny and Bob," began Donna, referring to the two imprudent young men who had been trading sexual
favors with them in back of the bean fields and underneath the Shaw Valley bridge.
"What about them?" Wendy Ward was all ears.
"You'll never guess who they are."
"Who? Tell me!" Wendy screamed in a whisper.
Donna held her fingers across her lips in a shush. Couching her voice in the low tones of conspiracy, she said,
"Do you remember about three years ago, when there was that fire out by Black Mountain, and that fireman
got shot?"
"Sure," said Wendy. "My dad was still living with us then, and he was a volunteer on that crew. Why? Do you
mean Bob and Johnny…?"
"Wait. Wait. Were you guys out here yet back in forty-five?"
"Unh, unh. We didn't come out till I was nine, I think."
"That's right. That's okay. You know who Murphy's are?"
"Murphy's?"
"Yeah. You know, like Murphy's pasture? The bus goes right across it on El Camino…"
"Oh, yeah, Murphy's! I don't know any of them, but I know who you mean."
"Okay, good. You don't know any of them 'cause there ain't anyone to know except fogies; but they used to
have a daughter."
"What do you mean, 'used to?' Did she get…?"
"Just wait! I'm telling you."
"Keep going." The two girls hunched together on the rear seat of the big yellow bus and unraveled the news
about old tragedies.
"Okay. I think her name was Maggie," said Donna Schultz. "I heard my parents talking about it. Anyways,
this Maggie… their daughter… she used to hang around with Carol Gallagher. Know who the Gallagher's are?"
"They live over by Rousten's?"
"Yeah, but way back in on that road; you can't even see their house from El Camino. Carol was their
daughter; she must be about thirty now."
"What do you mean, 'was their daughter?' Did she get ki…?"
"No! Shut up! I'm telling it.
"It's funny you say that though," 'cause I guess even her folks haven't seen her in years, but they say she's
still around, or maybe she's back from being off somewhere else."
"What do you mean?"
"Okay, listen. As near as I can get it, back in forty-five… what's that, about eight years ago?… it was right
after that war got over… anyhow, it seems like there was this big shootout, out by Black Mountain."
"Wow!" said Wendy. "You mean like police?"
"No. It was all over before the cops even got there. But there was like four guys dead, and also this Maggie
Murphy."
"Dead?"
Donna nodded. "Shot through the back of the head with a forty-four."
"Sheesh!" exclaimed Wendy, although her idea of what precisely a 'forty-four' may have been was not very
precise. She knew that it had probably not been a pretty sight.
"So anyhow, these guys are all dead; Maggie Murphy's dead. These guys' truck is just sitting there, and
nobody else is around. Maggie had been out walking with Carol Gallagher, but she's nowhere to be found. They
look all around, in the brush and stuff, like maybe she's dead too, but they never find her."
Donna paused so that her friend could insert another "Sheesh!" Then she went on with the melodrama.
"So then, next thing you know, these two guys who work for Heinz don't show up for work, and guess what
their names are?"
"Johnny and Bob?"
"Uh huh."
"Sheesh!" The school bus had made a couple of more pickups as it made its way through Carmel Valley. It
had gone through Weldy's Corners and was just now pulling up to load another contingent of students from in
front of the Driftwood Market. By now it had become too crowded on board for the girls to continue their
conversation in privacy. Donna elected to table the rest of it until a more opportune moment.
That time came at the school itself when the two miscreants crept away from their physical education class to
smoke cigarettes under the bleachers.
"Tell me more," urged Wendy Ward. "Are we fucking around with a couple of murderers?" That possibility
seemed only to add spice to the imagination of the young slut.
"Nobody knows for sure," replied Donna.
"You mean nobody knows for sure that we're fucking them?" returned her friend. The two of them dissolved
into giggles.
"No," said Donna Schultz, after she had caught her breath. "Nobody knows for sure if they are the killers.
They were wanted for questioning. They still are.
"All they found from searching the whole area was a place where it looked like somebody had been camping
or something, and they found a bunch of bloody bandages."
"Bloody bandages?"
"Yeah. So they were thinking, maybe somebody was wounded. They didn't know what to think. You know
Marilyn Fiero?"
"Isn't she Heinz' daughter?"
"Yeah, but back then she was married to this guy named Al Wells. He got killed in a head-on collision up on
Torrey Pines grade one night. Then later on she married this Fiero guy.
"But, anyhow, Bob, if he is the same Bob, is her nephew."
"Oh, really?"
"Really. Bob Cabler. And they were both working for Heinz, stringing fence and stuff, and Bob was living
down at Marilyn's stables and feeding the horses and cleaning stalls and stuff. Same place where we went and
rode before, you know?"
"Yeah. I remember. Marilyn is a really nice person."
"Yeah," agreed Donna. "They questioned her a whole bunch back then, trying to get some leads. The cops
figured that all of it was tied together, you know, but they never found anything."
"How strange!"
"Yeah. The cops thought that Marilyn Wells was hiding something for a while."
"Really? Why?"
"I'm not real sure. I guess because she was Bob's aunt, and they figured she might know something. What I
heard was that ol' Murphy wouldn't let it rest; he kept pushing the sheriffs to keep the case open. He's really
rich, you know. He wanted to find out who killed his daughter.
"He said if he ever caught him he would beat him to death with a stick."
"I can't blame him."
"Yeah, but he's an asshole is what I heard.
"Anyhow, except for all the bloody bandages and stuff, they never find anything else. Oh, yeah, there was this
thing about Marilyn Wells' horse."
"What was that?"
"Well, the guys were on horses. It turns out that Johnny had been riding a horse that Marilyn owned that
day. I think they said that his own horse had died of colic or something."
"Who was telling you all this?"
"Nobody was telling me. I just heard my parents talking about all this last night with some friends who were
up from San Diego. Wanted them to know what a wild west country we live in here, you know?"
"Uh huh," said Wendy. "Pretty wild up here." Wendy Ward's voice dripped with innuendo during the last
remark, and the girls again enjoyed a fit of giggles. "So they never found them?" she asked.
"No. But after a few months Marilyn's horse turned up back at her stables."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Murphy was over there, and I guess he really knows horses. He spotted it, and he went crazy. See, he
figured that Johnny, who is a half-breed, had killed his daughter and all those guys, and maybe Bob and Carol
too. He figured he just went some kind of Indian nuts, crazy, you know.
"So he gets the cops back out there again. Marilyn had hired this Mexican to replace Bob; had him living in
the stables to feed the horses and stuff. I guess the sheriffs beat the shit out of him, trying to see if he knew
anything."
"Can't blame them for that," said Wendy without sympathy.
"Yeah, but Marilyn and Heinz didn't like that. It was their Mexican, you know. They're pretty rich too, so
they practically get into this feud with Murphy. I think the families still don't talk to each other."
"I think I heard something about that before, about a feud."
"Yeah. So, nobody admits nothing about where the horse came from, where it had been. Nothing. No Bob, no
Johnny, no Carol Gallagher, doodly-squat."
"Then what about the fire?" asked Wendy Ward. The two young ladies were sitting cross-legged under the
bleachers. From afar they could hear the sounds of the rest of their class playing volleyball. Each of them lit a
new cigarette, and the tale went on.
"I was getting to that," said Donna. "The fire. That was like in nineteen fifty?"
"I think so."
"Yeah. So there's this big brush fire, and the fire marshal, he gets a report that there's some people out in
this area that they already had cordoned off so they could just let it burn. You know how they do that? Like
they were figuring they would just let it burn up to Black Mountain Road, and then they would stop it there.
"But then someone says there's some people down in that patch. So, the fire's coming pretty quick, so the fire
marshal, he sends three guys down there to help these people get out of that area.
"Next thing he knows, two of these guys are back, and they are scared shitless." Donna Schultz was relating
this as though she gained a wry satisfaction from retelling what she had overheard. "They tell the marshal that
it was real smoky, and that they found a woman with a little girl stumbling around out there in the brush."
"Holy shit!"
"Yeah, like these people are really close to getting burned alive. So, one of these guys was out in front. They
were working their way through some nasty shit, so it was kind of slow. So, the first guy, he gets to this
woman, and he starts to help her up the slope through the brush.
"Next thing the other two guys see a couple of men come into view. One of them is leading a horse. The horse
is going crazy; it's like a pack horse. So, before they know it, one of these guys pulls out a gun and shoots the
fireman!"
"Just like that?"
"Just like that. Boom, he dead."
"Fuck!"
"Really. So these other two guys hotfoot it back up the hill."
"They didn't want to get shot."
"Really. Firemen never do." Again there was the callous attitude.
"What happened to the people?" Wendy wanted to know. "The ones who shot them, and the woman and the
kid?"
Donna shrugged. "They disappeared. After the fire they searched, like for bones and buckles and stuff."
"Gross!" Wendy shivered.
"But they didn't find anything, and they still figure they got away."
"If it was our Bob and Johnny, I guess they did get away," was Wendy's comment.
Donna went on. "What they did find was the ruins of a house."
"A house?"
"Yeah. They never figured out whose house it had been. Just some squatters; nobody even knew it was there.
Been there a long time, too.
"They also found the bullet lodged in the fireman. They had some way of telling that it came from the same
gun that had killed Maggie Murphy five years before."
Wendy smiled with the intrigue, the mystery and adventure of it all. To think that she and her friend, fifteen
years of age, were having romantic encounters with notorious killers. It was just too juicy.
Donna Schultz had more to tell. "One more thing," she said. She paused for dramatic effect, took a long drag
on her cigarette, and slowly blew the smoke, watching it as it twisted its way upward through the bleachers over
their heads and dissipated against the blue of the sky.
"What's that?"
"Ol' man Murphy offered a ten thousand dollar reward for any information leading to the capture of Johnny
Stream and Bob Cabler. The offer is still good."
