JUNIOR KING ’S BUSINESS edited by Martha S. Hooker
Another Western Adventure with Leonard Eilers
THE HIDDEN VALLEY INCIDENT
Being a range detective can be mighty risky
H i! H ey, here we come! It’s us again, Deerfoot and me. Sure doesn’t seem possible that the wagons o f time have run over a couple of months since we last met. Sure got a humdinger of a story for you this trip, and to start things off I want to read you some verses out o f the Bible. “ N ow there was a man of Ben jamin, whose name was Kish . . . a m ighty man of power. And he had a son, whose name was Saul, a choice young man, and a goodly: and there was not among the chil dren of Israel a goodlier person than he: from his shoulders and upward he was higher than any of the peo ple . . . . Then Samuel took a vial of oil, and poured it upon his head, and kissed him, and said, Is it not because the L ord hath anointed thee to be captain over his inheritance? . . . And Samuel said to all the peo ple, See ye him whom the L ord hath chosen, that there is none like him among all the people? And all the people shouted, and said, God save the king . . . . And the L ord sent thee on a journey, and said, Go and utterly destroy the sinners the Amalekites, and fight against
them until they be consumed” (1 Sam. 9 : 1 , 2 ; 10 : 1 , 24 ; 15:18). In these verses we see how a fine young man was made king and then sent out to do a job. There was trouble in the land because of ene mies and he was expected to run them out of the country. He started out with good intentions to be obe dient but he failed. And that brings to m y mind something that happened back in old W yom ing on the Laramie Plains where there are hundreds of square miles of nothing but all kinds of land, mostly flat. There’s not even a wagon road or cow trail in most parts o f it. It’s really a place of the wide open spaces. A t the time of this story, cattle rustling and horse stealing were big business. And, of course, all horse thieves and cattle rustlers were enemies of the ranch ers, so there was always need for a man who would try to run them out o f the country. This man was the sheriff. N o matter how good he was, no matter how sincere and honest, it seemed like something was always happening to keep him from doing the job successfully. As you can imagine, any work o f this kind would be dangerous and that was
w hy sometimes it was hard to get a man for the job. M any a man who did accept it was ambushed or killed and no one ever saw who did it. That’s what happened to the last sheriff. The ranchers were getting des perate. Something had to be done. Someone who was qualified would have to assume the responsibility o f ridding the country of such ene mies. A fter some time had gone by, during which no one seemed to have any idea how it should be done, Big Boy Hawger, the owner of Arrowhead Banch, suggested a barbecue at his place. It would be a means of getting all the people in the country together and then they could decide on a man for the next sheriff. Even the Governor was to come with the sheriff from Cheyenne. W ell, I rode into the situation on the second day and I sure enjoyed myself, just watching all the people — must have been over 100, count ing all the children— have a good time eating, drinking and visiting. Big Boy sort of had charge of things, and on the afternoon o f m y arrival, he called a special meeting to decide what to do to get rid of continued
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The King's Business/July 1957
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