The Twenty - One Mile House

By Michael R. Häack

The frozen rock and gravel road over Sonora Pass was not kind to any form of weakness. Crossing the 10,000 foot Sierra Nevada pass was a balancing act where one side dropped off into icy snow-melt river waters and the other side dived into canyons of massive granite boulders.
The harsh winters blast brought death everywhere.
Into this setting arrived the Byers brothers and six horse drawn Murphy freight wagons from East to West at a time when the pass should have been closed to winter travel. They hoped to overnight at the ancient 21 Mile House for shelter, perhaps even warmth and food. If the weather didnt stop them first then the outlaw Pau Lim, was certain to kill anyone who ventured into the 21 Mile House. Within that abandoned lodge he hid his victims, his horrible secrets and stolen Wells Fargo gold. Pau was no stranger to killing; one more victim meant nothing to him, and the Byers brothers and their wagon train were headed right his way! Death in the frozen clutches of the old hotel fit into his plans just fine.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 12, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504967334

Michael R. Häack

The author resides in Modesto, CA, and is an artist working in mixed media, graphics and fabric art.

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© 2015 Michael R. Häack. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 12/11/2015

ISBN: 978-1-5049-6735-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-6734-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-6733-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015920226

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

O n e

T w o

T h r e e

F o u r

F i v e

S i x

S e v e n

E i g h t

N i n e

T e n

E l e v e n

T w e l v e

T h i r t e e n

F o u r t e e n

F i f t e e n

S i x t e e n

S e v e n t e e n

E i g h t e e n

T w e n t y

T w e n t y -- o n e

T w e n t y -- t w o

T w e n t y -- t h r e e

T w e n t y -- f o u r

T w e n t y -- f i v e

T w e n t y -- s i x

T w e n t y -- s e v e n

T w e n t y -- e i g h t

T w e n t y -- n i n e

T h i r t y

T h i r t y -- o n e

T h i r t y -- t w o

T h i r t y -- t h r e e

T h i r t y -- f o u r

T h i r t y -- f i v e

T h i r t y -- s i x

T h i r t y -- s e v e n

T h i r t y -- e i g h t

T h i r t y -- e i g h t

T h i r t y -- n i n e

F o r t y

F o r t y -- o n e

F o r t y -- o n e

F o r t y -- t w o

F o r t y -- t h r e e

F o r t y -- f o u r

F o r t y -- s i x

F o r t y -- s e v e n

F o r t y -- e i g h t

F o r t y -- n i n e

F i f t y

F i f t y -- o n e

F i f t y -- t w o

F i f t y -- t h r e e

F i f t y -- f o u r

F i f t y -- f i v e

This book is dedicated to all of my readers who have read my books and encouraged me to Write another.

Additional thanks to:

My editor Dawn Gardner

who kept me making repairs 'till I got it right.

My brother Warren Haack

who helped me with research and is also the cover artist.

My daughter Christy Mantz

who encourages me to deal with difficuilties

and keep on writing.

My God who oversees my life and keeps me faithful.

P r e f a c e

T wo old splintered felloes on the huge left rear wheel of the Murphy wagon broke simultaneously at about noon on a cloudy cold Sunday in late November of 1893. In the greater scheme of things the occurrence might appear rather inconsequential. However, the results over time helped to shape events in the story to follow.

The felloes were the wood rims which held spokes and when they shattered they lost spokes which destroyed any hope of using the canvas brake block on that wheel, and consequently threw off control to the left side of the team. The driver jumped off his spring seat onto Queen's broad back and shouted his lungs full of hopeless commands. Queen, whoa, whoa girl, hold back, gee gee! Queen was already a dead carcass waiting for the drop. She was sixteen hands high, an all-black and had been trained in the mountains since four. She took the events calmly and stumbled off the trail's cribbing edge at a knee-ripping rate. The wagon, a fully loaded two-ton Murphy overtook the team, drove shattering front wheels into soft horse flesh and fell with the frantically-struggling driver, the brakeman still at his Hawkins Bar and the six-horse team off the steep side of Hell's Hole. Screaming down the 300 foot granite drop into icy mountain water, the driver, the brakeman, and team lasted only minutes. The crated goods floated down the angry falls and launched into numerous splinter groups amongst stone outcroppings. The heavy freight wagon played tag with granite boulders and Bull Pines, awoke the birds and squirrels in the high Sierra wilderness and sent them racing from nests and burrows. In time nature would release bodies, bones, and freight wagon remains to the wagon crews which followed. For the time being they rested in silence. The company collapsed. The days gradually grew colder and a late winter sluggishly arrived in the Sonora Pass region of the Sierra Nevadas.

O n e

O rland Byers tossed down the Mono News Rivalry and groaned. My gad another season like this we may as well start panning for silver. This business is too full of green crews with a team, a top-heavy wood box on wheels and a hankering for beans. He addressed his younger brother Justin. You would think thick-headedness was a virtue. He pointed to the newspaper, now resting among cups and papers on the large wood table, which filled the kitchen and served as company business center and dining area. Those stupid mutts took off with loose felloes and busted canvas brake shoes, I'll bet you! Orland, oldest brother of the five Byers brothers at thirty-eight was already slightly grey. A man with a business head, he was also the bookkeeper for the small family-owned freight company.

The outside temperature was a brisk thirty-six degrees but warm for an early December day. The weather was calm, dry, and smelled of winter's pine and sage. Life on the home ranch east of Sonora Pass was mildly relaxed with overtones of desperation. The times called for action or a very long and spare winter.

Justin dumped a handful of coffee beans into the grinder and cranked. The fresh nutty odor invaded spaces, mingled with the smoky atmosphere of the large woodstove in the kitchen. Mainly used for cooking, it was also the single source of heat in that area of the rambling ranch house. Elsewhere in the downstairs, warming fires burned in the living room fireplace and the spare bedroom potbelly stove as well. Blended together these strong aromas lent a tang which served to lighten the mood.

Hmmm, Justin had his mind on a much greater prospect than either silver mining or freight hauling. He had seen the results of photography pioneer George Eastman and his mind was filled with Daguerreotypes and such things as silver tinting and sepia tone. Justin wanted to get to civilization and see one of the new dark box Kodak cameras. He was an artist, a photography student, if only by book knowledge, but his dream was to own a camera and study nature on film.

Soooo, what do you think? Orland asked the air in general.

What I think is we need a pot of coffee, drayage customers and money to put new spokes on our number-two wagon. Although he was the youngest of the five brothers Maurice successfully ran the company's physical operations. We need a contract on paper with orders to take one more load over the top before the heavy snows fly. A long speech for Maurice Byers.

An organizer by nature, Maurice had just naturally become the physical manager of the family freight-hauling company. Inside his brain, organization was a normal everyday thing; a safe of information, while the outer shell appeared a bit large and slick. His head, shaped rather like a melon, was going bald prematurely, but his looks failed to hide the fact that he was the man who made things happen.

Right now nothing was happening in Mono County and times were tight. Their business, The Byers' Freight and Drayage Company, was at a standstill, and while this was not unusual for winter months, weather was still mild enough for the wagons to run and make an income for the brothers. Although money was not coming in, horses still needed feed, men needed three meals a day, wagons and tack still wanted maintenance. Hmmm. Maurice chewed the air and stewed while Orland brewed the pot for breakfast.

Their business was an exception in those years of one-horse freight operations going boom and bust overnight. The five brothers had been in the heavy-freight hauling business for several years. While some had been hard and slim years, never-the-less the business constantly came back, surviving both feast and famine. Seven years in successful operation was ages, as many freight lines in the early hauling days with wagon and team came and went in months. Men failed, equipment failed, companies failed.

The country was not kind to weakness of any sort, flesh or machine. The news that a small competitor had fallen into disaster, while somber and certainly tragic, did however help to reduce the competition.

The company needed a steady stream of orders on both ends of the Sierra mountains to survive. Their route ran along the Walker River Canyon area on the east side of the Sierras north to Reno, south toward San Bernardino Valley and west over Sonora Pass into the lush sprawling San Joaquin Valley. From there freight moved to the docks at the headwaters of the delta waterways, then west via barges to the rapidly growing metropolis of San Francisco. Supplies, mostly lumber, which they hauled into 'The City,' either stayed there to furnish the growing demand of new buildings or was loaded onto ships and left for points all over the globe.

The Byers brothers were from a large and very close family in the Santa Clara Valley. Any trip they made west offered a chance to visit with parents and sisters.

The senior brother, tall and quiet, was Orland. Without too much emotion, bespectacled and quiet, Orland was the bookkeeper of the company. He not only never went on the hauls but did not like to smell horses or road dust. He could balance books and magically, it seemed, make ends meet...so far.

There were four others: Bob the mechanic who made things work and fixed them when they failed, Justin who was next younger in age and slightly pushy too. He was very sure of himself, a dreamer who would realize his hope of becoming a professional photographer in time. Next was Jim the scholar. Jim had his mind on a certain young lady in the bay community of San Jose named Anna Kern. Anna, or Kerney as she became known, was from Idaho. Moving west to practice millinery, she designed and made hats for the wealthy ladies of the San Francisco area. Jim planned to attend Bolt Law School and intended to leave the company at some future stop in San Francisco. The baby of the family was Maurice who organized and directed the physical operations of the company.

The brothers had a lot of differences, but in common they had the love of the outdoors and a tightly-knit family. They planned to survive and move ahead in the world. Their freight drayage company was a stepping stone into the bigger world of business.

Author's note: These characters were actual brothers from a fairly affluent bay area family. They were educated, highly read and well spoken. They eventually left the freight business and realized dreams: Maurice became owner and manager of the Ford agency in Gilroy, California. Justin became a photographer and cinematographer for a leading geographic exploration magazine. Bob was to become the first California Highway Patrol Motorcycle officer. Jim became a lawyer and a judge. Orland managed businesses and investments.

Breakfast was eaten family style at a large scrubbed table in the center of the kitchen, a sprawling room; while fairly cluttered, it none-the-less successfully served as the center of the business. There was the huge table, homemade by Bob, numerous chairs, a desk piled with Orland's organization system of 'pile it and leave it,' boxed-business ledgers and logs. Nearby was the large nickel-plated wood stove which served as cooking center, heater, and gathering point on cold-mornings.

In this warm and relaxing room, soaked in years of men gathered about, they talked, ate, looked over paperwork and relaxed before the day began.

The typical day began here, summer and winter alike at five o'clock and extended well into the darkness of night. Today's breakfast, while early, none-the-less included time to discuss work, any news which had arrived, plans for the day, and such social activities as a tiny isolated mountain community allowed. Afterward, chores were addressed, the needs of horses as well as machinery were tended to, and on a cold bleak morning like this men might return to the kitchen to read and relax, a rare luxury at best enjoyed on the occasional Sunday.

Maurice announced to the general cold-morning airs as he headed out the back door, I'll be gone overnight, headed north to discuss a business deal in Minden. Orland, who was still at the table pondering over a journal and his third steaming mug, nodded a slightly acknowledging head as Maurice pulled on a heavy-padded coat and gloves, tossed a few items into saddle bags and headed out the back door toward the closest of the three barns.

The sprawling home ranch sat on seventy acres of low hills, scrub brush, sage and Jack pines. Just a quarter mile east from the main road was the aged farmhouse of hand split bat-and-board construction, three huge barns, a machine shed, two outhouses and numerous chicken sheds, cattle chutes, stalls and feed-storage cribs. The seventy acres of fenced pastures faded into the eastern hills and supplied roaming grounds for horses, beef cattle, a single mule and several goats.

Inside two of the large barns were the bread earners for the family business; six massive Murphy freight wagons. These monsters, with just the empty wagon weighing over 500 pounds and wheels weighing up to 400 pounds each, were ten feet high and twenty-one feet long. The wagons were typically pulled by oxen, but in the place of such beasts, the brothers employed six-horse teams to pull the massive wagons. Historically, powerful oxen, less desirable to Indian raiding parties, were employed to draw the heavy but slow wagons.

The brothers, like most freight haulers of the time had switched to teams of six horses, mainly in the interest of speed. Horses, pickier to feed than oxen, were therefore more expensive to maintain but made up for it in their superior speed. Fully loaded Murphy wagons, often moving in a tandem line of a three-hitch were a sight creaking and groaning along a packed dirt mountain road.

Inside the smallest of the three barns, Maurice saddled Blanch, his hack and all-time favorite quarter horse, rode out the rock and gravel drive onto the main road and headed north the two miles to the small riverside town of Walker.

T w o

I n the settlement of Walker, population approximately two hundred, with many being seasonal, the central location for gathering, a drink, a yarn, and any news was the bar. For an up-to-date look at any important news Maurice joined fellow haulers inside The Livery, hub of the tiny community. Housed in a slightly unstable, old and bleached-board structure, The Livery served as a meeting hall, a repair shop, and a bar. It provided for its customers well on all fronts.

Maurice walked in on a conversation between two brothers, Mark and Bart Holland. The two men were locals and they had news, rumor more likely, about the missing men and wagon from the small local Dangberg Freight Company.

The Dangbergs sure took a beating so I heard, reported livery hand Mark Holland. I guess their pieces drifted all over the Middle Fork from Hells Hole to the Dardanelle Flats.

Poor sots, them what was so anxious to make a killing in the business just plain got it; killed that is. Bart Holland although taller, darker and slightly older was not that much smarter than his younger brother and had a hint of the dumb flatlander about him too.

Did anyone hear mention of what went wrong, or was it a runaway? Bart was trying to reconstruct events so he could avoid the chance of a similar accident happening to their team. Did any of the family survive or did they all go over at once?

His brother took the initiative. "You really expect to have answers to all of that in one season? Heck man, that news came weeks back and we'd not have known it but for the Chinese cook at The Twenty-One." Mark paused to spit an exact stream of chew juice on a very surprised dung beetle. (The floor of The Livery was packed dirt and gravel.)

"Word has it, and this is more like gossip I hear, word has it that Pau Lim saw them pass The 21 Mile House in a duster... then nothing more was seen or heard... The gaps in his speech were due more to slow mental process than dramatic hiatus. The Chinese stumbled on their bits and pieces while fishing in the flats a week or so later. His speech had become conjecture. Course ain't no one seen him either."

He looked about the group for confirmation. None offered, he continued. That was all information passed this way and I don't mean over the telegraph line.

Typically such news would have drifted their way via Adelheit Dillwood who was the operator of the government telegraph station at Leavitt Meadows. Nothing being heard from her source this was just word-of-mouth news which he was now embellishing into conjecture, better known as gossip.

Why heck, for all we know Pau Lim killed 'em, then took the gold and scampered.

The room went silent as faces in surprise waited for some evidence or proof of this information, information dropped like dynamite at a Sabbath worship. Mark grinned, satisfied that his homespun detective work had solved a federal crime, a crime which was in fact as yet more conjecture and home-spun than anything officially on wanted posters in sheriffs' offices.

Bart was yet attempting to solve the puzzle. Of course, he had to do it with all the skill of a man who could barely read the label on a whiskey bottle, a tobacco pouch, or dancehall poster. Hmmmm, he concentrated on the issue once more. "Had they spent the night at The 21 or were they just passing by?"

Mark was just about done with stupid by then, more than done in fact. Dumb head, he addressed his younger brother but in a collective display of general interest the entire saloon listened in. "Pau said they had passed on the run. Must have been uphill from The 21 on 'The Elevator' and blew a wheel."

He stopped to gain momentum and to allow the collective masses, all eleven of the gathered men, to absorb the tale. Then with the pride of a true hearsay spreader he continued. I suspect they dropped off into the river all together. No one survives a fall from that mountain.

That part, sadly enough was fact, not gossip. The massive granite cliffs of the Sonora Pass highway were not kind to those who attempted her passage, and in any confrontation between man and the granite, the hard rock immodestly won while the dark horse became more alluvium at the base of the massive rampart cliffs.

Bart was not one to let his brother have the last word on any subject.

What I want to know is - what became of that secret gold shipment Wells Fargo had stashed onboard Dangberg's freight wagon? You know, stuff too rich to send on the usual overland stage?

Obviously the shipment was not too secret since the likes of Bart Holland knew about it. Holland pulled a smug look of one who felt sure he owned a key piece in the puzzle then continued. I suspect it went off the cliff with the wagon. Question is where did it end up? Bottom of the river, bottom of the Dardanelles Flats, high and dry on some rocks just waiting for some tin pan to pluck it and be an overnighter?

Bart looked around to confirm that he had anyone's attention before he continued. Heck, I should be down there right now having a look-see! Hey, that kind of gold would make any poor freighter an instant man on the run; on the run and very rich!

He shared his broken-toothed grin with all gathered before Mark got in his final comment; not much of a show stopper, rather a grubby verbal finger pointed at the only other interested voice.

Mark got in his last shot, a sarcastic shot at best. I suppose Dangberg was above such a stunt. He was always going on about God and scripture and the end of time. Surely no man of God would steal government gold now would he?

The sarcasm bespoke of Mark's lack of trust for the deceased, although it could have been just an attempt to plant seeds of mistrust in the departed likes of the Dangbergs. The silence in the group indicated a certain lack of trust for any information involving the Holland family.

Maurice waited. Someone was bound to know all the facts and put them on the line. At the same time he had other interests. He was on his way north to contact a post and beam cutter working a scalp and slab rig up river in the next small town of Minden.

For the trip north, Maurice hitched Blanch to the small working farm wagon the brothers kept stored in the Walker stables. He planned to put in supplies for the next several weeks. The entire trip was business, with no stopover to see the boys in the pool hall for a taste of the bottle and a rattle of the balls on the pool table. The ride up and back was a two-day event and while there existed the prospects of a tardy winter finally arriving, there was more importantly considerable money to be made for the freight business.

Maurice picked up his stored rig at the livery and headed north with a saddlebag, a bedroll and food. His brothers would stand his chores two days and secretly enjoy the switch in the bargain. A full load of timbers and beams for the west side was good money, hard work and a visit with the family in the Bay Area.

Maurice briefly glanced at the sky for weather changes. Red skies at night, sailors delight. He told himself that winter would have to hold off 'til one more trip over the top. The sky had been shot through with red at night, blazing rills of orange met each dawn, daytimes the sky was bedizened with mares tails, and worse, most of the well-informed grazing cattle he passed along the rutted road north were settled down on cold grasslands; a sure sign of rain and snow to come. Winter would be there soon, perhaps too soon for the last trip over the pass. Maurice cursed silently, pulled his padded coat snugly around himself, climbed onto the spring seat of the small one-horse buggy and headed north. Gee Blanch, let's get up.

Unlike the tiny riverside burg of Walker, Minden was a real town. That being said one must realize that in Nevada in the late 1800's there were numerous silently struggling burgs and hamlets with populations ranging from a couple hundred to 500 or only slightly more. These outposts of civilization were spotted about the countryside; most never growing larger and many vanishing without a trace over time. One such struggling town became the famous gambling center of Reno.

On most days, the tiny community of Minden was just one more east side Sierra village, squatting amidst silent bleached and slanting wood-storefront buildings, resting starkly among sparse vegetation and rocky-potholed roads, patiently surviving biting summer flies and winter's freezing chill, waiting for anything to occur. Minden had a population of 650 mixed inhabitants scattered throughout her thirty or so hand-axed wood structures all alike in their mute evidence to any form of liveliness. Assorted wagons, aimlessly wandering citizens, sundry horses and scruffy half-wild dogs held sway over the boredom of the cold December afternoon. Mixed among them stood a half dozen or so teams, hitched to wagons of various sizes, all lined up outside 'Stewart's Grange Hall.'

That particular day, gathered inside and drawn in welcome relief to the massive wood-fired stove, stood drivers, swampers and handle men. Warmed outside by heat from the cherry-red fire-box and inside by a large whiskey, huddled the wagon men, all hopeful for one more order for cargo to be hauled toward the railhead at Carson, south over The Wall into the sprawling San Bernardino Valley, or west up the hectic Sonora Pass route.

Maurice pushed his way through the crowded and smoky room to the fire and thawed a bit. Men sat at random wood tables and played cards, drank and talked. The talk was of work or the lack of it. The winter waited and so did the freight haulers. As he edged towards the warmth, Maurice recognized a few men and spoke to one, Ted Carson. Ted, a local wheelwright, invited Maurice to indulge in a drink and some local gossip. Maurice had other needs and asked Ted his opinion on the wheel repairs he needed. Ted advised him to go directly to his shop and request of his assistant Lou Pratt the necessary parts and labor.

Tell him I sent you and assure him I will be along shortly to fill the order. As always, it will be on your bill and I'll see to it myself. Ted and Maurice had done business for three years and between them existed an understanding of speed, need and the goodwill involved in an open account.

Maurice thanked Ted, purchased him a drink and reluctantly but with the speed necessary to complete his needs left the warmth of the building and headed north to the wheel shop. Inside there was noise and cold air but very warm greetings and an immediate attention to the personal order sent over by Ted. Maurice was assured his order for extra spokes and a mixture of the two sizes of felloes for the four wagons would be filled that day. This was in preparation for a trip over the top. He was anticipating an order. It just felt like that sort of a day.

Money loomed and Maurice sought it out. The trip must be profitable for business, refill the coffers of the ranch and give the brothers a positive note to finish off the year 1893.

The race against the calendar was also a race against the weather. By all rights, winter should have closed the pass with feet of snow for two months by that day's date. The rather mild weather was in their favor, and while there had been some snowfall that year, both in November and December, the pass remained open. But would it linger that way for a last hop over the top to the west? All odds were against.

When the wires were not down due to storm, tree fall, bears or outlaw, the telegraph line west was mostly reliable, if slow. Maurice spent impatient minutes in the tiny telegraph office holding a conference with the telegrapher, one Hans Hoovendyke. Hans, tall, redheaded and slightly bony, was every inch an old-world Dutchman. He and his huge hairy mutt named Zugg lived in the small station which doubled as their home. He explained to Maurice, as he stood at the wooden counter in the small front room, that just that morning he had been in communication with the next three stations down the line: Bridgeport, Lee Vining and Lone Pine. Likewise, the line was clear and working north, all the way north to Reno. Beyond Reno the line was clear over the historically-deadly Donner Pass and back around through the San Joaquin Valley, up the west side of the Sonora Pass and still clear to the final west side station at Long Barn Lodge.

Yah, I been talk to Julius and Hazel at the barns. It's all good telegraph to there. However Hans informed Maurice, the junction up the east trunk was dead. It was often dead he continued, a fact that was not a surprise. The pull up rocky, treacherous east-side of Sonora Pass approached 26%. It killed wagons, horses and men, why not kill the telegraph line in the bargain? No one expected much else, least of all Miss Adelheit Dillwood, something of a recluse, a hermit, who lived in isolation and ran the end-of-the-line station up the pass toward the west at Leavitt Meadow.

Sory Herr Byers, der ist jus nofink I can do fer yous. His accent made communication somewhat difficult, rather ironic for the man in charge of the tiny telegraph communications station there in Minden; but since an accent really didn't travel over a telegraph line, it was something of a joke but never really a handicap.

Vell, Mr. Byers, ist dees vay. Maybe yous come back later, yah? Hans was willing to keep trying so, Maurice shook his lanky hand, looked in amazement about the tiny station house and wondered if code sent by Hoovendyke really did carry the heavy Dutch accent.

Laughing silently to himself, he left the telegraph station and headed back to his wagon. Glancing upward to an accumulation of heavy clouds he climbed to the seat, adjusted his warm coat against an almost darkening midday cold, spoke to Blanch and moved out of town. They headed on north to the lumber mill operated by Jug-the-hump. It was time to talk business.

Hans re-established communication with Hazel at Long Barn. "There's