Sinks Canyon Mystery

By R. L. Newman

This simple little adventure tale was originally written as a juvenile novel in 1964 while I was a teacher in Lander, Wyoming. It didnt impress publishers, so I put it aside and later moved to Colorado and stored the manuscript in the attic and lost track of it.

Decades passed, but I persistently thought of rewriting my book, not to sell, necessarily, but for my own gratification, and I pondered how it could be better. I found the manuscript in early 2007, read it one more time and immediately set to work. The result was a complete revision, a total re-write other than the title, the locale and the basic plot. Because I was no longer hampered by trying to satisfy an editor or agent, I developed a style which frequently matches the way I really think and talk. (Some people who know me are thinking, Yeah, right: disorganized, repetitive, foolish, irreverent, clich-ridden, etc., etc.) Anyway, I was satisfied with the result. If you can read through the whole thing without losing interest or throwing up, then I feel that I have achieved my goal of becoming a bona fide novelist.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 24, 2008
• ISBN: 9781465323415

R. L. Newman

My writing career began in a one-room country schoolhouse in South Dakota where I scribbled short Western stories in little spiral notebooks and charged my classmates a penny or two to read them. My ambition to be an author was delayed by college, Air Force, marriage with children and other distractions. Eventually, while teaching English in Lander, Wyoming, I succeded in writing Duel Decision, using a pseudonym: Milo Grant. It was not published. Years later (2008) I did publish a juvenile novel (Sinks Canyon Mystery) under my own name. In that story, one of the characters spent his spare time writing a rather racy Western novel. It was only natural that I named that character “Milo Grant” and the book he was writing was, of course, Duel Decision! Thus we have a unique situation in which a fi ctional character wrote a book which became real--this one. RLN (Milo Grant)

Book preview

Sinks Canyon

Mystery

R. L. Newman

Copyright © 2008 by R. L. Newman.

Cover design by Margo Newman

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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Contents

Foreword

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 1

For Susan

My wife, my companion, my best friend

Special Thanks to Laura Toffoli, whose computer expertise enabled me to write a book the way it’s done in this age of incredible technology much too complicated for old-timers like me.

Cover Design by Margo Newman

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Foreword

Once upon a time, out West in Wyoming, a likeable trio of teen-agers and a well-worn old-timer became involved in a totally unexpected mountain adventure, pitting themselves against altogether un-likeable and dangerous scoundrels who were bent on doing them harm. Okay, so that opening phrase begins practically every fairy tale; it’s the most over-used opening to a story in the English language, I suppose, but I happen to like it. Nothing wrong with tradition, is there? Now I’ll continue this gripping tale by giving you a little geography lesson, always an exciting and suspenseful way to introduce an epic of this sort.

Sinks Canyon is in the Wind River Range of the Rocky Mountains in central Wyoming, near Lander. Most of you have never heard of Sinks Canyon. You all know about Wyoming’s more widely-known attractions: Yellowstone Park, the Tetons, Jackson Hole, Devil’s Tower, Jackalopes, and other interesting natural phenomena which everyone should see sometime. By the time you finish this novel, you’ll surely want to visit Sinks Canyon. In fact, you might want to begin that journey before you finish reading it! That’s okay, take it along.

But I digress. This story takes place in and around Sinks Canyon in 1964, a good time to be living in Wyoming and the West in general. There were no wars to worry about (Vietnam was not yet on everybody’s mind), gas was about 40 cents a gallon, the skies were clear (outside of the cities, of course), and terrorists were somebody else’s problem, not ours.

Some of you have probably driven across Wyoming on I-80, but if that’s all you’ve seen of the Cowboy State, you really shouldn’t judge it by your experience on that bleak stretch of highway. In a word, you might call it uninspiring. You need to get off I-80 and go north; the scenery gets much better. Then you begin to realize that Wyoming is a land of breath-taking vistas, towering mountains, magnificent rivers, huge ranches and great open ranges where the deer and the antelope roam, where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day. That line sounds real good; I wonder if I heard it before somewhere? However, this story is not about the familiar geographical wonders of the state with the bucking horse on its license plates, it’s about one little area that’s not so well-known: Sinks Canyon.

So what’s Sinks Canyon, you may ask, and you have a right to ask, since you’re reading this book about a mystery there. And what’s the mystery? Well, did you ever hear of a river that flows into a cave and disappears, to emerge a half mile downstream? It’s a geological phenomenon, rare but not unheard of. But I’ll get to that later. The real mystery concerns the aforementioned young people and an old guy who get involved in a very unusual situation, quite by accident, in Sinks Canyon. Many interesting and exciting things happen by accident. You’ll see what I mean shortly.

As I said, this story takes place in the 1960’s, before the Interstate system was completed across southern Wyoming. At that time the main road was US 30, the famous Lincoln Highway (two lanes, mostly). I-80 generally follows that original route, since it’s the easiest way to get across the state, and the fastest; most travelers don’t want to spend too much time in that wind-swept section. A friend of mine, a lovely young lady named Laura, frequently drives this stretch of highway, and just before her last trip heading west from Laramie, I asked her to take note of her thoughts, emotions and observations so that I could update my recollections of this road I had not traveled lately. When she returned I asked her to report and she said she had nothing to say; the journey had been too dull to bother commenting about. She’s not into wide-open spaces.

Come to think of it, if you come out of Nebraska on I-80, you might think that the Wyoming stretch is pretty darn exciting. Everything is relative. Those of us who live along the Front Range in Colorado are spoiled, I guess.

So forget about southern Wyoming and I-80. Let’s head north; we’ll begin that welcome change of direction at Rawlins. Now you’re in for a geographical treat.

As you drive up from Rawlins, you begin to see the real Wyoming. Still a lot of wide-open spaces, I grant you, but now your gaze begins to take in immense areas of really colorful desert (especially in early summer when this tale begins), with distant mountain ranges appearing on the horizon, deceptively close in the crisp clear air; it seems to take forever to reach them. These scenic delights make you appreciate what Mother Nature can do when given the time to manipulate an enormous expanse of what otherwise would be worthless real estate.

The road is a two-lane highway, of course, but a pretty good one to drive on. There’s not much traffic, and you can cruise along at a steady 65 with no trouble. (In those days, a cruise control would have been invaluable in the West, but they weren’t invented yet.) The highway splits at Muddy Gap, near Split Rock and Independence Rock, two famous landmarks on the Oregon Trail. (The split in the highway and Split Rock are not related, by the way.)

You can turn right to Casper or left to Lander, which is the direction we’ll take, since that’s where Sinks Canyon is, so that’s the logical place to go in order to solve whatever mystery is there. This road follows the route of the Oregon Trail along the Sweetwater River and up toward the Continental Divide. You can visualize those lumbering prairie schooners heading west to the riches of Oregon and California, not to mention Utah, if you’re a Mormon. The trail was a dangerous method of getting to the West, what with Indians (Native Americans, nowadays) who didn’t appreciate the white man’s invasion, and the weather, which was always an unpredictable factor on that perilous trek; it could be life-threatening in any season. But usually this stretch of road is a traveler’s delight during a bright summer day.

You pass Jeffrey City, a modern boom town of sorts at that time, but otherwise the road is without major interruptions most of the way from Rawlins to Lander. You soon see the Wind River Range beckoning to you in the west, snow visible in its jagged crevices the year round (this is before Global Warming).

The road branches again, going left to South Pass, the low point for the pioneers crossing the mountains, and right to Lander and beyond: the Tetons, Jackson Hole, Yellowstone Park, and continuing on into the vast and wonderful beauty of the American Northwest.

Are you thinking you’ve had enough geography? You think we ought to have some people involved with this story? And some action? Maybe a little romance? All right then, let’s get on with it.

Chapter 1

Picture this: a very clean and polished 1961 Ford Thunderbird, tan in color, humming along Highway 287 with the constant accompaniment of rock-and-roll music blaring loudly from the radio. It’s late June and two teen-age boys are heading for a Yellowstone vacation, free from parental influence, for a few days at least.

The driver and owner of this beautiful little car is Norman Forrester, fresh out of high school in Colorado. Riding beside him is his younger brother Val, just out of junior high, anxious to get on with the delights and horrors of the upper grades. Big brother Norm (he doesn’t like to use his full name) is a muscular young fellow, medium height, without an ounce of fat, since he’s a runner and biker and works out to keep in superb shape. He’s the more serious-minded of the duo, but at times he can be as carefree and comical as his younger brother, who has always been something of a clown. You’ll see what I mean as we go along.

Val is tall and slim. The brothers get along fairly well, usually, although Val had often been picked on by Norm and their older sister as the siblings grew up, but his resistance to such indignities tended to make him resilient to their jibes, able to ignore them completely with considerable success, and as a result he developed a serene, optimistic outlook and an immunity to carping criticisms, and at the same time a sense of humor which invaded his psyche permanently. Or perhaps these qualities were innate, that they were instrumental in his ability to overlook the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune as he matured. I don’t know. You’ll have to make up your own mind about that.

Norm, on the other hand, was often too serious-minded for his own good and sometimes too detail-oriented, but he also frequently showed a weird sense of humor that ordinary people sometimes didn’t get. For example, if a person commented about the cloudiness of the day, something unusual in Colorado, by saying, Gee, I wonder where the sun is today, Norm might come up with an answer like, Oh, it’s still there, you just can’t see it, and if he said it without a trace of a smile, the other person might think he was a total idiot to take his comment literally. When he was with Val, the two of them could create complete chaos with their foolishness. I’ll describe them better as we go along, since I know them well and you haven’t even met them yet. This is a long story—we’ve got time. And speaking of stories, most, including this one, develop because of unusual circumstances with a plot that always thickens and conflict that must be resolved with hopefully satisfactory results.

Let’s get on with it! you’re pleading. You’re right, this is no place to teach Fiction 101. Very well, I’ll try to keep my mind focused, if you promise not to complain.

The boys started this trek from Denver at an ungodly early hour, and as soon as they were settled down with the routine of highway travel, Val took it upon himself to be the guide, although Norm already knew where they were going. But Val enjoyed studying the road map, pointing out to his usually uninterested brother all the little notes describing historical or geologic features which most drivers seldom pay any attention to. He was always letting Norm know how far it was to the next town or point of interest, but his information was often deliberately misleading. Example: I know you can get sperm oil from a whale, but how do you get bear oil from a bear?

Norm glanced at his brother curiously but didn’t say anything, knowing that Val would soon come up with an explanation. He did: There’s a town here named Bear Oil.

You’ve got to be kidding, Norm commented.

No, right here! Val said, pointing to the map and then showing it to the driver. The town was actually named Bairoil.

Later, Val said, This car isn’t too good in mud. Hope we get through the Gap.

And what gap is that, may I ask?

It’s called Muddy Gap.

If there’s any mud in Muddy Gap, I’ll let you drive the rest of the way, wise guy.

If we make it through all that mud, the road branches left and right. Turn right and we’ll go to Casper. We could spend a day or two there. But I don’t think that’s the right road to Yellowstone. We could ask somebody how to get there. Or maybe you might want to turn left. Whatever.

They drove in silence for a while. Then, at Muddy Gap, Val suddenly said, I’ve got to go.

Right now?

Yeah, now! There isn’t any traffic. Stop here.

Norm sighed and pulled over to the side of the road. In those days, you sometimes didn’t see another car on the road for five minutes or more. The road was clear. Val relieved himself without closing the door while Norm waited impatiently. Then Val said, Look here! and pointed to the ground. Norm leaned over as directed. Val was pointing to the puddle he had just made. There’s your mud, bud! I get to drive!

Norm had to admit that Val had pulled a fast one. He was impressed by his brother’s ingenuity, to the point that he decided to reward him. You win! Just don’t get stopped by the fuzz or we’ll both wind up in jail. He got out, and they traded places. Val, of course, did not have a license, but Norm had taught him to drive and they were now on an almost deserted highway, so he wasn’t worried.

The Thunderbird had an automatic transmission, so there wasn’t any problem with shifting gears, and Val expertly continued their journey, after Norm warned him that his stint at the wheel was only to the next obvious stopping place, whether that was a town or gas station or scenic turn-off or whatever.

Very soon they approached the intersection where the road split. Val said, I’m glad we’re not going right. We’d wind up in Hell.

This time Norm had to ask, Why?

Look on the map. There’s a place called ‘Devil’s Gate.’ Gateway to Hell, sure enough.

Norm merely shook his head. But he sneaked a look at the map just to make sure his brother knew what he was talking about. He did.

They got to Jeffrey City before noon, too early to take a lunch break, but they were in the mood for a Coke break at least. They parked near the town’s only grocery store, got their Cokes, and were just standing idly near the Bird when they saw a blue 4-door ’62 Falcon pull up nearby. Having nothing else to do, they watched the driver get out. Both boys were glad they did. They both appreciated seeing a pretty girl. The older had already had some interesting experiences with pretty girls; the younger could still only imagine, but his imagination was very active. You might get the idea that the driver of the Falcon was a pretty girl. Not just a pretty girl: she was young, curvaceous, blonde, blue-eyed, and in general just a well-wrapped gift for sore eyes, if you’ll pardon the cliché.

I use a lot of cliches, by the way. They sometimes save a lot of time. Who can think up original similes and metaphors on the spur of the moment? Who has the time to spend hours trying to get a sentence right? I used to hate cliches with a passion. I wouldn’t touch one with a ten-foot pole. I wouldn’t be caught dead using one! Hearing one would make my skin crawl! It drove me crazy! But cliches are so prevalent that they’re a dime a dozen. You can’t evade them. Therefore, since I couldn’t beat them, I joined them. This whole diatribe against cliches is one cliché after another, as you probably realized. Since joining them, I use them now quite freely, without compunction. Get used to it.

A few of my cliches are deliberate and obvious, although most have crept into my composition unannounced and I didn’t realize I used so many until I re-read the manuscript, getting it ready for publication. If you’re twelve years old, you may not notice how many there are. If you’re a college graduate, you may be appalled by their profusion. (I like alliteration, too.) Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

But I digress. And I digress a lot too, as you may have noticed. But I like digressions. They add to the subject (sometimes). You can learn a lot by veering off into new territory, as long as you keep to the subject. However, you should eschew non-sequiturs! They sometimes bring the topic to a dead end.

(I didn’t deliberately mean to show off there. It means avoid things that are off the subject, advice that I seldom follow). If I use weird or invented words, I might have to explain them, but usually you’ll be able to figure out what I mean if you’ve had at least some education and an IQ over 50, and I’m sure you fit that category if you’ve read this far. You really don’t need to have your dictuary handy all the time. (That’s a word I heard while in basic training, when a southern recruit referred to a dictionary in that manner. I never did know if he was kidding or not. Anyway, I’ve used it frequently ever since.)

This is not a kids’ story, by the way, even though it’s about the three young people mentioned above and an old-timer who get involved in perilous and peculiar circumstances, as I indicated earlier. It’s more like your standard adventure novel with kids in it, you might say. I hesitate calling it a juvenile novel because that might turn off some of you, thinking it’s a story just for juveniles. Actually, it gets kinda racy now and then. Remember The Catcher in the Rye? It was about a young person, Holden Caulfield as I recall, but it certainly wasn’t a story just for high school kids. Now you’re thinking: What a flagrant attempt to generate interest! I don’t mean to say this novel can be compared to that classic; this is just a simple little adventure tale that’s written to amuse you somewhat.

Now you’re thinking, Why didn’t he put all this crap in the introduction where it belongs? Listen, I’m the one writing this! Keep your complaints to yourself and you’ll soon see what genius lies in the construction of this work of art!

Actually, I had my discussion of cliches and digressions well-planned. I just didn’t think they would show up so soon. But there I was, writing cliches and digressions, so I had to defend my use of them, didn’t I?

Anyway, let’s get back to the little scene at the grocery store. (About time! you’re thinking. Well, my advice is to stop thinking! Just relax and keep on reading.)

Where was I? Oh yes, the pretty girl. She was young, seventeen or eighteen, Norm guessed. (He was a good guesser; she was seventeen.) She was wearing blue jeans, boots, a plaid long-sleeved Western shirt with snaps in place of buttons, and her long, shoulder-length very blonde hair was set off with a well-worn, wide-brimmed straw hat, which she had put on when she got out of the car. She was wearing sun glasses which hid her eyes. Her typical Western attire did not hide the fact that her figure was ideal, in fact it probably emphasized it: slender and well-proportioned in all the right places and you know which places I’m referring to. But I’ve already described her physical attributes. I tend to repeat myself a lot. She was a fine-looking young girl, you can take my word for it. Use your imagination; I can’t be bothered describing every little feature of every person who appears in this story. I’ll let you know when someone is unnaturally ugly, though. Or even naturally ugly.

Both boys were transfixed, their Cokes frozen half way to their lips. The girl glanced briefly at them, saw how they were looking at her, and smiled slightly as she went into the store, possibly walking just a little suggestively, as if she enjoyed the attention. You know how girls can walk suggestively; it’s got something to do with the way they manipulate their hips, I guess. Fascinating.

Norm and Val looked at each other. Wow! These Wyoming gals are pretty hot! went through their minds at the same time. Norm managed to blurt out, You’re too young to be thinking what you’re thinkin’, son.

No harm in lookin’, Val replied.

Did you see how she smiled at me? Norm said.

"You? She was smilin’ at me, anybody could see that!"

"I don’t know why anybody would smile at you! Besides, you’re too young for her."

Nah, she’s just about right for me. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be tryin’ to get my attention like that! retorted the younger one, not too convincingly.

She’s at least sixteen or seventeen years old! Norm insisted. Maybe eighteen. Think I don’t know women? Besides, she’s driving a car. Even in Wyoming they don’t drive cars at your age.

Well, they went on arguing about that subject for a while, practically wore it out, as was their habit with arguments. Norm thought about re-entering the store to get another look at the girl, but couldn’t think of a good excuse to go in, so he said instead, in his best Western dialect, We’d better be hittin’ the trail, pardner. I’m gittin’ hungry. How far to the next waterin’ hole? He wasn’t one to waste time when he was going somewhere.

Val reached into the car and surveyed his map. About 60 miles, looks like. Town called Lander. We can grab some lunch there. It’s your turn to pay.

I just bought the Cokes, jerk!

That doesn’t count! We’re talkin’ about regular lunches, you tight-wad!

Norm just smiled as he got in behind the wheel. He enjoyed trying to get Val to pay for the little things (and bigger purchases too, like lunches), although he was responsible for the major expenditures. Actually, Norm was a little close with his spending money but he wouldn’t admit it. His friends and acquaintances soon found that out as soon as they got to know him.

They got into the Bird and drove slowly out of the parking lot, Norm glancing briefly at the blue Falcon, visualizing the beautiful young girl who drove it. He sighed and wondered why he didn’t meet girls like that in his regular life.

Their journey continued uneventfully, although they commented now and then about the beautiful, big-sky scenery surrounding this part of Wyoming. There were distant mountains, broad grassy prairies, outcroppings of colorful rocks, prosperous-looking ranches, sagebrush and willow trees, antelope and jackrabbits (although they didn’t see and jackalopes) and the incredibly clear mountain air which made every distant feature they observed seem close enough to hike to during a coffee break. I’m talking about genuine Western scenery here, people. Some of you know what I mean. If you don’t appreciate good scenery, well, read on anyway. You can skim the descriptive geography if you want to.

Val was studying his map again and commented, There’s a fork in the road up ahead about ten miles. Be sure and stop there.

Why?

So we can get out and pick up the fork! Val guffawed, using a favorite gag of my favorite late-night talk-show host. Norm just rolled his eyes and shook his head. He was so accustomed to his little brother’s constant foolery that most of the time there was no response needed.

Assuming there actually is a ‘fork in the road,’ would you mind telling me where each one goes? he asked, mostly for the sake of conversation, since he had a pretty good idea already where the road led. I’d hate to take the wrong one and wind up in Arizona. We’re behind schedule as it is. Norm tended to stick to a set routine and anything out of the ordinary sometimes upset him; following specific sets of rules was his usual habit.

Left goes over the Continental Divide and then down south, which is where we don’t need to go. Right goes to Lander. He perused the map for a moment before adding, There’s a place outside of town called ‘Sinks Canyon.’ Wonder why they named it that? You think people discard their old sinks in it? Anyhow, the town’s only seven more miles from the intersection. Step on it, I’m hungry!

Sixty-five isn’t fast enough for you? This isn’t the Autobahn, you know.

Autobahn is the name of that guy who studied birds and painted pictures… .

His joke fell of deaf ears as Norm detected something wrong with his beloved Thunderbird. Specifically, it suddenly quit running. He put it out of gear and coasted to a stop at the side of the road.

What’s wrong? Val asked, suddenly serious.

Dunno, replied his brother, frowning. He turned the key a few times, but the engine would not start.

Out of gas? asked Val helpfully.

Can’t be. We filled up in Laramie. Gauge says we got plenty. It just doesn’t want to run, for some reason.

Well, keep trying. This is no place to spend the day.

I’m not gonna keep turning it over and run down the battery. Damn!

They both got out of the car. Norm opened the hood and peered inside. He had done some mechanical work, but figuring out why an engine won’t run was not easy, especially out on the open road. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong; no loose wires or other unnatural conditions were evident.

They stood there for a while with that kind of sick feeling you get in the pit of your