The Law of The Gun: The White Mountain Bigfoot, #3

By Bobby Clark III

The Fascinating tale of a man and a beast who work together solving mysteries and righting wrongs

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bobby Clark III
• Release date: May 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201647148

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Table of Contents

The White Mountain | Bigfoot V3 | The Law Of The Gun

The White Mountain

Bigfoot V3

The Law Of The Gun

It was a cold winter night in 1984. I was 12 years old. My family and I lived in an old farmhouse built back around the turn of the century, in Tennessee, on the edge of the Cumberland Plateau. It was over a mile down a long lonely gravel road to our house. It had no insulation in the walls and an open stone fireplace for heat. 

We had no Internet, no computers and no TV. For entertainment we would sit around Saturday night and listen to the Grand Ole Opry while we ate popcorn with yeast flakes sprinkled generously on it. Like most 12-year-old boys I hated reading, but on this particular night everyone was busy with their own activities. My dad loved to read. Finding nothing to do that interested me I became so bored that I asked my dad for something to do. He handed me a Louis l’Amour book called Hondo and suggested that I give it a try. Reading a book was the last thing I wanted to do, but since the only room in the house that was warm enough to be in was the living room, and I could find nothing else to do, I finally sat down in front of the fireplace and began reading. I was hooked!      That seemingly insignificant event in my life was a pivotal moment that began a lifelong love of reading, especially of anything western. I learned how to ride through the desert, or through a pass high in the rocky mountains, to face evil and triumph, to find love and happiness, to face your greatest fears and survive tragic loss, to stand firm on principle against all odds, all from within the pages of a good book. Through those books, on that cold winter night, on the stone hearth of an open fireplace in an unassuming old farm house nestled deep in the mountains of the Cumberland Plateau, my lifelong passion for the west and anything western began. I didn't know it at the time, but the stories of grit, determination and hard work coupled with danger and doing the right thing, no matter the odds, were subtly, yet significantly, molding the man I was to become.                                                                                 During my teen and young adult years I had the privilege of making two trips out through the west, and was determined to come back. Louis l’Amour describes the magnetic, almost irresistible, pull the west has on men and women who have been there, and I can attest to having experienced that very sensation. It is best described as a thirst of the soul and the imagination that can only be fulfilled by being in the West. As a young boy I dreamed of someday owning a cattle ranch somewhere out west. 

I have since read every Louis l’Amour book on the shelf as well      as most of the Zane Grey collection and JT Edson and many other writers as well. As I grew older I got married, had a family and settled down in Tennessee. But always that dream of the west was in the back of my mind.  I’d read about the rider on his horse, with his hat brim pulled down low against the downpour. The collar of his slicker turned up to keep the rain out. I would picture, in my mind, that rider working his way along the slope of the mountain, just the way Louis l’Amour described it. The water coming down through the leaves and dripping off of his hat brim. The rider would emerge on the shoulder of a mountain as the wind and rain slashed at him. The thunder and lightning rumbling among the distant peaks. He would look out across the valley as the rain came down in a grey veil, obscuring the far mountains.

When I got older, and a place of my own with a few acres, I built a barn with the help of my wife and kids, and bought some horses. I learned how to train them and how to use a round pen to de-spook them. How to remove the fear of saddle and bridel. I bought that hat and slicker that I had always worn in my dreams, and finally got to experience the feel of a horse on the mountain trail with the rain coming down. To hear what it sounded like as it pelted down on my stetson. It was like cool salve on a raw wound. I listened to the creak of saddle leather as I shifted my weight. The sound was music to my soul. It was exactly like I thought it would be. Only a hundred times better.

I was overcome by a feeling of freedom and nostalgia as I sat there listening to the rain and to the other forest sounds. Being almost completely warm and dry while the rain came down all around me. The strength of the horse between my knees gave wings to my imagination. I felt like that mountain trail was a portal that had mysteriously transported me back in time. To a simpler time, where the cares of a modern world had vanished. For a moment it was just me, my horse and the rain on the lonely mountain side.

The feeling of the horse moving under me along the mountain trail, smelling the rain in the forest and even the wet horse smell, brought back the emotions I felt while reading those westerns. It was magical as I rode onto the shoulder of the mountain and came out into a clearing where I could look along the mountain and into the valley. I imagined myself, 150 years ago, seeing the world as it was then. 

I was brought back to reality by a cold drop of rain as it made its way inside my slicker and down my spine. I shivered as I hitched my gun belt into a more comfortable position. My horse twitched his ears and cocked one backwards towards me as though to ask me if I was out of my mind being out there in the rain like that, instead of back inside the warm barn. I couldn’t blame the horse, but I was having the time of my life. 

I went on to do many trail rides including one from Kentucky all the way down into Alabama. All of this just made me want to see the west from between the ears of a horse all the more. 

As life would have it though I settled into a career in Tennessee where my wife and I raised our children. I joined the local volunteer fire department in 1996. By 1998 I had obtained my Emergency Medical Technician license and began working full time on an ambulance. In 2001, 3 days after 9-11, I obtained my paramedic license. I worked full-time as a paramedic for years after that. I had the privilege of joining my local sheriff's department as a tactical medic. Otherwise known as a SWAT medic. I went through combat medic training, Basic and Advanced SWAT, basic and advanced weapons and a number of other classes. The last nine years that I was a paramedic I also served as a coroner, investigating all types of death scenes in my county. 

Eventually I realized that I wanted more in life and I was ready for a change. I had been managing and building a small trucking company on the side, hauling cars and taking some trips out to the west coast and back. I had obtained my commercial drivers license back in 2007 and decided to put it to use full-time. I found that hauling cars nationwide answered that primal need I had to see the country. To be in the mountains of the west. To feel the dryness of the desert of the southwestern United States. To hear the pound of the surf on the pacific coast. The dripping water from the leaves in the rainforest of Washington and Oregon. The smell of buffalo, and the sound of them snorting and grunting, in Yellowstone National Park. 

Hauling cars has provided me the ability to see the west. I have traveled almost every state and every major highway along with many secondary roads in the lower 48. With careful planning I get to visit almost every national park and stop and hike in the mountains, the canyons, the valleys, and along the creeks and rivers of the west. The names are almost magical to me. Dead man’s pass. The Snake River. The Yellowstone and the Gila River. The list goes on and on and as I see the names on road signs, I recall the stories of courage and sacrifice I’ve read of those areas. I’ll pull the truck over and get out and walk out into the forest following deer and elk trails. Smelling the evergreens in the fresh mountain air. To me there is nothing like it back east. As beautiful as the mountains are on the Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee there is nothing there that can compare with the vast beauty and expanse and unending miles of the great American West. The purples and reds, browns and grays, lavenders and yellows of the painted desert. The staggering heights of the peaks above tree line in the Rocky Mountains. The crisp freshness of the air over ten thousand feet above sea level. The beautiful evergreens of the Sierra mountain range. The rolling grass and tree studded hills of Montana and Idaho. The beauty of the mountains through Lolo Pass in Idaho and the trout filled Columbia river running down towards Moscow Idaho. The thimble berries growing in huge patches along the highway‘s of Washington. The glass-like rock in the shale slides and the mountains with nothing but grass on them along the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon. The multitude of thorny yet beautiful cacti and other native growth in Arizona and New Mexico. The herds of hundreds of antelope through the northern Midwest. The evidence of historic mining scattered all across the west. It’s a wonderful, mysterious, beautiful land that pulls at the heart and beckons you to return. I found that car hauling gave me the ability to see, smell, touch, taste and hear the american west, all while getting paid to do so. 

It is my desire to share just a bit of the magic of the west with the readers of this book and others. I want to pull you into this adventure with me as we travel through the West and experience the emotions and see the sights that I saw while traveling through this alluring and enchanting land. If you can catch just a glimmer of the beauty and warmth of the Great American West, as you ride with me through the pages of this book, I will have succeeded in sharing something with you that money cannot buy. 

Ch 1                

The Murder of Young Billy

It was hot in the slot canyon where we rode, ready for trouble, our rifles across our saddles, and anger etched hard on our faces. The sun beat down unmercifully on the riders and horses alike. We had been on the trail of the rustlers for two days now, and had suspected rustling for a few weeks. We had been unable to prove it, that is, until Billy was murdered. The size of the Broken Arrow Ranch was such that it was hard to get an accurate count on the cattle except for during spring round up. It wasn't until Billy had ridden in, about dark three days ago, barely alive, with a nasty bullet wound to the scalp, and a bullet in the back, that we knew for sure trouble was upon us. Billy had whispered hoarsely Jim Reynolds...shot me....rustling... Billy died that night in Hank’s arms. It was a hard, ugly, senseless death.

Hank had been ranch foreman for years now and had taken young Billy in and treated him like a son. Billy had ridden in half starved and ready to give up on life two years ago, after losing his family in a wagon train massacre. He had just turned 16 last month. Hank took it hard, and no one blamed him. Everyone liked Billy.    

Since becoming owner of the Broken Arrow Ranch six months ago, I had been busy getting settled in and learning the lay of the land. Charlie, my wife, whose real name is Lizzy McCabe had been busy taking care of Ma Johnson, as well as seven year old Laura and five year old Daniel that we had adopted. Charlie was still getting used to having a home of her own as well. Zacchaeus and I had rescued Charlie, Laura, and Daniel from the same slave traders that had kidnapped Zacchaeus’ little sister, Echo.

Ma Johnson had been bed bound with a broken hip, brought on from an attack by an outlaw named Preacher, when he had tried to take over the ranch. Zacheaus and I had foiled Preacher’s plans, and Ma Johnson had deeded the ranch to me, with the stipulation that she was able to stay until she died. She had no children to pass the ranch to.

Jim Rynolds was one of the outlaws that I had run off because he had sided with Preacher. In the old days the Broken Arrow Ranch had been known as a safe haven for outlaws, but after taking over, at Ma Johnson's request,  I had told all of them that the Broken Arrow was no longer going to harbor outlaws and that there was a shoot on sight order in place. It was a harsh land and I had to get the point across to the harsh men that rode in its shadows.

We had taken only enough time the next morning to bury Billy in the ranch cemetery. It was a simple ceremony, with Hank saying a few words. The entire ranch was in attendance, including Ma Johnson. 

It had not been hard to backtrack Billy. He had been sent to one of the southern line shacks to check on the condition of the cattle in the lower pastures. We found the tracks of four different horses that had been pushing what looked to be a small herd of about twenty five cattle when Billy had ridden up on them. The tracks told the story. Billy had been shot from a distance. Probably with a rifle. The bullet had knocked him from his horse, and left him unconscious, with the head wound. There was blood on the grass where he had fallen. The four riders had converged on Billy. One of the riders, with a badly worn boot heel, had dismounted and walked up to Billy. That was where the rider had shot Billy in the back. The powder burns around the wound told the story. They must have thought Billy was dead, and had ridden off with the cattle. Billy had dragged himself to his horse and somehow managed to climb on, and stay on, to