Beneath the Burning Timber: The Wanted Outlaw Who Died to Save His Blood

The sound did not descend from the jagged granite spires of Black Tooth Ridge, nor did it rise from the throats of the desperate men gathered in the graveyard. It began as a deep, sub-surface vibration—an iron pulse traveling through seventy miles of frozen Sweetwater shale, humming through the cold river gravel until Eleanor Hayes felt it shuddering against the worn leather soles of her work boots.

Down in the rocky coulee where the Union Pacific had blasted its single-track spur through the dwarf spruce, a massive iron cowcatcher sliced through the dense, freezing ground fog.

A special military locomotive—Engine No. 44, a monstrous Baldwin eight-wheeler with four driving wheels tall as a cavalry mount—screamed into the basin of Pine Hollow. Its iron chimney spewed a towering plume of resinous woodsmoke and incandescent cinders high into the slate-gray sky, howling like a wounded cougar as the engineer hauled back on the heavy brass whistle lever. Behind the tender rolled two olive-drab passenger coaches and three flatcars carrying thirty troopers of the United States Third Cavalry.

Steam exploded from the cylinder cocks in white, blinding sheets, scalding the frost off the trackside thistles. Even before the heavy iron brake-shoes had finished squealing against the steel rails with the sound of tearing sheet metal, blue-coated soldiers were already pouring over the wooden tailgates of the cars. Their wool campaign coats were buttoned to their throats, their yellow kerchiefs tucked tight against the biting mountain wind, their trapdoor Springfield carbines held across their chests at the port arms.

In the churchyard of Pine Hollow, the world had come to an absolute, terrified standstill.

Beside the great, cracked bronze church bell lying half-submerged in the slush, Silas Danner lay sprawled across the sod. His throat bore the black, purpling impress of Elias’s iron grip; his breath rattled in and out of his ruined windpipe like dry river gravel stirred by an oar. His remaining regulators—rough men who had spent ten years herding cattle, burning out homesteaders, and shooting sheep-men for two dollars a day—stared down the road at the advancing skirmish line of federal soldiers. One by one, their gloved fingers uncurled from the receivers of their lever-action Winchesters. The rifles clattered against the limestone headstones, their owners raising mud-stained hands into the freezing air without a single curse.

The teamsters who had held cedar pick-handles and double-barreled shotguns on Danner’s orders backed against the picket fence of the parsonage, their heads bowed low, their faces the pale, sickly color of curds. They had known Daniel Hayes. They had sat in the general store and watched Daniel cough blood into his handkerchief while Danner smiled and bought tobacco for the house. Now, the weight of their silent complicity pressed upon their chests like an iron wagon tire.

Leading the cavalry detachment through the shattered lych-gate was Captain Arthur Vance, his long cavalry saber slapping rhythmically against his high, mud-splattered riding boots. Walking stride for stride beside him, holding a heavy sheepskin greatcoat closed over his black broadcloth suit, was United States Marshal John Benton.

Benton stopped three paces inside the cemetery. His heavy boots sank four inches into the fresh, yellow clay that had been cast out of Daniel Hayes’s open grave.

His dark, deep-set eyes fell first upon the fallen giant.

Elias Ward lay stretched across the wet clover, his six-foot-six frame motionless at last. The three bullet holes from Danner’s Colt had ceased bleeding; the cold mountain air had already glazed the crimson into dark, glossy beads against the ragged wool of his blouse. His scarred, battered face was turned upward toward the gray, weeping sky, and the lines of torment, hunted exhaustion, and bone-deep isolation that had carved his skin for twelve long years had smoothed away into an impenetrable, marble peace.

Kneeling beside the dead man in the mire was young Thomas Vale Jr., his fingers tangled in his uncle’s matted beard, his shoulders heaving with silent, dry sobs that wracked his entire slender frame. The silver deputy's badge on his breast was smeared with black soot, lime dust, and his family's blood.

Standing directly over them both, her boots planted firmly on the edge of the open pit, was Eleanor.

Her canvas drover's coat was soaked with river slush, her knuckles raw and bleeding from the gravel of the coal tunnel, her hair plastered across her cheeks by the sleet. Yet she stood with the fierce, unwavering posture of a mountain hawk guarding its nest. In the crook of her left arm, pressed against the warmth of her breast, was the bundle containing Emma; tucked secure beneath the heavy wolf-fur lap robe within the wooden communion crate at her feet lay young Noah. In her right hand, held upright like an iron pike, was the short-handled spade she had used to break Deputy Ross's skull at the water tank.

"God Almighty in heaven," Marshal Benton breathed, slowly taking off his wide-brimmed felt hat and pressing it against his chest. "Elias."