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

Spring came late to the Sweetwater in the year of 1877, but when the thaw finally arrived, it came with a wild, triumphant majesty.

The mountain snows melted under the warm chinook winds that swept down from the Pacific, turning Willow Creek into a foaming torrent of turquoise water that rushed through the willows. The dry, brittle bunchgrass of the basin turned into a sea of emerald green, punctuated by the yellow heads of wild mustard and the delicate blue bells of mountain lupine. The air smelled of damp earth, sweet pine pitch, and the rich, intoxicating scent of new grass.

On the fifteenth of May, a convoy of four white-topped canvas wagons rolled into the town square of Pine Hollow.

They did not carry regulators or soldiers. They carried the Federal Land Commission for the Territory of Wyoming—three surveyors in high boots with brass transit instruments and steel chains, two title clerks from the Department of the Interior, and a special commissioner appointed by the President of the United States.

In the center of the square, where Danner had once tacked his black-lettered wanted posters, the commissioners erected a broad wooden awning.

For two weeks, the business of theft was undone.

One by one, the homesteaders of the basin walked up the three wooden steps. Men who had been driven from their claims by armed riders were handed certified patents stamped with the Great Seal of the United States. The forged water deeds held by the Danner Syndicate were burned publicly in an iron wash-tub in the center of the street, their black ashes scattered to the mountain breeze by the children of the settlement.

On the last day of the session, the commissioner called the name:

"The heirs of Section Twelve, Black Tooth Basin."

Eleanor Hayes walked up the steps.

She wore a clean calico skirt of slate gray and a white apron. On her left hip, she carried fourteen-month-old Emma, whose pale red hair caught the golden morning sunlight like copper wire. Toddling beside her, his small hand locked tightly around his mother’s fingers, was young Noah—Thomas Elias—sturdy, dark-eyed, his small face glowing with health.

Waiting for them at the surveyor’s table was Thomas Vale Jr.

The young man was no longer a deputy sheriff. By order of the United States Attorney General, he had been appointed as the official Federal Land Registrar for the Sweetwater District. He wore a simple coat of brown corduroy, his face calm, purposeful, and mature. Pinned over his left breast was the tarnished, five-pointed silver star that had belonged to his father—cleared of all dishonor by an act of the territorial legislature.

"Mrs. Hayes," Tom said, his eyes shining with an emotion that needed no words.

He laid a massive document of heavy vellum upon the table.

The document bore the official seal of the General Land Office and the signature of Rutherford B. Hayes, President of the United States. In bold, elegant copperplate script, it set forth the boundaries of Section Twelve—from the limestone bluffs of the north ridge to the center of the willow draw, containing six hundred and forty acres of river bottom, meadow, and the forty-foot seam of anthracite coal.

"By authority of the United States Government," Tom announced to the crowd of sixty freeholders who stood watching in the street, "this grant is hereby confirmed in perpetuity to Thomas Elias Vale and Clara Emma Vale, under the sole guardianship and life-tenancy of their mother, Eleanor Hayes."

He dipped a steel pen into the black inkstand and handed it to Eleanor.

"Sign your name, Mother," Tom whispered.

Eleanor took the pen. Her hand did not shake. With firm, deliberate strokes, she wrote her name across the sheepskin vellum:

Eleanor Hayes.

The crowd burst into a deafening cheer. Old Silas Kemp threw his battered hat into the dust; the teamsters who had once held weapons against her cheered until their throats were hoarse. Calloway, the blacksmith, stepped forward, his leather apron off, carrying a cedar box containing six hundred dollars in gold specie collected by the merchants of Pine Hollow.

"Take it, Mrs. Hayes," Calloway said, his rough face flushed with shame and gratitude. "It's what the town took from Daniel for taxes that weren't owed. We couldn't sleep in our beds if we didn't give it back."

"Keep half of it for the schoolhouse, Mr. Calloway," Eleanor said gently, her hand resting on the blacksmith's rough forearm. "We need a teacher more than we need gold. But the other three hundred... I will take for the timber."

That afternoon, Eleanor and Tom rode out to the north draw.

The blackened ruins of Daniel’s old cabin had been cleared away. In its place, framed against the towering limestone wall of Black Tooth Ridge, rose the yellow pine skeleton of a magnificent new homestead.

Thirty men from the valley were working on the rafters.