By Judy Brotton
David Althouse first began writing for Distinctly Oklahoma magazine in June 2008, covering such diverse subjects as art, travel, history, westerns and personality profiles. Never is his writing better than when these subjects converge – as in stories about glassblower Chris McGahan and artists Mike Larsen, Augusta Metcalfe, Dr. Bob Palmer, Tom Palmore and Gordon Yellowman; Oklahoma’s Quartz Mountain, the Fighting Thunderbirds and Titanic survivor Helen Churchill Candee. He has written about musicians and showmen like Wayman Tisdale, Toby Keith, Red Steagall, Wanda Jackson and Pawnee Bill. His travel pieces have included the Chisholm Trail, Guthrie, Tulsa’s Art Deco and New Mexico’s Enchanted Circle Scenic Byway.
As an OSU graduate, David is our go-to guy when we have stories from the orange side of the state – Burns Hargis, Eskimo Joe’s 35th Anniversary, Gov. Mary Fallin, and last month’s cover with football coach Mike Gundy.
We were thrilled for David when we learned that his efforts in writing a book had come to fruition with the recent publication of “Hawk Eyes,” by Western Trail Blazer. We bring you the foreword, as well as the first chapter to whet your appetite for this new western saga that takes place in the Indian Territories.
Sixteen-year-old Benson Sadler meets a most unusual man in 1870. The man, chained to a tree, is to hang for murder. In response to the boy’s curiosity, Hawk Eyes shares his story of bad luck and misadventure.
A master storyteller, Hawk Eyes relates near-death escapes, living with the Cherokee, gunfights, the death of loved ones, and a quest for revenge.
Ben can see vast landscapes painted from the words of the doomed man and feel the wild history of the West come alive. Will he have to watch Hawk Eyes die at the end of a rope?
Chapter 1: The Wild-Eyed Desperado
My name is Benson Sadler, and my father brought me, a lad of 16 at the time, to the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado in July of 1870, his intent to find his fortune in gold and silver near the area now called Silverton. Back in those days, men referred to the high-mountain flat as Baker’s Park, in recognition of Charles Baker, the man who first publicized to the world that gold and silver lay hidden beneath the ground in this scenic mountain heaven.
Baker and a group of men explored the area to some degree before the outbreak of the War Between the States, and their stories of lode discoveries spread far-and-wide. Outbreak of war in 1861, coupled with the threat of hostile Ute Indians who populated the area, kept white men from the high-mountain park until about 1869.
By 1870, fortune hunters had made their way back to Baker’s Park in earnest, having crossed Stony Pass from the Rio Grande River east of the Great Divide, making their way north up Cunningham Creek, and then spreading out along the ore-rich country cradling the Animas River.
Baker’s Park offered my father a last chance. Until then, his life consisted of farming a rocky hillside in Tennessee, avoiding creditors, and raising me as best he could without the help of my mother, who passed away when I was very young. We crossed the plains country in the brutal heat of summer in 1870, trudging along with horses and mules, making our way westward to the promise that was Baker’s Park.
There is something about those San Juan Mountains, promise of riches or not, that offered at least the chance of new life to poor farmers like us. We left behind a bleak existence in Tennessee, as well as a few unpaid creditors, crossed the endless scorched plains and soon beheld majestic and far-away peaks to the west. My eyes looked to those westward peaks with awe and wonder. Even as I beheld them from a point many miles to the east, their imposing size was obvious. This mountain country stood taller and greater than anything we had back home, and my mind pondered the many secrets, stories and possible riches they held.
Like many before us, we crossed Stony Pass, made our way up the creek and meandered our way to the fly-by-night tent city in Baker’s Park on a picturesque summer day in 1870. Never had my eyes beheld a city such as this one, a city in its infancy, a city of prospectors, adventurers, crooks and cons who conducted much of their business under the roofs of canvas tents. Until that first day there, my mind could not have imagined that tents could adequately serve as taverns, hotels and offices for assayers, doctors and lawyers. The education of a greenhorn farmer had just begun.
Upon entering the tent city, my father, believing time was of the essence, moved quickly. Having first secured us a few days of lodging in a tent beside the river, my father left me at our canvas abode to stand guard over our belongings while he set out alone to better acquaint himself with the new community, meet the men of the town, purchase additional supplies and ascertain possible locations for our mining efforts.
Father had been gone only a few minutes when I walked out of our tent to absorb the sights and sounds and people of our new world. The view from tent city upward to the heavens stole my breath. Never had my eyes beheld such imposing peaks. There stood massive rock mountaintops that men today call Storm Peak, Sultan Mountain, Anvil Mountain, Tower Mountain and Kendall Mountain. They looked as gargantuan and angry gods peering down upon lowly ants building a new anthill. Immediately, my imagination stood captivated. This was a high-mountain world straight out of the pages of a fairy tale. Right then, a thirst was born in my heart to learn of every trail and gulch, every cave and rock face in this fascinating new world that seemed to stand on end.
With the hustle and bustle of hardened men all around me, and their curses filling the mountain air, my eyes gazed over the rippling water of the Animas River, over the inviting mountain openings that were Swansea and Idaho gulches, and upward to the top of Kendall Mountain. My first thought was to one day scale its slopes to the summit, but the movement detected out of the corner of my eye soon interrupted that interlude.
I turned to get a better look.
At first, my eyes refused to believe what they clearly saw: The picture of a man chained to a large aspen trunk adjacent the river. It took a moment to make sense of the complete spectacle. My eyes clearly beheld the irons around the man’s ankles, and they could easily follow the 30-foot-long chain over to the aspen trunk to which he lay shackled. The problem lay in digesting the scene clearly and concisely at first glance.
The sight required a second, more thorough visual examination. The chain was, most certainly, attached to the base of the gigantic aspen, and, following it link by link in the opposite direction gave me to see a man fettered to the other end, seemingly sound asleep on the banks of the Animas. The men of the mining camp shuffled by the prisoner on a regular basis as he sat situated within close proximity to the assorted tents of the new community. This no doubt explained the absence of any guard standing watch over the securely bound captive.
He then awoke, arose without seeing me and situated himself in a cross-legged sitting position, staring into the fast-moving waters of the Animas.
As if feeling my gaze upon his back, the captive turned around and his piercing eyes, easily the first characteristic of his face to notice, seemed to look right through me. Never had I seen such eyes on the face of a man. They seemed knife-like in their power to cut to the chase.
“I’m not a ghost, boy. I’m a real live human bein’. And I’m surely chained to that beautiful aspen tree yonder. Your eyes ain’t playin’ tricks.”
“Why are you chained?”
“I had to kill a man, and the local citizens committee – they call it – decided I’m to be hanged tomorrow at daybreak.”
“Are you a murderer? Did you truly kill a man?”
“I killed him. I sure did, and he wasn’t the first one.”
The first question to run through my mind was, “Is this man with the haunting, piercing eyes a mad man, a killer, a man needful of hanging?”
“You’d best be on your way, boy. You get seen talkin’ with me and your Pappy yonder will thrash you for minglin’ with a murderer, or else the townies hereabouts will think you’re wantin’ to slide me a pistol. If I was you, I’d skedaddle.”
“Who did you kill, mister – and why?”
“Listen, boy. It’s no use. Do yourself a favor and perambulate on out of here before you get yourself in trouble. Scat!”
I could not accept the notion that he was a wanton murderer. Sure, his eyes glowed wild and piercing, like a flash of lightning from the skies; his partly-braided golden hair flowed halfway down his back; and his hardened, scarred and leather-like skin had tanned an almost coffee brown under a lifetime of baking suns. His clothes were made of buckskin, fringed throughout. Surely, lurking beneath his outlaw exterior was a story, his story, I thought, while standing there with eyes locked on this spectacle of a man who had seemingly lived a life on the edge.
His hawk-like eyes demanded attention. They spoke of a man who had been up the hill and down the river, as the old-timers might put it, of great secrets and stories waiting to be told, of great sorrow, and even of ghostly things not of this world.
“You’re readin’ me, boy. That’s good. I like a man what can read another. I’m good at that, myself. That makes us pards.”
That sealed it.
He possessed too easy and pleasant a demeanor to be a murderer and, to boot, it seemed he could read men’s minds. I stood convinced he owned a story, and I wanted to hear it.
“You want I should fetch you a pistol, mister?”
His eyes emanated a look of fierceness and sadness at once, and I knew I beheld a scarred soul.
“I don’t reckon I’ll need one.”
“You want I should go tell my pa? Pa will know what to do.”
The energy coming from his eyes shot right through me, and he held his glance on me for what seemed like a minute. The look in his eyes fortified my belief that he was not a man with whom to start trouble. Goose pimples welled over my body as I overcame the urge to shudder. Had I never before seen veritable death on two feet, I was surely beholding it now.
“I’m hopin’ not to be here in the mornin’ when they come to take me to the hangin’ tree, boy.”
“Where will you be?”
“Far, far away.”
“How will you get away, mister?”
He stood, and then he motioned to the skies with outstretched arms. He gazed off into the heavens as if in conversation with something or somebody far away in another world. It seemed as if an unseen force held him in its clutches, and only after a few minutes did he turn to me again.
“If I can, I will fly out of here, fly away in the night like a hawk.”
“You sure you don’t need a pistol, mister?”
“I could use some cigarettes. I’ve never smoked ‘em, but I think I could use some now.”
At break-neck speed, I ran through the tent city on a quest for smokes. Having secured all I could buy with the little money on me, I returned to the man with the mysterious eyes. He lit his first smoke.
When I returned to the outlaw, he appeared more at ease, as if something had happened to change his disposition while I was away. I could not begin to understand the man’s sudden transformation.
After having only been asked his name, and the events leading up to his current predicament, the prisoner inhaled the tobacco smoke and began talking. His willingness to talk took me by surprise. In the same situation, most men would prefer their own company, to be alone, perhaps to meditate, or to make peace with God.
Not so with this man. He seemed at ease, and at peace.
“I’m gonna tell you a story, boy – my story. But, before I do, I want to give you somethin’, somethin’ to take with you and safeguard for the rest of your life.”
From out of a pocket in his buckskin coat, he pulled a large lock of raven black hair, held together by an intricately braided leather strip. He cast adoring eyes upon the lock before running his fingers through it over and over, giving me to know it held deep significance in his life.
“Take this, for it will bring you luck.”
Then, he recounted to me his story, a story I will remember always. I lay his tale before you now, exactly as it was told to me – in the unvarnished words of the desperado himself. What follows are the words of Hawk Eyes, a man whose piercing eyes and simply-told story will haunt me until my dying day.
To hear Hawk Eyes’ story, the book is available locally at Full Circle Bookstore and Barnes & Noble, or online from Amazon.
