All Entries in the "Hard News" Category
Medicine Wagon in Ashes
Special from the Ouray Solid Muldoon
(Uncompahgre City –1880) The sale of more than 200 bottles of alleged cure-all elixir has resulted in the destruction of a gypsy medicine wagon and the near tar and feathering of one Doctor Orwadd Chestnut. According to local marshals Chestnut sold his self-heralded mixture to naive townspeople with the promise that it would relieve rheumatism, prevent small pox, treat bunions, prevent pregnancy, fade freckles, improve hearing, reduce stress, and attract the opposite sex. It also proved to be an effective meat marinade and intoxicant according to the doctor, who concocted the juice up in his clandestine Gladstone laboratory last summer.
Of the 200 persons who paid $2 per bottle for the stuff, about 195 were severely displeased. When the subject came up at the weekly town meeting and continued over at the Blind Horse Tavern it was decided that actions speak far louder than words. That night, under cover of January darkness, an angry mob approached the medicine wagon, parked illegally, we might mention, in the heart of the red light zone on 2nd Street.
A spokesman for the group, Al Utter, who had purchased two bottles of the elixir, demanded that Chestnut return the money spent on the cure-all. The doctor agreed saying that he would gladly accept unopened bottles in that they were legitimate returns. That would be impossible, said Utter since everyone tried “the worthless potion” and only then did they realize they had been hoodwinked.
Chestnut smiled nervously and said he could do nothing for them He then attempted to terminate the discussion by slamming the door of his wagon when Utter, aided by a size 13 shoe, blocked his evasive tactics. He grabbed the doctor by the collar and attempted to shake the money out of him.
“We heard a few coins drop on the wooden floor knowing that this charlatan had stashed or spent the cash,” said Sam Murphy, local undertaker a leading member of the vigilantes. “It was at that moment when somebody yelled Burn him out! and torches appeared. In moments the brightly colored gypsy wagon was in flames.”
After watching helplessly while his establishment fried Doctor Chestnut decided that discretion was in fact the better part of valor and that ill gotten gains could cost him his neck. He relented and gave back the $400 (a handsome sum to say the least), spouting apologies, quoting the moralists and begging for mercy. The mob then returned the remaining elixir, those bottles that had not been smashed against the burning wagon. Several eye witnesses insist that they saw evidence of tar and feathers in the wings and that Chestnut was smart to leave town.
“People just don’t like strangers coming into town fast talking them out of their hard earned money,” said one marshal. “It’s a long winter up here. We’ll just save the tar and feathering for another day,” he smiled.
Meanwhile up in Highland Mary residents report a severe drop in small pox, freckles and general stress. In addition they informed this reporter that rheumatism was under control and that everyone in town could hear much better after a week taking Chestnut’s recipe. Bunions, too, had miraculously disappeared from the toes of the miners.
“We don’t know how the stuff works with regards to the opposite sex since we don’t have any women currently residing here,” said one satisfied customer.
HUNTERS SHOOT HORSE
A Dream Shot of Some Consequence
a true story with Uncle Pahgre
(Delta) It all seemed to make sense, at first. A friend of ours, who shall remain very nameless, was awakened from his early winter hibernation by a loud pounding on his back door. He threw on a robe and stumbled in the direction of the interruption. When he opened the door he saw two men in blaze orange, heads hung down, shuffling their feet, serious about gaining his immediate attention.
“We done shot your horse, mister,” said the first, “and we come to make reparations.
The second man held out a wad of cash that turned out to be one hundred dollars in the company of four more bills of like currency.
“Well, come in,” yawned my friend. “I guess that was the shot we heard earlier. This time of the year one gets used to guns going off all around. What the hell time is it anyway?”
“Bout eleven,” whispered the first looking around the kitchen in the direction of assorted snores from the hallway.
“You people hit the hay early round these parts, heh?” winked the second man who turned out to be from just outside Dallas.
“We’re up here from Texas hunting and despite what you may have heard we’re responsible, respectable and accountable.”
“Then what’s all this about a horse?” asked my friend.
“Well, you remember the part about responsibility?” offered the first hunter. “That only goes so far, I guess. We’ve been prowling these hills for two weeks and ain’t seen nothing of an elk, unless you count the scat. We were frustrated. We were tired and hungry and headed back to a motel down the road when, just as dusk pulled up her skivvies, we saw movement in the hay field just north of here.”
The first hunter went on.
Jim here decided that it might be our last chance at glory so he took a chance. He sighted in and pulled the trigger. Blam! Then blam again. What a shot! Dropped that elk like a ton of greasy enchiladas on a Saturday night! Cow elk too, you know. No horns. And we each had a million-dollar tag right here in our pocket. Some shootin, Jim.”
The second man just smiled, still embarrassed but yet a little bit proud of his expertise with a rifle.
“We climbed your fence and snuck out to the kill which was dead as an armadillo after arm wrestling a semi on Highway 287. Then the problem emerged. It wasn’t a bull elk. No. It wasn’t a buck or doe, but neither was it a cow elk. It was your horse, mister.”
My friend just stared at the kitchen table.
“The old swayback. She was getting to be an old lady, too slow to ride much less dodge a bullet. Where is she now?”
The two men laid the five hundred dollars on the table and told him the mare was still laying in the spot where she dropped. He sighed.
“How am I going to get around reporting this to the authorities?” he asked.
“We hoped the five hundred would help you make that decision. It ain’t a bribe but it’s a far sight more than that old girl was worth alive. We realize that local cops would put our buts in a sling over this episode but I think you can see that out hearts, if not our brains, are in the right place.”
My friend yawned. He though to himself of a new tractor he needed. He thought of Christmas and his kids. He thought of the good it would do to turn these poor hayseeds into the pencil-pushing cops.
“You boys want a cup of coffee? I gotta think this out. Tell me again, what made you shoot what you thought was game on private property at dusk. Don’t you ever read the back of your hunting license. Cripe, at the cost of the thing I’d think you’d memorize every word just in case you lost it.”
The hunters went through their thinking process one more time dwelling on their fatigue and frustration. They apologized again saying that they wouldn’t blame my friend if he turned them in and pressed charges for trespassing and the whole cheroot.
“OK, but if I ever see you on my land again you’ll be the horsemeat,” he said “Now can you find your way back to your motel or should I drive you?”
They both laughed the laugh of men much relieved. They thanked him again and departed. He watched them as he pulled on his coveralls.
“I hope that backhoe starts. I didn’t plug her in and the weather’s turned cold.”
He stuffed the bills into his desk drawer, told his wife he had to check the cows and wandered into the night. He’d bury the mare before the rest of the family got savvy to what had occurred. He drove through the dark expecting a messy ordeal, then he saw the mound of flesh hugging the ground and approached.
“What the hell?” he barked standing over the kill. “It’s an elk. Those morons shot a cow elk and from the looks of things it was a perfect lung shot. I’ll be dipped!”
Thinking that the meat was still good he proceeded to dress out the elk there on the spot. The cold weather had kept it from going bad right away and the lung shot had insured that the meat wasn’t spoiled by adrenaline and trauma.
“Hell of a shot,” he smiled. “Hell of a shot.”
At dawn he woke up his oldest son who helped him cut up the elk and package it for the freezer. It would feed a lot of people a lot of nights this winter.
“Does this mean we won’t be going hunting, dad?” asked the son on the way to school later that morning.
“What makes you ask a question like that, son,” smiled our friend. “In fact I think we oughta stop by and look at that rifle down at the hardware store. It’s been fired a bit but they might let it go cheap if we flash them some cash, heh?”
“Whatever you day, dad.”
(Editor’s note: The San Juan Horseshoe in no way endorses withholding evidence from the law however until we can safely determine who the responsible parties might be we can tolerate temporary storage of such data. In closing this paper likewise does not ignore good karma, frontier justice, divine intervention or just dumb luck. In short: We suggest that one never look a gift horse (or elk) in the mouth, a part of the anatomy that should remain shut on a host of occasions.)
FISH GET NEEDED BREATHER
(Ridgway) Local trout, who have enjoyed the time off over the past month due to bow and black powder hunting seasons as well as the gov’ment shutdown, are ready to get back to work Monday.
“The reservoir is starting to freeze and we expect the ice fishermen to start arriving any day now,” said Ken Kokanee of Colona. “We look this season much like a hockey game. The only difference is that there’s a hole in the ice and half of the participants use fishing poles instead of hockey sticks. Also,” Kokanee spouted, “there’s no puck! Think of the fish as the puck.”
MATH CORONER
If Governor Polis would have spent his campaign funds on beer instead of all that annoying television advertising this year, how many of the beverages would have been bought for each American over 21 years of age? Would he have gained a larger percentage of the popular vote this way? How would this have affected the electoral college in terms of square roots and all that? Is a gubernatorial candidate expected to provide snacks too?
Write your answers on a bar napkin and send to Math Coroner, Potter Gazette, Pea Green, Colorado. The first person to answer these biting questions correctly will be, in turn, bitten by a member of our kitchen staff. In case of tie, all winners will be encouraged to run for President in 2028.
Should Organic Farmers Pay for Grazing on Public Land?
(Uncompahgre Plateau) Farmers grazing onions and potatoes on public lands here have petitioned for a general variance that excuses them from seasonal grazing fees. Saying that their vegetables don’t eat anything, are quiet and immobile, the growers, most of them organic tribesmen who migrated to this area from New Mexico in the 19th Century, catch water, add nutrients to the soil and clean up after themselves.
“It’s not like onions trample existing flora or that potatoes give off methane gas,” said Betty Sweetcorne from her sun-dried tomato camp near the Transfer Road. “And when the harvest comes we don’t haul our produce to lower elevations in cattle trucks leaving cow pies in their wake.”
Sweetcorne adds that most of the vegetables grown on the Plateau end up at local farmer’s markets and not sold to giant food conglomerates where they are dyed, wrapped in plastic and marked up to be sold hermetically.
Currently the Department of Inferior is considering a plan that would borrow funds from the newly enacted Horse Flesh Tax legislation to cover these grazing fees.
-Sterling Bidet
Colorow’s Ghost
Part I Act 2
(READER SYNOPSIS: In our last episode we met Salli Radar, a former nuclear physicist who walked off her job at a Nevada Test Site, dropped out of high society and moved back to Western Colorado to find herself. Spending an idyllic summer cultivating hybrid snapdragons and tending the family’s burgeoning marmot flock on her grandfather’s Dallas Divide ranchette, Salli knew bigger and better things were in store for her just down the next dirt road. The first act crash landed as Salli bursts forth with a Western rendition of “The Sound of Music”, waking the majority of marmots from a lengthy siesta and setting local heifers on a collision course with E minor. We pick up the action as Salli prepares to bed down for the night.)
Although a comfortable house beckoned, a rough and ready herdsman often took to sleeping on the ground. It was no less than a show of solidarity with the livestock. Salli was no different. As she tried to fall asleep gazing at Jupiter and the headlights from the tourists down on Highway 62 she thought long and hard about her recent work in the nuclear industry and back in Los Alamos, New Mexico where she had designed and assembled weapons capable of destroying Las Vegas or Grand Junction.
The wind kicked up sending an eerie message that winter would be making a house call in about October.
“This is already July,” whispered Salli to herself amid cricket chirps and coyote calls, “I’d better get my nuts in.”
As Salli lay in her goose down sleeping bag, purchased from from a designer outdoor boutique while she still had a fat check coming in, she thought of her fly boy, Mango, who had only last month run off with a bowl of wax fruit leaving her with little roughage and a broken heart.
“That bastard,” she thought, remembering feverish nights in the moonlight on Paiute Mesa and sizzling days with her security clearance and the man she loved in the radiant yet hazy Nevada sunshine. “I miss him so.”
As Salli drifted off to sleep to the rhythm of the vigilant whistle pigs and the swayback skunk cabbage she felt the strange sensation that her camp was being observed from above. Each time she popped her eyes open she saw nothing, but a heavy odor filled the air. It was then that she heard the chanting and the sound of distant tom-toms. The drums got louder as the moon came up for another rousing Charleston with a lingering wallflower star.
“What can this be?” she thought, now frightened by all the recalcitrant racket and the rancorous, pervasive musty smell in the air. “I must be losing my marbles. I shouldn’t be surprised. It happens to a lot of us retired atom splitters.”
Rolling over in an attempt to find a soft spot on the planet, Salli fell back to sleep. The random snoring that had driven poor Mango away now attracted something more wild than Paiute Mesa, something more intoxicating than league night at the Pahrump Bowl. What was out there hovering over the marmot herd anyway?
It was then that Salli awoke, sitting straight up in her sleeping bag. A dark, misty figure meandered its way toward her expired campfire. His glorious war bonnet and taut hunting bow seemed in conflict with his preposterous tie-dyed headband and a badly faded synthetic “Indian” blanket, the kind sold in every border town showroom from Tijuana to Ushuaia. He spoke in quiet, drifting tones as if not to needlessly alarm the snoozing snapdragons.
“I am the great chief Colorow, leader of the proud Utes!” said the spooky warrior. “I have returned to the land of my ancestors!”
“Whoa!” gulped Salli. “How did this guy get in here!”
“I am the great Chief Colorow!” the specter now bellowed. “I come for horses with which to hunt the buffalo!”
Salli sat anxiously as the warrior searched the horizon for the spoils of his intended coup. She had digested all the data on UFOs while working for the government but even the classified variety had never alluded to anything like this Colorow character. This was a completely new ball game.
Had this Pale Horse chief returned to his previous haunt to communicate an eternal message to humanity? Would she share the agonizing particulars of the demise of his people? Why did he choose Salli when there were millions of other more suitable humans crammed onto the planet? Would the Dodgers win the pennant?
George Radar, Salli’s grandfather had mentioned a sacred Indian burial ground somewhere to the west of the family dump on Cottonwood Creek. Had someone left the gate open or had this chubby apparition wrapped in a blanket returned from the ages set on some callous revenge? Had he really chosen her as his medium to communicate sacred and primitive thought to the 21st Century? This was almost Biblical!
“I’ve always had a warm place in my heart for the Utes even though my ancestors stole their land, drove them out of the country and used them for target practice,” mewled Salli. “I just love Hopi pottery and trips to Mesa Verde.”
Salli quickly determined that if this Colorow had intended her harm he would have already drawn his tomahawk and taken her hair. She further surmised that he was here on a holy mission and would communicate his feelings to her when the time was right. In the interim, she would just sit tight and wait for his astounding revelation. What an impact this would have on the humanity! Would humankind rethink his calamitous rendezvous with ultimate destruction? What new philosophies would emerge? Could this elusive chief snatch 21st Century Homo Sapiens from the jaws of ecological extinction?
Of course, her newfound celebrity status would not emerge without some sacrifices. There would be the loss of privacy, as government heads all over the world would place incredible demands on her time. There would be the endless interviews by reporters and of course the abrasive talk show circuit. She would need a new wardrobe. Would Mango see her on TV? Salli whirled out of her trance as Colorow cleared his throat as if to speak.
“Here it is,” ducked Salli expecting the infinite truth from the happy hunting ground to fill the nearby canyons. “I am all ears, oh great warrior!”
“What’s for dinner, toots?” asked Colorow.
TO BE CONTINUED
