The Shack on Escudilla Mountain
By Jeffery Scott Sims
I would hike Escudilla Mountain. Having heard the trail to the top was a good one, I’d arrived late the previous afternoon under oppressive skies, finding a level spot near the trail head. I got my truck unloaded and the tent up just before the rain came, accompanied by bright flashes and quick booms of thunder. It was a wet night, and dawn didn’t break, it bent ever so slightly, leaving my forested camp site still shrouded in gloom. I didn’t care for the look of that sky. I considered pulling out, heading elsewhere for drier prospects. I was here, ready for action, and I’d been looking forward to this.
And I made it to the top without incident. It’s an interesting trail, that to the summit of Escudilla Mountain, third highest in Arizona. First it’s up, ever up, through the biggest aspen grove in the world. Then it passes into dense woods, shoots up again, then down, way down to a beautiful meadow. Back into the forest, steeply upward, nothing but trees, until a little patch of blue peeks through the needles. Yes, the clouds had momentarily cleared, and I saw the fire lookout tower which marked the third highest point in Arizona framed against the morning sky. In another minute I stood at the base of the tower. The ranger kindly called me up, allowed me to photograph the astounding vistas of lesser mountains and endless seas of alternating dark and light green as I pleased. I tarried in the tower or about its clearing for an hour, until the return of billowing darkness urged me back down the trail to the relative security of camp so many miles away.
I was deep within the descending spruce forest when the storm struck. I came prepared with plastic poncho and collapsible umbrella, sufficient to get me through normal rain with a minimum of discomfort. I didn’t count on what came. This late morning grew black as night. Lightning flared directly overhead, the earthquakes of thunder simultaneous. And the rain; how do I describe the rain? One normally speaks of rain falling. After the introductory sprinkles, this one crashed upon me like an avalanche. It crushed me with its weight. I might have been marching under a waterfall. It wearied me, stooped my shoulders.
It soaked me, too. The spray splashed in my face, steamed my glasses, trickled down my neck into my clothing. The poncho couldn’t prevent that, nor did the pathetic umbrella serve a purpose other than to keep the incessant drumbeat off my skull. The lower legs of my pants, exposed to the elements, were quickly drenched, fouled with mud to the knees. My high-topped hiking shoes sank into quagmire.
I couldn’t see well and was necessarily advancing slowly. I saw only the misty shapes of trees looming in murk. That, I guess, is how it happened. Directionless, unable to measure my progress-- I kept expecting, in vain, to hit the meadow-- the horrible realization stole upon me that I was lost. There was no trail beneath my feet.
I didn’t panic. I had plenty of water, food to snack on, and I knew the basic rules of the wild. Keep heading downhill, for the slope couldn’t go on forever.
Before I knew it was there, I stood in an open space choked with soggy grass, a single misplaced oak spreading tall and fat before me. Beyond that I spied the shack. I swirled the moisture on my glasses with my thumbs, peered through a particularly energetic squall. It was a sorry, decrepit place, a hundred years old if a day, composed of rotten, uncured boards. The doorway seemed empty, the window a vacant socket, the roof entirely gone, only the sagging lattice of support beams showing. Precious little shelter to be had there, but I might huddle against a wall until I pulled myself together and took stock.
Glare of lightning, a reverberating crash, freakish darkness, and then the rain tapered a bit, and I raced for the shack, struggling against the suction of mud. I approached the door. Initial appearances had deceived me. Something having to do, I guessed, with shadow and perspective; at any rate, the structure was considerably more intact than I first imagined. Indeed, despite its quaint, rustic air, I felt unable to rule out the possibility of habitation. I detected the odour of a fire. Of course that was grossly unlikely, in such a setting, miles from the worst dirt road, deep in a wilderness preserve. I hesitantly knocked at that solid door. The storm swirled up around me. I tried to peer past the heavy burlap curtain in the window. I was about to try the brass knob when the door swung open.
There stood a man. An old guy, I thought, although maybe not so old as he looked; seamed and lined, like the house, rather than truly aged. He wore a long greying beard and patched, unfashionable clothes. He glared at me for a moment, with the meanest expression, then his eyes relaxed and he asked, “You ain’t with them, are you?”
I launched into my story but didn’t get far. He said, “Git in, git in,” so I did. Within, a fire crackled in its stone hearth. The furnishings were simple, crude, suggestive of the homemade. There were two rooms to the shack, this main one and another, quite small, containing three horribly primitive beds, seen past a rough half-wall. Everything I saw indicated a revival or restoration of what I call the Early American Provincial. I asked the fellow if this was a cabin maintained for hikers.
He said, “This is my place. Ain’t fancy, but it’s stout enough to keep out the grizzlies.” I laughed politely at what I deemed to be his outdated joke, the notion that the fierce bears still haunted this mountain. Those days were dead long before our time.
He told me to sit down. I settled on an unbalanced stool and shed my gear. The fire warmed. I expressed surprise at anyone living out here. He replied, “I’m William Powers. I live here with my sons, Billy and Luke. We’re decent folks, don’t want any trouble. My boys are out running an errand for me. They bear most of the work now, since I hurt myself in that fracas by the Black River. They ought to be back before long; should have been by now. Can’t think what’s keeping them.”
His English was appallingly uncouth. Really, at odd moments his voice came to me as gusts of wind which I interpreted as speech. Mr. Powers limped to the window, fingered aside its thick covering and glanced beyond. “They’re on the way, or somebody else is coming. This might be the day. Say, that’s a peculiar rig you got.”
He marvelled at my stuff. In fact his behaviour irked me, for he made too freely with my belongings, as if he were claiming them for his own, with too many comments pertaining to their utility to himself. I had to explain the camera, but he was equally impressed by my rucksack and my plastic poncho, which I’d slung off and wadded into a pocket. I figured he didn’t get around much. When I tactfully suggested this, he “reckoned” it was so, adding, “My boys took the horses, so there’s no way out presently. I’ve got to stick a spell.”
He then said, “You know, a man has to live, has to provide for his sons. It ain’t like we take much. The townsfolk, them ranchers make big of every little thing. We’re just making our way. Been at it for years, teaching the boys, no one hurt up to now, except those that deserved it, that wouldn’t see reason. It ain’t right they should fuss so. All I’ve got for my trouble is this here place, and for that it has to end on that oak tree out there in the yard. It ain’t right,” he said.
I sympathized, as I could, without understanding. He replied, “You git me, then? That’s good. Something is coming-- there’s been shooting down on the Nelson spread-- I hear they bagged a couple of quail. That’s how it happened before, or is happening-- funny how it’s all mixed up-- and now they’re coming, only it ain’t Billy and Luke. No sir, it’s them others, and they’re gunning for me. It’s all supposed to end on that tree.”
This talk of “gunning” alarmed me. I expressed concern, hastily rose. Mr. Powers produced an antique rifle, shiny new, from a corner. He said, “I can make a fight of it, unless they creep up and take me unawares. I recollect that’s how they did it that last time, or this time. Couldn’t git off a shot, and then there was the tree. There ought to be another way.”
“Maybe there is.” He studied me with an ostentatiously shrewd gaze. “You weren’t here then, sonny. You just dropped out of a dream, like. Shoot, there’s got to be a reason for that. Maybe it would suit whoever runs things if you took my place. It’s been done before. I know how to swing it. I always was the clever one. That won’t help Luke and Billy much-- it’s already too late for them-- but it would do me a powerful good. I don’t aim to git stretched if I can avoid it.”
I began to let on that I needed to be on my way. I noted aloud that the storm had lessened (it hadn’t) and that I feared for my unattended camp. I certainly did not tell him I did not desire any more time in the company of a reclusive lunatic, and presumably an illegal squatter. He chuckled at what I did say, grinned. He said, “You ain’t going nowhere. You’ve got to stand in for me this day. That’s how it’s set up.”
He chuckled again, gestured with the rifle. “It makes sense,” he mused. “That’s why I keep showing up here, like it was that day over again. I’ve been waiting for somebody. Sooner or later you’d turn up, all part of the plan, and the story would be written different this time. It doesn’t have to be me; you’ll do just as well, and you can’t count for much, so it ain’t no bother. Yes, I reckon that’s the way it had better be.”
He stiffened, the smug grin frozen inside his dense beard. He turned, in an attitude of listening, hefted the rifle, strode warily into the bedroom and pressed himself against the window. I grabbed my things and bolted for the door. It flew open. Driving rain and hail pummelled my face. Wet through on the instant, I dashed past the great oak tree and plunged into the woods. In the split second before I fled out of the clearing, I thought I had company: fleeting images of forms, rough-hewn men, a number of them. I didn’t pause to analyze, nor do I recall particular actions on their parts. They were there, that’s all; then I was past, distinctly heard the reverberations of gunshots. No, it was thunder. The tempest raged on, crash after crash.
I fled through the gusting rain and rattling hail until I reached the edge of the forest, found the meadow, shortly thereafter the trail. I didn’t feel safe until I was off Escudilla Mountain and old muddy lanes and back on pavement.
Back at the ranger station in Alpine, inquiries confirmed that a historic shack existed on the mountain, abandoned for at least a hundred years, and so far from the beaten trail that no one could conceivably stumble upon it by accident. Further questioning of the gracious hosts of the Springerville Historical Society yielded other answers, several of them oddly pertinent. I learned there of Old Man Powers and his two sons-- Billy and Luke-- the worst gang of cut-throats to haunt that region after the turn of the last century. Cattle rustling and stage robbing were their specialties, and woe to the man who stood in their way. They left a bloody trail, to which even their associates were not immune. History recorded that the elder Powers, when implicated in an unethical round-up early in his reign of criminality, had conspired to implicate one of his few neighbours in his stead. The ruse worked that time. That man paid the ultimate price in place of Powers.
Their cruel careers came to an end in 1907 when the Powers boys raided the Nelson Ranch and marched smartly into an ambush. When the gun smoke had wafted from their dead bodies, a posse set out for the Powers’ hideout on Escudilla Mountain. The elder Powers expected family to come calling with their loot. Instead, his enemies surprised him, and his life ended on a rope dangling from his own tree.
So ended that trivial footnote of the history of Arizona and Escudilla Mountain. In the natural order of things, it should have meant little to me. The hostess pointed out a print hanging on the wall, of an ancient sepia glass-plate photograph, portraying a rugged gentleman in the garb of a cowpoke, reputed to be none other than William Powers, Sr. The heavy aspect of age was missing from that face, and much of the beard as well; but, you know, I can vouch that it was a tolerable likeness.