A Mountain's Secret

Sometimes history takes care of its' own.

"How did it get there?"

"No one around here really knows Donna," said her boss, Ralph Bellamy.

"They say that there are two sides to every story," he said, while taking pictures from every angle of the rusted rifle.

"Here's the story," he said, standing back to get a better look at the rifle, " as I've heard it told..."

It was on a wind-swept day that the party started out. The search party made its' way up the winding Colorado ravine, climbing the narrow mountain trail. The horses struggled mightily on the rocky trail, going deeper into the mountains.

"How much further, papa?"

"Not too much longer, no, not too much longer now." His calm voice betrayed his anxious eyes.

As Jacob Trembly turned his back into the saddle, shots rang out. He grabbed his rifle. The miner was under full attack. The shots were coming straight at him now, like heavy rain. He took out his Winchester, firing away, returning fire.

"Emily, if they think that they can get my stake," he yelled to her, "it's not gonna' happen."

The miner shot methodically, taking out one shooter after another. Now Bellamy, the veteran, was back there, back there on some forgotten Civil War. He was now firing quickly, and with precision, dropping his unknown enemy, not worrying about his enemy's body count.

Emily, then just a little girl, never forgot that fateful day.

She was never prouder of her father than she was that day in late November. One man and his rifle, worked as one.

He saved his family on that day. His life's savings was on that God-forsaken mountain. Outside his mine, the locals always said, sat a huge vein of gold, that was never mined.

But his daughter kept that Winchester 73 rifle. That rifle that she had seen her father dropping buckets of sweat, working to pay it off in full. In full meant for the grand sum of $50, over too many years for Donna to keep track of.

"Take this , " he said, lay dying to his grief-stricken wife. "Remember me with this rifle, for, over time, it became a part of me."

Years later, when Emily married a rancher, her mother gave it to her. She knew what that rifle, the memories of Emily's father, meant to her.

Soon, after the couple moved into their mountain home, the Winchester took its' place above the stone fireplace.

And, through the years, through the good, solid marriage, Glancing up at it, Donna often thought back to her dad, and her memories of him.

One day, in the fall of 1886, her husband Andrew, his home under Indian attack, out of desperation, pulled it off of its' resting place. With no time to load it, as the invaders came rushing in, he swung at them with his rifle. The butt of the rifle smashed into the stone fireplace, taking a piece out of its' handle.

When it was over, three Commanches lay dead. And with that incident, the Winchester rifle's legend grew.

Afterwards, Emily's husband began using it as a hunting rifle. With it, he dropped big game; deer, elk, and the biggest intruder of them all, the mountain lion.

In closing her eyes, Emily could, years later, still hear the 'cracking" sound of that rifle. She could see her pa taking down the same prey, man or animal, that threatened his way of life.

It had its' own sound, maybe a sound that in her memories, only she could hear.

And when Emily died, years after her husband, she willed it to her eldest son, Matthew.

He carried it to his own homestead, placing it on its' final resting place. As fate would have it, Matthew placed it above yet another stone fireplace. That's where it rested, until a fateful fire took the home down.

Battling the flames, he took his prized possession outside, and up , up on to the steep cliffs. After much searching, he placed it up the side of the strongest looking tree on the mountaintop. His plan was to retrieve it later, after putting out the fire.

But the fire ended up taking Matthew's life too.

After the fire, beneath the smoke and ash, only the home's foundation remained. For years after, the site remained untouched. That is, until a survey team from the state of Colorado, made its' way up the steep mountain grade, taking soil samples.

When the rifle was discovered, still leaning, but buried beneath, a thick cluster of trees, on the ridgeline, no one could quite believe it.

The rifle barrel, showing little rust, still glistened in the sunlight. The rifle's stock was still solid, despite its' scar - the gash, having faded slightly now over time.

Today, it sits proudly, in the lobby of the town's local historical society lobby.

It stands there today, proudly, in all of its' glory, as it should.

THE END