Dark Canyon (1963) (18 page)

Rimrock is gone. After the flash floods that destroyed it, only the foundations and a couple of old frame buildings remain, but higher up the hillside Ira Weaver is buried beside Dan Shattuck, who lived to see his second grandchild . . . and Sheriff Larsen, who died at ninety-two.

Kehoe married Peg Oliver, and one of their four great-grandchildren was killed in Korea on a bleak November day when, wounded and cut off from his detachment of the 27th Regiment, he settled down to show the Reds what the old breed was made of. He had eight grenades and a BAR, and twenty-three dead Chinese when he ran out of ammo.

Kehoe had been elected sheriff after Larsen retired, and Parrish had become his deputy. Parrish was killed when he interrupted a bank holdup and shot it out with two eastern gangsters. He took both of them with him when he went down shooting, and when Sampson McCarty bent over to hear his last words, Parrish said, "Jim Colburn planned 'em better!"

Colburn stayed on at the ranch as long as it operated, and then moved to Arizona. From time to time people looked him up to ask if the bad old days were really that bad, but few thought to ask about his own life. He was such a quiet-seeming man, with a shock of unruly white hair and mild blue eyes.

Gaylord Riley and Marie moved to California when the children were old enough to attend school, but the years they spent on the ranch were happy, prosperous ones.

When Senator James Colburn Riley married Blanche Kehoe they spent their honeymoon camping at the foot of the Sweet Alice Hills.

On their first night in camp their guide and packer brought a flat stone to the fireside, and Riley commented, "Looks like an old foundation stone." "Indian, maybe," the guide said. "Nobody else in this country until around 1900. Why, outlaws didn't start usin' the Roost until about '85!"

Riley glanced at Blanche, but neither made any comment. Later, when Riley accidentally kicked an old cartridge shell out of the earth near the fire, the guide glanced at it.

"Better keep that," he said, "they don't make that kind any more."