Book #9 of the Mogi Franklin Series
Two teens, one huge monk, and a stash of stolen gold—that’s all that stand in the way of a powerful corporation getting its hands on a peaceful river valley in rural New Mexico. Mogi Franklin and his sister, Jennifer, uncover clues to a century-old mystery, but unraveling a botched robbery isn’t enough when a whole river, and a way of life, are at stake. Can fourteen-year-old Mogi expose the truth—and save the valley before it’s too late?
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Read two chapters
Library of Congress Control Number 2018951006 Distributed by SCB Distributors, (800) 729-6423
Chapter 1
Chama, New Mexico Territory, October 1881
"Everett, we gotta find us a way to get big money. This slave work is about to kill me!”
Orin and Everett Cossey had come back from the grub shack and were sitting next to a small stream. It had been a long day, and the brothers had only an hour before dark. After another typically restless night in the crowded crew tents, morning would find them back at the rough and tough job of laying railroad track.
“Well, Orin, I just don’t see how to work much harder, and it don’t seem like they’s goin’ to pay us more, so we are stuck with what we are doin’, I think.”
Back in the spring, the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad had finished laying tracks over the Colorado mountains and into a sleepy little village in the New Mexico Territory called Chama. With the tracks complete to the middle of town, the track boss switched some of the crews to building a locomotive roundhouse, a repair shop, dormitories, and a depot building while others built a sawmill to cut the lumber needed for the construction. That took the rest of the summer.
Now in the fall, as the air chilled and the aspen leaves yellowed, the boss put them back to making roadbed and laying rails straight west out of Chama toward Lumberton. When the snows came, he’d put the crews into camps for the winter, downing every tree they saw to make the heavy wooden ties needed to support the rails. The D&RG wanted to be at the mines in Silverton by the end of the following year, and they’d need thousands of ties to make that deadline.
“There you go, tryin’ to think again,” Orin answered with his usual response to any comment from Everett. “That ain’t the kind of money I’m talkin’ about. I’m talkin’ big money—BIG! We gots to get out of here, go do somethin’ that will get us enough money so’s we don’t have to work for no bossman no more. I’m tired of havin’ somebody tell me what to do when they’s ain’t workin’ a lick.”
It was this way every night, Everett listening to his big brother carry on about going someplace, about doing something, about making it big and not having to work. It had been that way ever since they’d left Arkansas--Lord, how many years had it been?
Orin’s original plan was for them to go to Texas to become cattlemen. It ended with their working as drovers, choking on dust while driving herds of cattle north to Kansas. Then his plan changed to include cattle rustling on the side, one of those “big money” moves that got them nothing but a quick escape into Colorado.
Then his plan was to find bucketloads of silver up in Leadville. That plan ended after six months of freezing inside a granite mountain and a firm hand on their necks as the sheriff threw them out of town for printing up false mining claims.
What then? A month or so in Durango, then a spell in Dodge City, Kansas, where Orin tried his luck at gambling. That was supposed to be a “big money” move, too. And now they were humping railroad ties to the barking of a track boss in a damned wilderness.
“Ya know,” Orin said casually as he threw rocks into the stream. “Every month, they’s shippin’ a strongbox of gold down to the bank in Tierra Amarilla. They’s goin’ to lay a spur down that ways, and when they do, that there deposit money will go by train, whereas they now takes it by wagon. If ’n somebody was goin’ to steal one of them strongboxes, it’d be before next summer, ’cause after that, you’d have to stop a train rather than a wagon. A strongbox, I hear, holds a powerful lot of money.”
Everett listened with only one ear. It didn’t matter whether he heard everything, or whether he agreed or not, or whether he had any concerns. One way or another, Orin was going to come up with a plan—a plan where Orin would do whatever he wanted and Everett would have to do it with him. That’s what Momma had said that he as the younger brother should do, though she hadn’t thought it out, Everett realized. Momma expected Orin to take care of Everett but hadn’t considered it might mean being hung on a gallows beside him.
* * *
The road to Tierra Amarilla, May 1882
It was May, and Everett Cossey was talking to himself. “We shouldn’t be doin’ this,” he whispered under his breath. “This is a bad deal,” he said. “Oh, Lord, Orin,” he almost yelled out,“what would Momma be thinkin’?”
Sweat ran down his face as he fidgeted in the dirt.
Kneeling behind a boulder, shifting from one knee to the other, trying to conceal himself completely—trying, in fact, to be invisible—he hoped that Orin would forget about him. He should never have gone along with it, should never have let Orin plan this thing, this horrible, horrible thing. They had done bad things in the past but had never outright killed anybody. But Orin was in charge, Momma had told him. Always, it was Orin who would give the orders, always Orin who would decide things, always Orin who would tell Everett what to do.
But Momma couldn’t have meant killing people. Never, ever.
An hour earlier, Orin had sent Tom back along the road to climb up a small hill. When the jail wagon came into view, he was to give a wave and run back. Luke was in the rocks below the road, ready to cut the rope holding the tree, and Jug was in the bushes on the left, ready to shoot anyone in the back of the wagon or inside the cage.
That left Everett in front of where the wagon would be stopped, with Orin behind him on his horse, hidden in the trees. Orin would ride out when the wagon heaved to, but he expected Everett and Jug to already be firing.
“As soon as the tree falls across the road, kill the driver and anybody with him,” Orin had told them in no uncertain terms. “Don’t wait for the dirt to settle. Kill them before they have a chance to shoulder their guns.”
The Tierra Amarilla bank didn’t have a real strongbox wagon, one of those fancy rigs that had a big iron box on wheels with a shotgun man inside who could shoot through the little windows. Instead, the bank used the sheriff ’s jail wagon, which wasn’t much for protecting things—just a cage of iron bars set on a wagon frame where the sheriff kept the prisoners he collected as he rode among the villages and outposts around the backcountry.
The bank thought the strongbox inside the iron cage was secure enough, not so much because it was well protected but because no bandit would be stupid enough to rob the wagon as it moved the strongbox from the train in Chama down the road to Tierra Amarilla. It wasn’t much more than thirteen miles between the two towns, and there wouldn’t be enough time for anybody to rob the wagon and get away before the sheriff would be after them. A bandit would be crazy to attempt it.
Which was all part of Orin Cossey’s plan.
Tom’s hand shot into the air. Orin pulled the reins tight, making his horse stamp the ground all nervous like, and Everett could see Luke’s eyes getting big, staring at Orin between glimpses at the dust in the distance.
When the bank wagon got within thirty yards, Orin pointed at Luke, Luke cut the rope, the tree fell across the road, the wagon driver yanked back on the reins, the horses reared, and the guard blasted Luke with his shotgun before Orin put two slugs into his chest. With no one in the back of the wagon, Jug shot the driver.
Everett had stood up behind the rock but did not fire. By the time his hand stopped shaking enough to hold his pistol steady, there was no one left to kill.
“Get that wagon off the road,” Orin yelled at him,“since you ain’t got guts ’nough to kill when killin’ is needed!”
Everett obeyed.
The tree was dragged from the road, the wagon driven into the woods, and the tracks brushed out. The cage lock was shot off, the strongbox thrown to the ground and broken open, and the bags of gold coins moved to saddlebags. The dead bodies, including Luke’s, were thrown into the cage. Once the saddlebags were tied behind the four saddles, Orin spurred his horse north, and Everett spurred his southwest. Tom dropped into an arroyo to the left. Jug followed Orin, then Tom, and then went off on his own. Creating a maze of tracks in the grass, dirt, and sagebrush, each circled back to a cow trail that skirted the nearby Rio Chama flowing south. They rode together, urging their horses on, hot and panicked, trying not to think of what they had done.
Within an hour from when the wagon was stopped, they passed out of sight to the west of Tierra Amarilla.
When the gold wagon was late, the bank manager nervously paced in his office, but the sheriff was unconcerned. Delays were common in this rough country—there could be fallen rocks on the road, or maybe a washout.
It was an hour more before the sheriff finally rode out of town.
By that time, the four outlaws had reached the Rio Cebolla, a small stream running out of the mountains east of the valley. They turned and headed west, following the stream. But when Orin and his outlaw band reached where the Cebolla ran into the Chama, Orin’s carefully thought-out plan suddenly ran into problems.
The first problem was that the river was flooding. Orin and Everett had scouted the river crossing in late February but had not understood how much the river would change when the snow in the mountains melted. Now that it was spring, the water cascading down from the high valleys had swelled the Rio Chama to four or five times the amount of water it held in late winter. Sitting on their horses next to a high bank, the Cossey brothers were looking at a thundering torrent of swirling water racing down the riverbed, maybe two feet higher than what they had seen before and a great deal more vicious.
Orin was stunned, then angry, then furious, drawing his pistol and shooting several times into the water as if to punish it for daring to go against his plan.
The second problem involved the small homemade boat they had bought from a rancher, and which he and Everett had hidden along the banks of the river. It was the key to the whole robbery. Orin had intended to put the bags of gold into the boat and then row the boat into the deepest part of the Rio Chama canyon, a canyon so steep and narrow that no posse would imagine any outlaw venturing there. The bandits would bury the gold in the canyon and return for it later. It would never occur to the sheriff that the gold was in the canyon, so it would never be looked for. And if any of the thieves were caught later on, they could claim innocence as they would have no evidence of the robbery in their possession.
According to the plan, the man who would now retrieve the boat from its hiding place and load the bags of coins into it, the man who would take the boat down the river and bury the gold, the man who was now struggling to control the overburdened boat in the bumping, swaying, lurching current, was Everett.
Arguing with Orin, pointing out the impossibility of piloting or even managing the boat in the swirling torrent, reminding him of the danger of high water in a low boat, pointing to the size of the waves, Everett did everything to change the plan except refuse.
Orin paid him no attention.
As his brother protested, panicking as he sat on the thin board that made the boat’s seat, Orin cut the rope holding the boat to the bank. It was immediately swept into the surging water with Everett clinging helplessly to its sides, ignoring the paddle, talking a blue streak that soon grew into a series of screams. The small boat bucked and swirled and twisted in the angry water. Less than a minute later, it was out of sight in the dark shadows of the narrow canyon.
Orin had drawn a map of the canyon rim and river in February. At a place they had located, Everett would bury the gold and then wipe away any traces. At the other end of the deep canyon, not more than five or six miles away from the Rio Cebolla junction, where the tall sandstone walls spread out into a wide plain, Orin would be waiting for him, having ridden up into the mesas and doubled back to the river to lose the posse that would probably be on his tail.
After sinking the boat by bashing a hole in the bottom, the two brothers would race to the plateaus west of the small Spanish village of Abiquiu, twenty miles away. They would follow old Indian trails and disappear into the mountains while the other gang members would ride north for Colorado.
In exactly four months, long after the law had abandoned its pursuit, the bandits would meet up on the Rio Chama where the river comes out of the narrow canyon. Orin would dig up the gold and divide it equally. Each of them would be rich for the rest of their lives.
That was the plan.
As Everett and the boat disappeared into the canyon’s darkness, Orin and the other two men put spurs to their horses, fought the ferocious current, and were soon galloping up the far trail. Once on high ground, they separated, each heading miles away to find fresh horses and supplies. Changing mounts and chasing their used horses in different directions, the outlaws raced away as if the devil himself was after them.
"Everett, we gotta find us a way to get big money. This slave work is about to kill me!”
Orin and Everett Cossey had come back from the grub shack and were sitting next to a small stream. It had been a long day, and the brothers had only an hour before dark. After another typically restless night in the crowded crew tents, morning would find them back at the rough and tough job of laying railroad track.
“Well, Orin, I just don’t see how to work much harder, and it don’t seem like they’s goin’ to pay us more, so we are stuck with what we are doin’, I think.”
Back in the spring, the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad had finished laying tracks over the Colorado mountains and into a sleepy little village in the New Mexico Territory called Chama. With the tracks complete to the middle of town, the track boss switched some of the crews to building a locomotive roundhouse, a repair shop, dormitories, and a depot building while others built a sawmill to cut the lumber needed for the construction. That took the rest of the summer.
Now in the fall, as the air chilled and the aspen leaves yellowed, the boss put them back to making roadbed and laying rails straight west out of Chama toward Lumberton. When the snows came, he’d put the crews into camps for the winter, downing every tree they saw to make the heavy wooden ties needed to support the rails. The D&RG wanted to be at the mines in Silverton by the end of the following year, and they’d need thousands of ties to make that deadline.
“There you go, tryin’ to think again,” Orin answered with his usual response to any comment from Everett. “That ain’t the kind of money I’m talkin’ about. I’m talkin’ big money—BIG! We gots to get out of here, go do somethin’ that will get us enough money so’s we don’t have to work for no bossman no more. I’m tired of havin’ somebody tell me what to do when they’s ain’t workin’ a lick.”
It was this way every night, Everett listening to his big brother carry on about going someplace, about doing something, about making it big and not having to work. It had been that way ever since they’d left Arkansas--Lord, how many years had it been?
Orin’s original plan was for them to go to Texas to become cattlemen. It ended with their working as drovers, choking on dust while driving herds of cattle north to Kansas. Then his plan changed to include cattle rustling on the side, one of those “big money” moves that got them nothing but a quick escape into Colorado.
Then his plan was to find bucketloads of silver up in Leadville. That plan ended after six months of freezing inside a granite mountain and a firm hand on their necks as the sheriff threw them out of town for printing up false mining claims.
What then? A month or so in Durango, then a spell in Dodge City, Kansas, where Orin tried his luck at gambling. That was supposed to be a “big money” move, too. And now they were humping railroad ties to the barking of a track boss in a damned wilderness.
“Ya know,” Orin said casually as he threw rocks into the stream. “Every month, they’s shippin’ a strongbox of gold down to the bank in Tierra Amarilla. They’s goin’ to lay a spur down that ways, and when they do, that there deposit money will go by train, whereas they now takes it by wagon. If ’n somebody was goin’ to steal one of them strongboxes, it’d be before next summer, ’cause after that, you’d have to stop a train rather than a wagon. A strongbox, I hear, holds a powerful lot of money.”
Everett listened with only one ear. It didn’t matter whether he heard everything, or whether he agreed or not, or whether he had any concerns. One way or another, Orin was going to come up with a plan—a plan where Orin would do whatever he wanted and Everett would have to do it with him. That’s what Momma had said that he as the younger brother should do, though she hadn’t thought it out, Everett realized. Momma expected Orin to take care of Everett but hadn’t considered it might mean being hung on a gallows beside him.
* * *
The road to Tierra Amarilla, May 1882
It was May, and Everett Cossey was talking to himself. “We shouldn’t be doin’ this,” he whispered under his breath. “This is a bad deal,” he said. “Oh, Lord, Orin,” he almost yelled out,“what would Momma be thinkin’?”
Sweat ran down his face as he fidgeted in the dirt.
Kneeling behind a boulder, shifting from one knee to the other, trying to conceal himself completely—trying, in fact, to be invisible—he hoped that Orin would forget about him. He should never have gone along with it, should never have let Orin plan this thing, this horrible, horrible thing. They had done bad things in the past but had never outright killed anybody. But Orin was in charge, Momma had told him. Always, it was Orin who would give the orders, always Orin who would decide things, always Orin who would tell Everett what to do.
But Momma couldn’t have meant killing people. Never, ever.
An hour earlier, Orin had sent Tom back along the road to climb up a small hill. When the jail wagon came into view, he was to give a wave and run back. Luke was in the rocks below the road, ready to cut the rope holding the tree, and Jug was in the bushes on the left, ready to shoot anyone in the back of the wagon or inside the cage.
That left Everett in front of where the wagon would be stopped, with Orin behind him on his horse, hidden in the trees. Orin would ride out when the wagon heaved to, but he expected Everett and Jug to already be firing.
“As soon as the tree falls across the road, kill the driver and anybody with him,” Orin had told them in no uncertain terms. “Don’t wait for the dirt to settle. Kill them before they have a chance to shoulder their guns.”
The Tierra Amarilla bank didn’t have a real strongbox wagon, one of those fancy rigs that had a big iron box on wheels with a shotgun man inside who could shoot through the little windows. Instead, the bank used the sheriff ’s jail wagon, which wasn’t much for protecting things—just a cage of iron bars set on a wagon frame where the sheriff kept the prisoners he collected as he rode among the villages and outposts around the backcountry.
The bank thought the strongbox inside the iron cage was secure enough, not so much because it was well protected but because no bandit would be stupid enough to rob the wagon as it moved the strongbox from the train in Chama down the road to Tierra Amarilla. It wasn’t much more than thirteen miles between the two towns, and there wouldn’t be enough time for anybody to rob the wagon and get away before the sheriff would be after them. A bandit would be crazy to attempt it.
Which was all part of Orin Cossey’s plan.
Tom’s hand shot into the air. Orin pulled the reins tight, making his horse stamp the ground all nervous like, and Everett could see Luke’s eyes getting big, staring at Orin between glimpses at the dust in the distance.
When the bank wagon got within thirty yards, Orin pointed at Luke, Luke cut the rope, the tree fell across the road, the wagon driver yanked back on the reins, the horses reared, and the guard blasted Luke with his shotgun before Orin put two slugs into his chest. With no one in the back of the wagon, Jug shot the driver.
Everett had stood up behind the rock but did not fire. By the time his hand stopped shaking enough to hold his pistol steady, there was no one left to kill.
“Get that wagon off the road,” Orin yelled at him,“since you ain’t got guts ’nough to kill when killin’ is needed!”
Everett obeyed.
The tree was dragged from the road, the wagon driven into the woods, and the tracks brushed out. The cage lock was shot off, the strongbox thrown to the ground and broken open, and the bags of gold coins moved to saddlebags. The dead bodies, including Luke’s, were thrown into the cage. Once the saddlebags were tied behind the four saddles, Orin spurred his horse north, and Everett spurred his southwest. Tom dropped into an arroyo to the left. Jug followed Orin, then Tom, and then went off on his own. Creating a maze of tracks in the grass, dirt, and sagebrush, each circled back to a cow trail that skirted the nearby Rio Chama flowing south. They rode together, urging their horses on, hot and panicked, trying not to think of what they had done.
Within an hour from when the wagon was stopped, they passed out of sight to the west of Tierra Amarilla.
When the gold wagon was late, the bank manager nervously paced in his office, but the sheriff was unconcerned. Delays were common in this rough country—there could be fallen rocks on the road, or maybe a washout.
It was an hour more before the sheriff finally rode out of town.
By that time, the four outlaws had reached the Rio Cebolla, a small stream running out of the mountains east of the valley. They turned and headed west, following the stream. But when Orin and his outlaw band reached where the Cebolla ran into the Chama, Orin’s carefully thought-out plan suddenly ran into problems.
The first problem was that the river was flooding. Orin and Everett had scouted the river crossing in late February but had not understood how much the river would change when the snow in the mountains melted. Now that it was spring, the water cascading down from the high valleys had swelled the Rio Chama to four or five times the amount of water it held in late winter. Sitting on their horses next to a high bank, the Cossey brothers were looking at a thundering torrent of swirling water racing down the riverbed, maybe two feet higher than what they had seen before and a great deal more vicious.
Orin was stunned, then angry, then furious, drawing his pistol and shooting several times into the water as if to punish it for daring to go against his plan.
The second problem involved the small homemade boat they had bought from a rancher, and which he and Everett had hidden along the banks of the river. It was the key to the whole robbery. Orin had intended to put the bags of gold into the boat and then row the boat into the deepest part of the Rio Chama canyon, a canyon so steep and narrow that no posse would imagine any outlaw venturing there. The bandits would bury the gold in the canyon and return for it later. It would never occur to the sheriff that the gold was in the canyon, so it would never be looked for. And if any of the thieves were caught later on, they could claim innocence as they would have no evidence of the robbery in their possession.
According to the plan, the man who would now retrieve the boat from its hiding place and load the bags of coins into it, the man who would take the boat down the river and bury the gold, the man who was now struggling to control the overburdened boat in the bumping, swaying, lurching current, was Everett.
Arguing with Orin, pointing out the impossibility of piloting or even managing the boat in the swirling torrent, reminding him of the danger of high water in a low boat, pointing to the size of the waves, Everett did everything to change the plan except refuse.
Orin paid him no attention.
As his brother protested, panicking as he sat on the thin board that made the boat’s seat, Orin cut the rope holding the boat to the bank. It was immediately swept into the surging water with Everett clinging helplessly to its sides, ignoring the paddle, talking a blue streak that soon grew into a series of screams. The small boat bucked and swirled and twisted in the angry water. Less than a minute later, it was out of sight in the dark shadows of the narrow canyon.
Orin had drawn a map of the canyon rim and river in February. At a place they had located, Everett would bury the gold and then wipe away any traces. At the other end of the deep canyon, not more than five or six miles away from the Rio Cebolla junction, where the tall sandstone walls spread out into a wide plain, Orin would be waiting for him, having ridden up into the mesas and doubled back to the river to lose the posse that would probably be on his tail.
After sinking the boat by bashing a hole in the bottom, the two brothers would race to the plateaus west of the small Spanish village of Abiquiu, twenty miles away. They would follow old Indian trails and disappear into the mountains while the other gang members would ride north for Colorado.
In exactly four months, long after the law had abandoned its pursuit, the bandits would meet up on the Rio Chama where the river comes out of the narrow canyon. Orin would dig up the gold and divide it equally. Each of them would be rich for the rest of their lives.
That was the plan.
As Everett and the boat disappeared into the canyon’s darkness, Orin and the other two men put spurs to their horses, fought the ferocious current, and were soon galloping up the far trail. Once on high ground, they separated, each heading miles away to find fresh horses and supplies. Changing mounts and chasing their used horses in different directions, the outlaws raced away as if the devil himself was after them.
Chapter 2
Present Day
"I hear you two know your way around rafts.” The voicewas soft and had a strong Southern drawl.
“Yes sir, that’s true,” Mogi Franklin answered as his sister, Jennifer, stepped out of the garden and joined them. “We’ve both run rafts on the San Juan in Utah, working for San Juan River Expeditions in Mexican Hat.”
“Well, it would mean getting out of the pumpkin patch for two or three days, but we could use your services if you’re interested.” The man was dressed in well-worn but clean jeans, a summer work shirt, work boots, and a broad
cowboy hat. He had a friendly, easy smile.
“That’d be great!” Mogi responded. He loved any excuse to get out of “the patch”—nearly an acre of carefully tended vegetables, melons, and herbs that provided most of the fresh produce used in the Ghost Ranch kitchen. Jennifer was not disappointed either though she enjoyed working among the plants. She liked knowing that the aromatic tomatoes, onions, cantaloupes, and water- melons would make it to the tables of the Ghost Ranch eating halls.
Besides, working in the garden every morning was certainly better than sweating at any of the summer jobs they might have gotten in Bluff, their home town in Utah. The slickrock country around Bluff would be a lot hotter, a lot drier, and the work even less interesting than picking lettuce.
Ghost Ranch was a retreat center owned by the Presbyterian Church. Many years earlier, it had been a private “dude ranch” in the middle of the wild, untouched lands of northern New Mexico. Located on a high plateau about seventy miles north of Santa Fe, it was a secret vacation spot for the rich and famous in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. When it was sold in the ’50s, the facility was built up to include a conference center, a swimming pool, a large dining facility, two museums, and several groups of cabins, casitas, and apartments. It now offered educational and retreat programs for the general public.
Mogi, Jennifer, and their mom had driven down from Bluff on Sunday. Mrs. Franklin was teaching a writing seminar for three weeks at the ranch and had worked out an arrangement for her children to help out around the ranch for free room and board. Mogi appreciated the garden as it was related to food, but bending over all the time was not his favorite position.
At fourteen, Mogi was tall for his age, but his muscles had not yet caught up with his bones, so he was gangly and spindly and a little bit awkward, which is to say, normal for his position in life. He took after his mom’s side of the family in his looks and shyness, but seemed to be a sum of both families on the brain side. He was smarter than most people around him—quick-minded, mentally disciplined, and orderly—and had a natural talent for solving puzzles.
Jennifer, who was three years older, definitely took after their father. Shorter than her brother by a half-foot, with thick, brown hair cut short, she was strong, athletic, and physically graceful; she also had a keen sense of human nature and loved being around people. Whereas Mogi was the obsessive, analytical, adventurous problem-solver, Jennifer was the cautious, emotionally centered people person. He pushed her to do more than she thought she ought to; she pulled him back into what was reasonable.
“Well, wash your hands and come walk with me to the maintenance shed,” the man said. “We’ll see if our rafts
still hold air.”
Ted Allen was the go-to guy for anything and everything mechanical at the ranch, from the faucets in the guesthouses to the engine on the road grader; he also attended to the guests’ needs. When he introduced himself at a campfire talk one night, he shared that he’d grown up in South Texas on a ranch, learned to handle cattle and horses as a young boy, earned a science degree, and then served in the Peace Corps for three years. He had jumped at the chance to work at Ghost Ranch ten years earlier and was still happy to be there every day.
“We used to offer raft trips as one of the regular outings for guests,” Ted explained as the three walked toward a maintenance building. “But overnight trips got kind of expensive, and we let it go.”
Ted pulled back one of the large sliding doors and led Mogi and Jennifer inside. “We’ve got three rafts,” he said as he led them to a corner of the shed, moved aside a pile of fencing material, and revealed a shelf holding what Mogi recognized as folded rafts.
“What river are you talking about?” Jennifer asked.
“The Rio Chama, on the other side of the valley. We get on the river right below El Vado Dam, west of Tierra Amarilla, and we get off at a bend in the river called Big Eddy, about thirty miles later. The road to Big Eddy is just a few miles above Abiquiu Lake, so it’s only a short drive to get back here once we’re off the river.”
It took the three of them thirty minutes to drag each bundle out to the concrete apron in front of the shed, undo the straps, and flatten out each raft, which were old and dusty. Ted came out with a vacuum cleaner. Reversing the hose, they used the vacuum to blow air into the rafts and then a water hose to wash them off. They all seemed airtight.
Ted also showed the Franklins the frames, oars, life jackets, straps, and other equipment. After another hour of washing and rigging, the rafts were ready to use.
“Your mother hinted that you two might be interested,” Ted said. “A handful of people in her class were looking to do something on the river this weekend, but I had to tell them that although we had the equipment, we no longer had anybody experienced enough to pilot the rafts. If you two will help me out, we’ll put together a nice overnight trip for them.”
It was no contest. Working in the garden each morning was fine, but rafting on one of New Mexico’s most scenic rivers was a clear winner.
“If we pack up everything this afternoon, we should be ready to leave early tomorrow morning,” Ted said. “Let’s go talk to the kitchen folks about getting meals together for the trip.”
* * *
“This is great!” Mogi called over to his sister as he pulled on his oar to turn the raft into the current. He was used to the muddy waters of the San Juan River, as well as the deep, hot canyons of southern Utah. The Rio Chama was entirely different: cold, relatively clear water; green, pasture-like grasses and flatlands; pine trees and gambel oak thickets; and tall canyon walls of sandstone colored in yellows, browns, and whites.
Jennifer loved it. She let the raft slowly rotate so she could see the landscape around her. Instead of the uniform starkness of Utah stone, this canyon felt fatter and richer, wrapped by a thick robe of colors instead of a single-color curtain.
It was Saturday. Ted was in the first raft, Jennifer in the second, and Mogi the third. Each had three attendees from the writing seminar as passengers. The day before, Ted had assembled the tents, sleeping bags, dry bags, food, drinking water, stove, table, cooking items, a makeshift toilet, and other gear needed for the overnight trip.
Now he called back to them, “Pull over around the next bend!”
Mogi slowed his raft as he watched Ted and Jennifer pull their rafts over to the right bank, next to the ruins of an old farmhouse. Angling to come in next to Jennifer, he soon tied up his raft and his passengers followed Ted up a short path.
“This is the Martinez homestead,” Ted announced as he pointed toward the old leaning, two-story house, the tumbledown pig sheds, the bent wire fences, and a narrow, primitive road. “It was used by the Martinez family from the late 1800s until it was abandoned in the ’50s. You’re welcome to wander through the house and around the corrals.”
It was tiny. Mogi couldn’t believe that people lived in such small rooms. The kitchen was not much bigger than his closet at home. The floors were uneven, made of wide boards. The doorways were narrow and short while the ceilings were low enough for him to touch with his fingers. There was no inside stairway to the bedrooms of the second floor, only narrow stairs that went up the outside wall of the house.
“Look at this!” Jennifer called out. People gathered around. Where newspapers had been pasted over the walls to keep out the wind, she pointed to a yellowed article about a new baseball player named Babe Ruth and his latest game.
“Hey, look out here!” one of the guests called. He was outside, pointing at a small spring flowing from under the house, which pooled just before it ran into the river.
“It’s a hot spring!” the man said laughing as he swirled his fingers in the bubbling water.
Pretty clever for keeping the house warm in winter, Mogi thought as he stepped over the small stream. Looking back to the rafts, he noticed the guest from California, Sheila Winters, kneeling next to Ted’s raft. Shiela was the guest who’d taken a full five minutes to introduce herself at the beginning of the raft trip. While the other guests were content to say their names, where they were from, and a few words about what they were enjoying about the writing seminar, Sheila went on and on until Ted finally interjected to end her tedious speech.
Mogi watched as she filled a small bottle with river water. She capped it off, dried the bottle against her leg, and used a marker to write something on its label. She placed the bottle into a canvas bag and dropped it into the raft. She had done the same thing when they were preparing the rafts to launch on the river.
Leaving the farmhouse behind, everyone returned to the rafts. After rowing for less than a minute, Ted brought them to the opposite bank and tied up.
“Everybody is wearing clothes that can get wet, right? We’re going for a swim!”
The idea made several of the guests nervous; the water in the river was freezing cold, coming from the bottom of El Vado Lake, a reservoir held back by the dam.
Ted led them a hundred yards up the river to a flat piece of land that projected out from the bank. In the center of the flat ground was an almost circular body of water. He carefully stepped into the pool and sat down, the water rising up to his chest.
It was another hot spring, its circular shape and flat-rock bottom created over the years by visitors enjoying its waters. Mogi and Jennifer and the guests slowly lowered themselves into the pool with oohs and ahs and small squeals, settling around the rim. Sheila Winters had brought her canvas bag. After she lowered herself into the water, she pulled out an empty container, filled it with spring water, wrote on the outside, and placed it back in the bag.
She looked up with a guilty smile.
“I’m a biology teacher,” she said. “I’ll take these water samples back to my class where we’ll test them with water quality kits and compare them with the water from around our own area. My students will love to hear that this water comes from a place called Ghost Ranch.”
“Anyone know why Ghost Ranch is called Ghost Ranch?” Ted asked.
“I bet there’s a ghost involved,” a woman from Santa Fe said with a grin.
“Well, now, that’s true, but there’s a little more to the story,” Ted began. “In the late 1880s, two brothers named Archuleta built a cabin at the mouth of a canyon on the Ghost Ranch property. The Archuletas were outlaws— cattle rustlers and thieves—and were using the dead-end canyon to hide herds of stolen cows.
“The local ranchers became suspicious when they never saw any herds during the day yet heard cattle being moved during the night. The situation got worse when some people new to the area passed through the ranch one night, hoping to find shelter. They were never seen again, but their belongings—saddles, bridles, and spurs—soon appeared on the Archuletas’ horses. No one was brave enough to accuse them, but everyone assumed that the brothers had murdered the visitors and thrown their bodies down a dry well on the property.
“After that, shepherds grazing their sheep along the river next to the ranch began hearing mysterious sounds that they believed to be the wailings of those who had been murdered. They believed the ranch had become haunted and the whole area cursed. It was then referred to as El Rancho de los Brujos—The Ranch of the Witches.
“Time went by and the Archuleta brothers got into a squabble about money. One of them had hidden a jar full of money to keep the other from getting it, and one brother killed the other brother. That was more than the neighbors could stand, so a posse of local men went to the ranch and hung the second brother, plus everyone else who was working on the property. Well, their souls didn’t stay quiet either, and the ranch was soon abandoned because of all the noisy ghosts flying around.
“The land changed hands a couple of times until 1928 when it was sold to a man named Salazar, who promptly lost the deed in a card game. The new owner gave the deed to his wife. Her name was Carol Bishop Stanley, and it is she who later moved to the ranch, renamed it Ghost Ranch, and started what was to become a well-respected getaway for rich vacationers from the East. That was the beginning of what you know as Ghost Ranch today.”
Everyone clapped in appreciation.
“Any more stories?” one of the guests asked.
“As a matter of fact,” Ted replied, “there’s still the biggest and best known local mystery story, but I’ll save it for tonight. It happened in the 1880s when two brothers robbed a pay wagon, killed everybody, made their escape, and hid the gold along the Rio Chama. You’ll like it.”
"I hear you two know your way around rafts.” The voicewas soft and had a strong Southern drawl.
“Yes sir, that’s true,” Mogi Franklin answered as his sister, Jennifer, stepped out of the garden and joined them. “We’ve both run rafts on the San Juan in Utah, working for San Juan River Expeditions in Mexican Hat.”
“Well, it would mean getting out of the pumpkin patch for two or three days, but we could use your services if you’re interested.” The man was dressed in well-worn but clean jeans, a summer work shirt, work boots, and a broad
cowboy hat. He had a friendly, easy smile.
“That’d be great!” Mogi responded. He loved any excuse to get out of “the patch”—nearly an acre of carefully tended vegetables, melons, and herbs that provided most of the fresh produce used in the Ghost Ranch kitchen. Jennifer was not disappointed either though she enjoyed working among the plants. She liked knowing that the aromatic tomatoes, onions, cantaloupes, and water- melons would make it to the tables of the Ghost Ranch eating halls.
Besides, working in the garden every morning was certainly better than sweating at any of the summer jobs they might have gotten in Bluff, their home town in Utah. The slickrock country around Bluff would be a lot hotter, a lot drier, and the work even less interesting than picking lettuce.
Ghost Ranch was a retreat center owned by the Presbyterian Church. Many years earlier, it had been a private “dude ranch” in the middle of the wild, untouched lands of northern New Mexico. Located on a high plateau about seventy miles north of Santa Fe, it was a secret vacation spot for the rich and famous in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. When it was sold in the ’50s, the facility was built up to include a conference center, a swimming pool, a large dining facility, two museums, and several groups of cabins, casitas, and apartments. It now offered educational and retreat programs for the general public.
Mogi, Jennifer, and their mom had driven down from Bluff on Sunday. Mrs. Franklin was teaching a writing seminar for three weeks at the ranch and had worked out an arrangement for her children to help out around the ranch for free room and board. Mogi appreciated the garden as it was related to food, but bending over all the time was not his favorite position.
At fourteen, Mogi was tall for his age, but his muscles had not yet caught up with his bones, so he was gangly and spindly and a little bit awkward, which is to say, normal for his position in life. He took after his mom’s side of the family in his looks and shyness, but seemed to be a sum of both families on the brain side. He was smarter than most people around him—quick-minded, mentally disciplined, and orderly—and had a natural talent for solving puzzles.
Jennifer, who was three years older, definitely took after their father. Shorter than her brother by a half-foot, with thick, brown hair cut short, she was strong, athletic, and physically graceful; she also had a keen sense of human nature and loved being around people. Whereas Mogi was the obsessive, analytical, adventurous problem-solver, Jennifer was the cautious, emotionally centered people person. He pushed her to do more than she thought she ought to; she pulled him back into what was reasonable.
“Well, wash your hands and come walk with me to the maintenance shed,” the man said. “We’ll see if our rafts
still hold air.”
Ted Allen was the go-to guy for anything and everything mechanical at the ranch, from the faucets in the guesthouses to the engine on the road grader; he also attended to the guests’ needs. When he introduced himself at a campfire talk one night, he shared that he’d grown up in South Texas on a ranch, learned to handle cattle and horses as a young boy, earned a science degree, and then served in the Peace Corps for three years. He had jumped at the chance to work at Ghost Ranch ten years earlier and was still happy to be there every day.
“We used to offer raft trips as one of the regular outings for guests,” Ted explained as the three walked toward a maintenance building. “But overnight trips got kind of expensive, and we let it go.”
Ted pulled back one of the large sliding doors and led Mogi and Jennifer inside. “We’ve got three rafts,” he said as he led them to a corner of the shed, moved aside a pile of fencing material, and revealed a shelf holding what Mogi recognized as folded rafts.
“What river are you talking about?” Jennifer asked.
“The Rio Chama, on the other side of the valley. We get on the river right below El Vado Dam, west of Tierra Amarilla, and we get off at a bend in the river called Big Eddy, about thirty miles later. The road to Big Eddy is just a few miles above Abiquiu Lake, so it’s only a short drive to get back here once we’re off the river.”
It took the three of them thirty minutes to drag each bundle out to the concrete apron in front of the shed, undo the straps, and flatten out each raft, which were old and dusty. Ted came out with a vacuum cleaner. Reversing the hose, they used the vacuum to blow air into the rafts and then a water hose to wash them off. They all seemed airtight.
Ted also showed the Franklins the frames, oars, life jackets, straps, and other equipment. After another hour of washing and rigging, the rafts were ready to use.
“Your mother hinted that you two might be interested,” Ted said. “A handful of people in her class were looking to do something on the river this weekend, but I had to tell them that although we had the equipment, we no longer had anybody experienced enough to pilot the rafts. If you two will help me out, we’ll put together a nice overnight trip for them.”
It was no contest. Working in the garden each morning was fine, but rafting on one of New Mexico’s most scenic rivers was a clear winner.
“If we pack up everything this afternoon, we should be ready to leave early tomorrow morning,” Ted said. “Let’s go talk to the kitchen folks about getting meals together for the trip.”
* * *
“This is great!” Mogi called over to his sister as he pulled on his oar to turn the raft into the current. He was used to the muddy waters of the San Juan River, as well as the deep, hot canyons of southern Utah. The Rio Chama was entirely different: cold, relatively clear water; green, pasture-like grasses and flatlands; pine trees and gambel oak thickets; and tall canyon walls of sandstone colored in yellows, browns, and whites.
Jennifer loved it. She let the raft slowly rotate so she could see the landscape around her. Instead of the uniform starkness of Utah stone, this canyon felt fatter and richer, wrapped by a thick robe of colors instead of a single-color curtain.
It was Saturday. Ted was in the first raft, Jennifer in the second, and Mogi the third. Each had three attendees from the writing seminar as passengers. The day before, Ted had assembled the tents, sleeping bags, dry bags, food, drinking water, stove, table, cooking items, a makeshift toilet, and other gear needed for the overnight trip.
Now he called back to them, “Pull over around the next bend!”
Mogi slowed his raft as he watched Ted and Jennifer pull their rafts over to the right bank, next to the ruins of an old farmhouse. Angling to come in next to Jennifer, he soon tied up his raft and his passengers followed Ted up a short path.
“This is the Martinez homestead,” Ted announced as he pointed toward the old leaning, two-story house, the tumbledown pig sheds, the bent wire fences, and a narrow, primitive road. “It was used by the Martinez family from the late 1800s until it was abandoned in the ’50s. You’re welcome to wander through the house and around the corrals.”
It was tiny. Mogi couldn’t believe that people lived in such small rooms. The kitchen was not much bigger than his closet at home. The floors were uneven, made of wide boards. The doorways were narrow and short while the ceilings were low enough for him to touch with his fingers. There was no inside stairway to the bedrooms of the second floor, only narrow stairs that went up the outside wall of the house.
“Look at this!” Jennifer called out. People gathered around. Where newspapers had been pasted over the walls to keep out the wind, she pointed to a yellowed article about a new baseball player named Babe Ruth and his latest game.
“Hey, look out here!” one of the guests called. He was outside, pointing at a small spring flowing from under the house, which pooled just before it ran into the river.
“It’s a hot spring!” the man said laughing as he swirled his fingers in the bubbling water.
Pretty clever for keeping the house warm in winter, Mogi thought as he stepped over the small stream. Looking back to the rafts, he noticed the guest from California, Sheila Winters, kneeling next to Ted’s raft. Shiela was the guest who’d taken a full five minutes to introduce herself at the beginning of the raft trip. While the other guests were content to say their names, where they were from, and a few words about what they were enjoying about the writing seminar, Sheila went on and on until Ted finally interjected to end her tedious speech.
Mogi watched as she filled a small bottle with river water. She capped it off, dried the bottle against her leg, and used a marker to write something on its label. She placed the bottle into a canvas bag and dropped it into the raft. She had done the same thing when they were preparing the rafts to launch on the river.
Leaving the farmhouse behind, everyone returned to the rafts. After rowing for less than a minute, Ted brought them to the opposite bank and tied up.
“Everybody is wearing clothes that can get wet, right? We’re going for a swim!”
The idea made several of the guests nervous; the water in the river was freezing cold, coming from the bottom of El Vado Lake, a reservoir held back by the dam.
Ted led them a hundred yards up the river to a flat piece of land that projected out from the bank. In the center of the flat ground was an almost circular body of water. He carefully stepped into the pool and sat down, the water rising up to his chest.
It was another hot spring, its circular shape and flat-rock bottom created over the years by visitors enjoying its waters. Mogi and Jennifer and the guests slowly lowered themselves into the pool with oohs and ahs and small squeals, settling around the rim. Sheila Winters had brought her canvas bag. After she lowered herself into the water, she pulled out an empty container, filled it with spring water, wrote on the outside, and placed it back in the bag.
She looked up with a guilty smile.
“I’m a biology teacher,” she said. “I’ll take these water samples back to my class where we’ll test them with water quality kits and compare them with the water from around our own area. My students will love to hear that this water comes from a place called Ghost Ranch.”
“Anyone know why Ghost Ranch is called Ghost Ranch?” Ted asked.
“I bet there’s a ghost involved,” a woman from Santa Fe said with a grin.
“Well, now, that’s true, but there’s a little more to the story,” Ted began. “In the late 1880s, two brothers named Archuleta built a cabin at the mouth of a canyon on the Ghost Ranch property. The Archuletas were outlaws— cattle rustlers and thieves—and were using the dead-end canyon to hide herds of stolen cows.
“The local ranchers became suspicious when they never saw any herds during the day yet heard cattle being moved during the night. The situation got worse when some people new to the area passed through the ranch one night, hoping to find shelter. They were never seen again, but their belongings—saddles, bridles, and spurs—soon appeared on the Archuletas’ horses. No one was brave enough to accuse them, but everyone assumed that the brothers had murdered the visitors and thrown their bodies down a dry well on the property.
“After that, shepherds grazing their sheep along the river next to the ranch began hearing mysterious sounds that they believed to be the wailings of those who had been murdered. They believed the ranch had become haunted and the whole area cursed. It was then referred to as El Rancho de los Brujos—The Ranch of the Witches.
“Time went by and the Archuleta brothers got into a squabble about money. One of them had hidden a jar full of money to keep the other from getting it, and one brother killed the other brother. That was more than the neighbors could stand, so a posse of local men went to the ranch and hung the second brother, plus everyone else who was working on the property. Well, their souls didn’t stay quiet either, and the ranch was soon abandoned because of all the noisy ghosts flying around.
“The land changed hands a couple of times until 1928 when it was sold to a man named Salazar, who promptly lost the deed in a card game. The new owner gave the deed to his wife. Her name was Carol Bishop Stanley, and it is she who later moved to the ranch, renamed it Ghost Ranch, and started what was to become a well-respected getaway for rich vacationers from the East. That was the beginning of what you know as Ghost Ranch today.”
Everyone clapped in appreciation.
“Any more stories?” one of the guests asked.
“As a matter of fact,” Ted replied, “there’s still the biggest and best known local mystery story, but I’ll save it for tonight. It happened in the 1880s when two brothers robbed a pay wagon, killed everybody, made their escape, and hid the gold along the Rio Chama. You’ll like it.”