1908-1910 — Grit, Grief and Garden Rows

Ed started driving stage between Gibbonsville and Noble in 1908—just a young man then, but already with more grit than most.[1] The run wasn’t long—ten, maybe twelve miles—but it was steep as a preacher’s climb to Heaven and twice as treacherous. In summer it choked you with dust, in fall the ruts rattled your bones, and in spring the thaw left mud and ice enough to swamp a team. Through the depth of winter the company set the coach on runners, a sleigh more than a wagon, and the horses lunged through snowbanks with steam rising off their backs. Still, Ed took to it like he was born to the reins. And he had been.

Come April, when the snow began pulling back from the ridges, the wheels went back on. Up before dawn, hitching the team in half-light, he hauled passengers, freight, sometimes mail—whatever needed hauling. The stage sloshed through half-thawed ruts, iron shoes scraping ice where the shade held fast. More than once the wheels skidded sideways before finding purchase again. It must have been a wild ride for any passenger not used to mountain roads. You paid for a seat, not for comfort—and if you came out alive, you got your money’s worth.

Ed would roll out of Gibbonsville with the chill still clinging to his boots, and by the time he crested the mountain he was looking toward Noble. Not much of a town by then, just a camp along Fourth of July Creek, but still a stopping place.

Billy took work supervising the mill at the Rabbit Foot mine—until they had to shut it down for lack of wood to fire the boilers. Afterward he hung his hat in Ulysses, poked around Gibbonsville, and eventually made his way to the ranch. When the river opened up he took the stage into Salmon and helped run a boatload of supplies downriver. He wasn’t sure yet where his next steady work would be. There was enough water to power the stamp mills, but nothing was certain. For the time being, he was content to stay close to home—amalgamating crushed ore from the Pine Creek mine and keeping an ear to the ground for good paying prospects.

In the summer of 1908, President Roosevelt—who never did ask our leave—signed Executive Order No. 841 and stretched the Salmon Forest Reserve north across the river. It took in the Boulder Creek drainage, then swept north to Horse Creek, east clear to the Divide, and down again to Agency Creek where the Lemhi had lived. Land once belonging to them, or to no one at all, was folded into Washington’s maps like it had always been theirs. They called it a consolidation—parts of the old Lemhi and Bitterroot Reserves bundled together neat as you please. The order took effect July first. I remember the date because that’s when some of the old-timers stopped calling it "the Reserve" and started calling it "a robbery."

Nathaniel Turner, alias Driftwood, died at the end of November.[2] He’d moved south to live near his brothers and had been crushed under a wagon that left him paralyzed. Still, from the Soldier’s Home in Boise, he’d get to missing Lemhi County and write for the newspaper. So I’d missed seeing his face downriver for some time but he was never far from my thoughts about the early days, especially the evenings spent on Tom Wend’s porch eating watermelon while discussing politics, prospecting, mining and religion.

Not long after Nathan died, Bill and I got into a marital squabble—the kind where you couldn’t rightly say what started it, only that it dragged on long enough to do damage. Bill packed his bags. That part wasn’t unusual; he was always coming and going, barely home long enough to settle in once the creeks went dry or the ore was crushed. But this time he packed everything—his clothes, a few keepsakes, even the little mementos he usually left on the shelf. He saddled his horse, gave Billy Jr. and handshake then swung up and rode off without so much as a glance back.

I hadn’t committed any of the marital deadly sins—no adultery, no cruelty, no desertion, no neglect, no drunkenness or law-breaking, and I wasn’t insane, at least not incurably so. I had a temper, sharp and sudden, like a firecracker: loud when lit but quick to fizzle out. Well, perhaps more like a bottle rocket—all noise and misdirection, liable to go off sideways and hit the chicken coop. I usually regretted it before the smoke cleared.

And while I’m on the subject, yes—I could be sharp, sarcastic even. The men downriver rather liked that in small doses, so long as it came with pie. I, of course, tied it all up in what I thought was sophistication—wit, learning, a touch of intellectual flair. Which, as I came to understand over the years, made me—how shall I put it gently?—a bit of a bore. Not to myself, mind you. Just to everyone else.

Peter and Alta were back in Ulysses when baby Alta Lee Barton was born on February 5, 1909. I crossed the ice on horseback to pay mother and child a proper visit and did my best to convince my son-in-law Peter to bring my family back to the ranch. I left satisfied on both accounts.

Just days later, I was nearly swept off my feet—and not in a good way—when the Lemhi Herald ran Bill’s notice of our separation on February 11:

Notice I hereby give notice that I will not be responsible for any debts my wife contracts without my knowledge and written permission.—W.E. Taylor

The same notice appeared again the next week. And while I felt humiliated, I’d felt worse. Life has a way of humbling you in layers.

I didn’t let the notice break me. I had too much to do. There was little time to sit around licking wounds. I had seed to order, tack to mend. Soon spring would be coming on, and with it, all the usual work—fencing, calving and selling eggs.

The month of February hadn’t ended when young Wild Bill Verges[3] was shot and killed. The Lemhi Herald rushed to set the type, printing the tale as told by the supposed perpetrator—a ten-year-old boy. But before the ink was dry we all knew it was a lie.

Lemhi Herald, February 25, 1909

A Fatal Fight at Indianola Roy Layton, a Little Boy, Shoots and Kills Wm. Verges, alias "Wild Bill"

About noon yesterday, Roy Layton, a son of Chas. Layton, shot and killed Wm. Verges, usually known as "Wild Bill." This is the message which came over the phone from Indianola to the sheriff’s office at Salmon.

The story alleges that Verges was fighting Chas. Layton, had him down and was pounding him with a six-shooter, when the boy, a lad of about ten years, grabbed a gun and the killing followed.

The Layton family runs a way station for travelers, at the mouth of Indian Creek on Salmon River about 35 miles below this city. Chas. Layton bought the place of C. H. Spayd some four years ago, and here the tragedy occurred. There used to be a saloon run in connection with the place, but in the past two years or so this has been closed.

Sheriff Waters and Coroner Dr. Hammer have gone down to investigate the affair. There are lots and lots of rumors afloat bearing on the case, but nothing of a substantial nature can be added to the above until the officers have performed their mission.

Bill Vergis carried the nickname of Wild Bill, yet he was anything but wild. He was a hard worker and kind—never gave anyone trouble, much less a pistol whipping. I was relieved when after Dr. Hammer returned to Salmon, word had it that the person who shot Wild Bill had to be taller than four-foot-two, which laid the blame on the father, not the boy.

By that time, we all knew Kate Moore had something to do with what happened to Bill Vergis, but she wasn’t talking—and Bob Moore was playing dumb, which came easy for him. He’d been nothing but trouble since they arrived and planted themselves near Indian Creek.

Johnny Rowe had information but the Sheriff told him to keep his mouth shut until the investigation was over. Didn’t matter. He’d already spilled the beans before the Sheriff was on scene. Near as I could finesse the situation, Charles Layton had set his sights on young Kate—or maybe she’d set hers on him first.

Kate was in a predicament, no doubt. Her husband was Bob Moore—a widower who’d drifted around Idaho—had married Kate before she was old enough to understand what the words “I do” meant. They showed up downriver with two little girls living between Shoup and Indian Creek. Bob was a wife beater.

My jaw dropped the first time I met Kate because she couldn’t have been more than fifteen, if that. But she carried herself like a grown woman and she knew how to turn heads.

Charles Layton about broke his neck every time she walked by. Kate wasn’t the kind to turn down affection—or a helping hand, for that matter. But Layton’s help came with strings. Wild Bill’s help was genuine—and Lord knows that girl could use it when Bob Moore was on a drunk.

Layton went green with envy when he would see Wild Bill and Kate so much as talking, so on that fateful afternoon he ambushed Wild Bill, thinking he could kill off what he saw as competition. When all Bill Vergis had ever done—besides step into a sticky web—was try to help a girl with two needy little kids. Leastwise, that’s the story I pieced together from the mountain of gossip. We had to hope the Sheriff could find the truth in it.

We didn’t have to wait long. The Sheriff arrested Charles Layton, and J.R. Hibbs of Shoup was called to testify at the first hearing.

The Lemhi Herald reported on March 18, 1909, that Charles Layton was bound over to the district court without bail, charged with willful murder. Out of respect for Judge McCracken’s request, the paper withheld the testimony from the preliminary hearing, noting that further airing of the facts might make it near impossible to seat a jury when trial came in April.

The trial itself passed with little fanfare in the papers. No dramatic headlines, no witness details—just the quiet announcement that Charles Layton had been sentenced to twenty-five years of hard labor in the state penitentiary.

As for Kate, Robert Moore took her and the girls to Salmon, where they fuddled and fought, flirted and flared, carrying on like nothing had changed. Can’t say anyone was sorry to see them go—but the little girls, Luella and Mabel, hadn’t asked for any of it. And though no one knew it then, the worst was still ahead. Their story wasn’t over.

Before winter let go and let spring dance into the valley, I received word that my brother Samuel had died on March 22nd. It was a cold, then pneumonia, that took him quick. I always thought that I’d see him again and had to pin my hopes on the afterlife.

When the river opened in April, Bill Taylor assisted in bringing a boat of supplies downriver—and we needed them. Before spring ended, Bill was the amalgamator for the Q & C. Mill, taking a few days' layoff so he could loll around Salmon seeing the sights of the city.[4] I put down the newspaper and headed into my garden to till the soil.

Sunday evening, May 9th, Pine Creek got the dread news that Charley Spayds had ended his life on Tom Wend’s ranch—stood on the riverbank and shot himself in the side. Knowing Charley, he likely hoped the river would take him, carry his body off but Charley never did get things quite right. Instead, he lingered and Tom sat with him through those last hours. Tom and Charley shared a devotion that kept them close, even when Charley’s drinking drove its wedge. It was only right that Tom was there at the end.

I had known Charles Hiram Spayds since Jimmy Callahan and I first came downriver in ’86, lived at his camp with he and Tom. They were a pair—one steady, the other never quite so. In my younger days, I even set Charley into rhyme, meaning it in fun, not knowing what lay ahead:

Then came the firm of Spayds & Pound,

With the gay and fair they are always found.

Spayds’ marble-topped head grown plain to view,

But he has the same smile for me and for you.

How I wish that Charley, only three years older than me, could have kept that smile. We laid him to rest at Indianola, beside Wild Bill Vergis.

Lemhi Herald, May 13, 1909

CHAS. SPAYDS CALLS IT OFF

In Despondency Takes His Own Life by Violence

Chas. H. Spayds of Indianola committed suicide Sunday by shooting himself in the left side, using a .38 S. & W. Winchester rifle. The ball entered his lung below the heart, and he lived about four hours, dying of internal hemorrhage. He was aged between 50 and 60 years.

The cause of the rash act was despondency. He has acted queerly before, but his friends did not think he would resort to such extremity. He had been staying at Layton’s place at the mouth of Indian Creek, and one of his recent acts displaying the eccentric turn of his mind was his directions, placing all his clothes into a grip and throwing the outfit into the Salmon River.

On Sunday morning he left Indianola, saying he intended to go to a ranch down the river and work. He walked to the ranch, and finding nobody at the house, he forcibly entered the place and took away the rifle, after which he walked to the river bank and committed the deed. The owner of the ranch, Thos. Wend, and the hired man, watched his movements from the field but could not make out who it was. They saw him fall, but by reason of the distance did not hear the shot. Hurrying to the place, they found him in the agony of death.

Coroner Hamner went down to the place, and found the conditions about as here reported. Deceased was buried Tuesday near the body of Wm. Verges who died last winter by the hand of Chas. Layton.

Chas. Spayds was of an excellent family. Naturally generous, kind, and of a confiding disposition, he has nearly always assumed the losing end of his transactions. Charges of blasted hopes, whiskey, and more blasted hopes—he was worthy of a better end. Two years ago he attempted his life in Dillon by slashing his throat with a pocket knife. He was at one time a highly respected citizen, a devoted and trusted friend to his friends, but never quite stable enough for business requirements. He served two years as county commissioner of Lemhi County, where his sincerity in every relation was his ruling passion, and he was too liberal to be just.

But his faults were not to others, and his failings always had a sumptuous and merciful leaning. If every man to me had been as good as he, Chas. Spayds would have been successful.

Life doesn’t pause for sorrow, not even downriver. While we were still reeling from Charley’s death, Salmon City was celebrating the last placement of track and the arrival of the first passenger train.

There was talk of pushing the railroad clear down the canyon, to the Snake, then the Columbia and the Pacific itself. For the moment, though, the train left Salmon at 6:30 each morning with passengers, freight and mail, returning at 7:30 each night. A hundred-mile trip to Armstead, Montana—once a bone-shaking trail—now took only six hours. That was progress.

Harry Guleke and Dave Sandilands were downriver again, surveying the Salmon River canyon all the way to Lewiston. They came back with tales of crews hanging from cables on the sheer cliffs, and said any track laid there would have to do the same. Bridge timbers were already stacked in Salmon, but then word came to halt the whole venture.

For us, the promise of iron rails was just another dream left hanging on the cliffs. My disappointment was sharp. Once we’d recovered from that letdown, we pinned our hopes on something simpler: a road to Shoup. It didn’t seem too much to ask.

The day that the Bartons arrived at the Pine creek ranch, I was overjoyed, helped to settle them in, and kissed little four-year-old Edna Corrine, telling her I’d missed too many. Alta Lee, who had just mastered walking, chased my chickens until she caught one.

We seeded the garden and prayed for a gentle rain but resorted to buckets when the soil was dry by May. June brought heat, and when we heard thunder, we hoped it would rain but it seldom did.

That summer brought a new face to Pine Creek—though it was Scotty Stewart Goddard who made the bigger stir at first. Scotty had been part of this country since 1888, wintering at Sheepeater, freighting, prospecting and showing up wherever there was work to be had along the river. Eventually he settled on Pine Creek, built a cabin and said he was staying put. And he did until spring, then crossed the continent to sail back to his “bonnie doone.”

On his return from Scotland, he stepped off the train in Salmon but wasn’t alone. Beside him was Jane Hardy and her fifteen-year-old son, Tommy. Within days Scotty and Jane were married in Salmon and Scotty brought his bride home to Pine Creek.[5] Jane and Tommy’s brogues were so thick you could almost see it.

Jane Stewart wasted no time clearing a garden patch and making their place tidy. She was quick with a smile, quicker with a kettle and I knew she would fit right in. In a canyon where women were few and far between—and even fewer in the valley of Pine creek—her arrival made me happy. We became fast friends.

The drought continued across the entire West. In July, lightning strikes started hundreds of fires from northeastern Washington, through northern Idaho and into Montana. Every time the clouds gathered we held our breath.

Bill had work at Arnett Creek on the Mackinaw Ridge where hard rock and placer mining operations were ongoing and the breeze was cooler.

Bill didn’t stay away entirely. He’d drop by now and then and always made a point to hand over enough money to see me through. And sometimes he brought me a silk blouse, or some thoughtful present. We’d exchange a few words, sometimes even laugh a little if the wind was right, but come evening he’d saddle up and ride out again, off before the lanterns were lit.

I doted on my granddaughters, worked the land and had a few horses to sell. Come autumn, there’d be two-year-old steers ready for slaughter. Peter worked out, and Alta and I looked ahead.[6]

Then came the weekend of August 20th.

That’s when it happened. A cold front brought gale-force winds and all those scattered flames north of us, rose up together in one terrible breath.

Whole towns vanished in that breath—Taft, Haugan, De Borgia—burned clean off the map. Grand Forks, too. Nothing left but scorched nails and twisted rails. Even proud Wallace lost a third of itself—over a hundred homes, most of its business blocks. Henderson, Quartz, Saltese—same story. They said in places the heat melted metal and turned glass to puddles.

Metamonte burned to the ground. Avery hung on by the skin of its teeth—men fighting with shovels, burlap sacks, whatever they had. Some took shelter in mine tunnels. Some jumped in rivers. Not all made it. The papers counted eighty-six dead, most of them young fellows sent to dig fire lines with no equipment, no real plan—just guts and orders.

We weren’t in the path of it, not directly, but we smelled it. Felt it in our chests. Smoke settled on the land for weeks. The horses twitched. The dogs whined. We choked and wheezed through muted daylight. No one slept easy. Even our shadows felt wrong.

News came downriver—people had burned alive, crews buried under snags, families fleeing with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

I read every scrap the papers printed. Couldn’t help myself. You want to turn away, but you don’t. Not when you know the smell. Not when you’ve stood in your own doorway, watching the wind shift and wondering which way means survival. We were all on edge—a single lightning strike away from our own disaster.

When the rain finally came at the end of August, it broke the drought—and doused the worst of the flames.

At the end of the summer, Bill leased the Hayden mill above the Italian mine and was pounding the values out of the ore of two to three mines.[7]

After the fire, Washington came in hard. The Forest Service didn’t waste time. They built fire roads, lookouts, new trails—and they brought rules. Tighter permits. Shrinking access. Regulated grazing. Timber marked and measured. I’ll say this—they learned something from that fire. But they didn’t always learn the right things.

There’s sense in stewardship—I’ve never argued that. We all must tend the land. Yet there’s a difference between stewardship and control—between protection and punishment. After the fire, Washington’s grip tightened on every ridge and draw. More uniforms. More signs. More paperwork for things folks used to just do.

Some of it made sense. Some of it just made life harder.

Even now, when the wind comes over the ridge just so, I think of that fire, moving like a beast through the woods. And I wonder who really learned its lesson.

NOTES

[1] Idaho Recorder, April 2, 1908. Noble was a small camp in Lemhi County on Fourth of July Creek, remembered locally as a stage stop though it never grew into a platted town.

[2] Idaho Recorder, December 3, 1908

[3] The Lemhi Herald spelled Wild Bill ’s last name as Verges. Sometime his name is recorded as Vergis.

[4] Lemhi Herald, May 27, 1909

[5] Lemhi Herald, June 25, 1912,

[6] The expression “worked out” was widely used in this era. In mining regions, men who “worked out” hired on at nearby claims or mills, sometimes for months at a time, while their wives (when they had one) managed the household.

[7] Idaho Recorder, September 3, 1908