Coyote!

Tuesday October 4th.    Following the Pony Express trail over the end of the Sulphur Springs Range towards Garden Pass... 

Scrambling up the trail to the south of Mt Hope and over to Robert's Creek...

This was a lovely section of trail winding round forested hillsides, but the track was not always very clear, so it was a comfort to find these Pony Express markers every so often....

 A view of the Roberts Range with Roberts Creek ranch at its foot, from the new gravel road which bypasses it....

This was the site of one of the first Pony Express stations, named after Pony Express division superintendent Bolivar Roberts who took over management of the Division Five stations from this point to Carson City.  The valley was originally called the Sheawit Valley by local Indians. The station had its fair share of Indian attacks, and was burned down in 1860, though it had been partially rebuilt by the time Burton passed through.  However he spent "a cosy, pleasant evening there .....in the ingle corner and round the huge hearth of the half-finished station".   He reported "About the station loitered several Indians of the White-Knife tribe, which boasts, like the old Sioux and the modern Flatheads, never to have stained its weapons with the blood of a whiteman. ,,,,,,,,,,These men attend upon the station, and herd the stock, for an occasional meal, their sole payment".  Nowadays the ranch is attended by Peruvians who I assume are good people, and who get more than the occasional meal. 

Following the trail across the wide Kobeh (or Sheawit) valley in late afternoon, the sun lowers over the Simpson Park mountains over twenty miles away... 

 

In all the months of travelling across North America I had heard coyote howling and yelping eerily in the distance on many an occasion, but amazingly had never actually caught sight of one.  Suddenly I saw a little figure  trotting up the trail towards me, far too confidently to be anything other than a dog. At least until it saw me, and then I realised it was my first coyote sighting!  Out with the camera, but of course sod's law it chose that moment to play up.  Ah well, at least I have a representative blur.....

Lucy was now getting an old hand and met me bang on where the trail crossed the gravelly Three Bars road, about ten miles from Robert's Creek and our camping destination for the day.
Wednesday October 5th About five miles further on the next morning we came to the abandoned outpost of Grubbs Well..

 There was initially no Pony Express station here, though Burton notes "We came to some wells whose alkaline waters chap the skin". Butterfield probably built an Overland Stage station which was then used as a Pony Express way station during its last months. The station has been described as a tepee-like structure of rough poles covered with rushes and grass (Townley 1994) but none of the old buildings currently existing are original.  According to Chapman, the telegraph line had reached this point from the west by the end of August 1861.
Pony Express monument for Grubbs Well...  

There was also a sign erected by the Overland Trails Organisation quoting Wilson Fryberger in August 1864 "After noon traveld 17 miles to Grubs Well. Som water not much grass along the rode for 40 miles fit for a hors". 
The long and winding road past The Point, a protruding hill which provides clear landmark for travellers to aim for...

Tumbleweed piled up along a fence line....

 

 

My evening rendezvous with Lucy was near the site of Dry Creek Pony Express station at the foot of the Simpson Park mountains.  This degraded rock is actually the Pony Express monument.. 

You may just be able to see the plaque, and also the rig in the distance across the creek valley which was not unsurprisingly dry.  The station was the scene of a deadly attack on May 21st 1860 during the Indian troubles.  Station keeper Ralph Rosier (also referred to as Roiser and Losier by different sources) was shot dead by a Paiute warriors as he was going to the spring for water that morning.  Station employee John Applegate was badly wounded but managed to make it back to the station, where he was joined by storekeeper Si McCandless and pony express employee Bolwinkle.  Although the Paiutes did not immediately attack the station, Applegate asked for a pistol but then used it to blow his brains out.  McCandless and Bolwinkle managed to make a run for it and escaped all the way to the next station while the Indians pillaged Dry Creek. As late as October Burton remarked "It was a mere shell, with a substantial stone corral behind, and the inmates were speculating upon the possibility of roofing themselves in before winter."
 
Burton also commented disapprovingly on the double grave of Rosier and Applegate, which "piled up with stones, showed gaps where the wolves had attempted to tunnel, and blue bottle flies were buzzing over it in expectation". Station keeper Col. Totten "at our insistence, promised that it should be looked into". The station ruins are now covered with sage-brush, but there is a gravestone to Applegate and 'Lozier'.

An apochryphal story exists of a pony express rider who died at Dry Creek after riding in shot with arrows and bullets but who safely delivered the mochila.