ALONG THE WAY

One Author Finds Another, and Not in the Expected Place

SETTING OUT FOR THE CHIRICAHUA Mountains, I knew I was a century too late to meet Geronimo or any of the other hard cases and tough settlers from the area. But I figured that perhaps I would encounter Portal resident Alden Hayes, a self-described "failed farmer, bankrupt cattleman, sometime smokechaser, one-time park ranger and would-be archaeologist," who wrote A Portal to Paradise, published by the University of Arizona Press in 1999. Hayes' carefully researched, often-droll account of the early settlers confirmed my love affair with the southeast Arizona mountain range the Chiricahua Apaches fought so desperately to protect. I'd written a couple of books of my own about the Apache Wars and appreciated the care Hayes took with his story.

So I reread his words before heading off to spend the weekend seeking the ghosts of the Chiricahuas. After marrying Gretchen Greenamyer, Hayes settled into that isolated, historyconscious community of characters and iconoclastsreaching the deep gash of Cave Creek Canyon in 1941 amid a springtime riot of Mexican goldpoppies. But Hayes skipped over his own history to write about the warriors, gunfighters, rustlers and ranchers who populated that spectacular contortion of geology. My only regret was that I couldn't call my Dad and cajole him into coming along. We used to take similar aimless rambles together, but he died nearly three years ago after a stoic struggle against cancer that did nothing to dampen his capacity for deep joy and good questions. Ever since, I have struggled with the sense that life is as fleeting as lizard tracks in the dust.

I knew Dad would have loved gabbing with Hayes, or the outlandish people Hayes wrote about, like Mary and Gus Chenowth.

Gus Chenowth was a preacher with a vivid and violent past. In 1869, he helped found Phoenix, where he started a wagon freight business. In 1871, he ran for sheriff against Whispering Jim Favorite. The two candidates got into an argument, which prompted Favorite to grab a shotgun and snap off a badly aimed shot. Gus then drew his six-shooter and shot the fleeing Favorite in the back. Acquitted on the grounds of self-defense, Gus withdrew from the sheriff's race.

When the railroad came to Phoenix in 1879, Gus moved his wagon freight business to the Chiricahuas, despite the danger of roving bands of Apache warriors. When Mary grew religious, Gus became a preacher. Confronted by a robber on a back trail, Gus calmly dismounted and asked permission to retrieve his Bible from his saddlebag, according to one version of the story. The robber agreed, whereupon Gus drew a handgun and killed the robber, whom he then buried with all the proper prayers.

On another occasion, Gus reportedly offered to say a prayer for the sinners in a Galleyville saloon full of toughs. When one of the patrons mocked him, Gus killed the scoffer with a single blow, then preached a sermon over his grave.

Hayes crowded his book with such anecdotes, which made me eager to meet him. On the way to find him, I spent the day driving tortuous jeep trails, stalking summer tanagers through sinuous sycamores, climbing crags of fused volcanic ash, listening to the murmured melody of a small stream, admiring the view from a gathering place of rustlers and sitting among the boulders the Apaches believed could soothe your mind and confer wisdom.

All around me, life flitted, flourished and soared-vultures and pine trees and lizards and ants and flickers. I could hear the hum of the life force the Apaches believe pervades all things.

At the end of the day, by the nearly deserted town of Paradise, just a few minutes up the road from Portal on the eastern face of the Chiricahuas, I came to the ramshackle gate of a small, treeshaded cemetery full of wildflowers. I skidded to a halt, hoping to find the graves of Gus and Mary.

Near the gate, I read the headstones on a modest row of graves. One caught me off guard. I stared at the name: Alden Hayes. He'd died just months before his book came out. Tears sprang to my eyes-unbidden, unexpected.

And when the rush of sorrow subsidedfor Gus, for Alden, for my father-I found a strange swelling of comfort. A splash of the same Mexican goldpoppies that had welcomed Hayes to the Chiricahuas bloomed close by his grave. A cardinal flitted past, a heart-wrenching flash of scarlet. And I knew that nothing ends; it merely moves from hope and longing to memory and myth, persistent as poppies. We wonder at the frail marks in the dust, even as we leave our own marks.

"I read your book, Alden," I whispered into the cool breeze. "Well done."