HOLMES, ALMOST, ON THE RANGE

by Frazer Williamson.

    It was with an utterly despondent mind that I returned to London from Meiringen below the Reichenbach Falls where my friend and companion Sherlock Holmes had sacrificed his own life to rid the world of that Napoleon of crime Professor James Moriarty.
I made my way to 221B. Baker Street where Mrs. Hudson, full of condolences, announced that a visitor awaited.
"Does he not know that Holmes is dead?"
I could hardly contain my tears.
"It is you he wishes to see, Dr. Watson."
I entertained the hope that Holmes would be sitting in his armchair smoking his pipe or tuning his violin when I walked into the room. I hoped that somehow he had escaped that lethal cascade of water.
Mrs. Hudson told me it was my colleague, Arthur Doyle. I found him sitting in Holmes armchair.
"My dear John," he said. "Re-label your trunks we are off to America."
"America!" I exclaimed
"I have a friend who lives in a Western town called Congress, a doctor of the mind."
"You think I am in need of an Alienist?"
"Holmes asked me to take care of you."
He handed me a letter in Holmes writing. Holmes asked me in a postscript that I should accept the friendship and guidance of Arthur Conan Doyle.

* * *

    I need say nothing of our journey to the town of Congress where we stayed in the home of Doctor Albrecht.
    One morning after breakfast Doctor Albrecht asked if I was a horseman. Before I could say no, Doyle answered saying I was an excellent horseman experienced with both the European and the Western saddle.
"In that case," Albrecht said, "we can ride out and see the new owner of the Old Morgan ranch which the Governor of the Territory has just sold. He is, I believe, an Englishman like yourselves."
"Watson is English," Doyle said. "I am a Scot."
"The Morgans were Irish," Albrecht said. "They came to a violent end."
"What is the new owners name?" Doyle asked
"Hes called Mills," said Albrecht.

* * *

    As Doyle had said I proved to be an excellent horseman. We rode out across great grasslands that seemed endless. We came upon what seemed to be separate herds of cattle, slowly grazing. There must have been thousands of these animals and occasionally we came upon a couple of cowhands riding together.
    We stopped and spoke with two of these and Albrecht asked how they liked working for their new employer. The taller of the two pushed his hat to the back of his head and drawled that he thought him to be no fool even if he was a cripple who had to go about in a wheelchair.
"Hes hired a gunslinger to Ramrod the outfit," he said before riding off with his silent companion.
At the ranch we met a dangerous looking man called Seth Shaw, who said he was the Foreman. Albrecht said that we had come to call upon Mr. Mills.
Shaw sent an Indian servant to inform Mr. Mills. She returned highly agitated.
"Master dead."
Doyle and I followed Shaw into what was Mills' study. The wheelchair was overturned and the man lay crumpled on the floor staring at the ceiling with protuberant eyes.
"Great Heavens!" I exclaimed. "Doyle, this is, this is"
"Professor James Moriarty," Doyle said.
"Hes been strangled," I said. "The ligature is still around his neck."
    It was a silken cord. Had Holmes been here he would have been able to deduce its genesis and history if not the size, weight and colour of hair of the person who had used it. How had this villain survived the fall in the clutches of Holmes?
"The body is still warm," Doyle said.
"I spoke to him ten minutes ago," Shaw said.
Albrecht sent a rider to bring Marshal John Clay. Until he arrived Doyle had the room locked.

* * *

Clay arrived and examined Moriartys study, alone. He came out, not at all pleased.
"Youve wasted my time?" he said. "I was told a man had been murdered here."
"He lies in the room you have just left," Doyle said.
"Nobody, dead or alive lies in that room," Clay said.
"Watson, go in and tell us what you see," Doyle instructed me.
I went in and found Moriarty as he had been before, strangled, his wheelchair overturned.
"He lies there, strangled," I said coming out again.
"Doctor Albrecht," Clay said. "Go and see."
Albrecht went in and called out that there was no body to be seen.
"The body lay on the floor," I said. "As physical as myself."
Clay seemed not to hear me.
"Mr. Doyle," he said. "What do you want me to do? Arrest you for disposing of Holmes and Moriarty and the discarding of Dr. Watson? You are the mind outside your creations. You can do what you like with them and nobody will arrest you or hang you."
"Doyle," I cried, aghast. "What is your intention?"
"His intention," I heard the voice of my friend, Holmes, say, "is to waste his time and mine in the writing of stupid Historical Romances. Watson, you must convince him to bring me back. It is the only way you, yourself, will continue to exist."
"Doyle," I said. "You must have Holmes return. Your readers demand his return. His death dismayed them. It is not beyond your creative abilities to ensure his return."
"I will not be constrained by Holmes readers," Doyle said
"You brought back Moriarty, did you not intend to bring back Holmes? Surely Holmes also escaped death at the Reichenbach Falls. Was it he who strangled Moriarty in that room leaving no clue?"
"Enough, Watson," Doyle said. He turned to Marshal Clay. "I apologize for wasting your time, Marshal."
"Having purloined Doc Albrecht you should have him examine your head, Mr. Doyle."
Clay rode back to town.
Months were to pass before Holmes returned and I took up my pen to recount "The Adventure of the Empty House".

AT THE MOVIES:
BUDD BOETTICHER GETS HIS DUE
ON TNT AND DVD

by Johnny D. Boggs

   In many places (especially France) and among several film historians, filmmakers and critics, he is considered one of the greatest -- if not the best -- directors of Western films.
John Ford, right? Guess again. Sam Peckinpah? Howard Hawks? Anthony Mann? Nope.
    If the name Budd Boetticher isnt familiar to you, dont kick yourself. Although Randolph Scott fans probably have seen Boettichers films, the temperamental director has often been overlooked among Western fans in the United States, and he was overshadowed by the Fords and Manns during his career.
    Yet times are changing, and once relegated to film festivals, the self-proclaimed sissy turned tough guy is getting noticed.
    Perhaps his best film, Seven Men From Now, will be reissued on DVD on December 20. The following day, Turner Classic Movies pays tribute to his life and legacy in an original hourlong documentary, Budd Boetticher: A Man Can Do That. Ed Harris narrates the documentary, which includes tributes from Clint Eastwood, who served as executive producer, and Quentin Tarantino.
    Boetticher (1916-2001) was a journeyman director saddled with B movies, and the bulk of those are almost unwatchable. Yet he carved himself a niche in the late 1950s by directing lean, raw, leathery Westerns starring Randolph Scott. In the process, revitalized Scotts star status and helped launch writer (and eventual director) Burt Kennedys career.
    In 1956, while John Wayne was out making his classic The Searchers, the Duke hired Boetticher to direct a movie written by Kennedy called Seven Men From Now. It starred Scott and Gail Russell and gave Lee Marvin one of his best roles. The Searchers went on to become a classic, but Seven Men From Now was no slouch, and Randolph Scott was no idiot.
    He was a shrewd enough businessman to know how to build a creative team, says Robert Nott, author of The Films of Randolph Scott. Scott, Nott points out, formed a creative team that consisted of Boetticher and producer Harry Joe Brown and sometimes Kennedy as screenwriter.
    Over the next four years, Scott starred in six other Boetticher Westerns -- The Tall T (1957 and based on an Elmore Leonard story), Decision at Sundown (1957), Buchanan Rides Alone (1958), Westbound (1959), Ride Lonesome (1959) and Comanche Station (1960) -- before retiring in 1962 after making the Peckinpah classic, Ride the High Country.
    They are B films, Nott says of the Boetticher-Scott Westerns. Boetticher once said they were making A films on a B budget, but I like to believe they were making B+ films on a C+ budget ($300,000-500,000 per film) and I'm glad for that. Because they are not A films, they are without pretension.
    Yet the films made money, and they influenced many future filmmakers. The Tall T and Comanche Station are edgy and stark, and even the lesser efforts are not without merit. Buchanan Rides Alone is fast-paced and fun, while Ride Lonesome features James Coburn in his film debut.
    Boetticher's style was as simple his impassive hero's, deceptively simple, director Martin Scorsese has noted. The archetypes of the genre were distilled to the point of abstraction.
And Boettichers bad guys are in many ways more memorable than Scotts loner good guy: Marvin in Seven Men From Now, Richard Boone in The Tall T, Claude Akins in Comanche Station and Pernell Roberts in Ride Lonesome.
    Budd had a great line about that, says screenwriter Kirk Ellis. That was one of the best things I ever heard from somebody as a teacher. He said, its particularly true of Westerns but its true of drama in general: Your hero is only as strong as your villain. What he meant by that was if you make the villain a cardboard cutout, if you make him somebody whos a bit of a cliche, you dont really have that much respect for what the hero does. But if you make this guy admirable and in a way kind of more principled and more noble than your hero, then theres a real sense when White Hat beats Black Hat that something great has been achieved.
    Boetticher made other Westerns (1951s The Cimarron Kid with Audie Murphy, 1952s Horizons West with Robert Ryan and 1953s The Man from the Alamo with Glenn Ford, for example), but hes remembered for the Scott Westerns and his somewhat autobiographical bullfighting tale, The Bullfighter and the Lady, starring Robert Stack, and also produced by John Wayne. That one got Boetticher an Academy Award nomination for screenwriting.
    Boetticher faded out of the Hollywood picture after a strange journey to Mexico, and stayed there for years, to make a film about bullfighter Carlos Arruza. He did develop the story for Eastwoods Two Mules for Sister Sara and directed Audie Murphy again in 1969s A Time for Dying, but for all intent and purpose, his career ended with Comanche Station.
    People were kind of shocked that he walked away from a successful career and turned his back on Hollywood and never came back, but thats essentially what happened, Ellis says. And he would always say at that point, things were changing, they werent making the kinds of pictures he liked very much. More, his way of directing was going out of style so it was a good time to get out of there, but boy it cost him. It really cost him.
But now, at least, his films and his legacy are getting noticed.

Nippers Grammar Nits

by Pat Decker Nipper

Farther vs. Further

     These two words, when used as adverbs, have been considered rather interchangeable.  However, where distance is concerned, you should use farther:  The older I become, the farther away Europe seems to be, or, How much farther is the beach?

    Farther can also be an adjective, as in, San Francisco is the farther city.

    Use Further for quantity, time, or degree:  The engineers progressed further on their code than theyd anticipated, or, That statement couldnt be further from the truth.

    Further can also be used as a sentence modifier:  Further, the consultant will be coming next week.  Another meaning for further is addition, as in, She needed no further advice.

PLAGIARISM REPORT

by Allen L. Lee

An excerpt from the book I use as a guideline for scientific writing, "Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association."

    "...Plagiarism (Principle 6.22 ). Psychologist do not claim the words of others; they give credit where credit is due. Quotation marks should be used to indicate the exact words of another. Each time you paraphrase another author ( i.e., summarize a passage or rearrange the order of a sentence and change some of the words), you will need to credit the source of the text. "
pg 349 par.2
   "...The key element of this principle is that an author does not present the work of another as if it were his or her own work." pg. 349 par.4 American Psychological Association, Copyright 2001 Washington D.C.

    I think the important idea is to not represent someone else's work as your own. One can report what they've heard or what they have read without telling anyone where they have heard it or read it. After working on a U.C. campus for fifteen years, I have learned that it is important sometimes for an author to keep their sources confidential. The university has a policy which stipulates that it owns the intellectual property of researchers at the time of the contract, it is directly related to a salary. Someone who is not paid to be under such an agreement would not want the university to benefit from their research. With U.C.s "Publish Or Perish" philosophy for researchers, source material is the difference between a lucrative grant and the unemployment line and those with scant source material will do what it takes to protect their economic interest, even if they didn't work hard enough to acquire sources.

    Newspaper writers also have the need for source confidentiality. My opinion is that un-cited material is considered hearsay and it is up to the reader to engage the author on a point of interest or dismiss it as such. The author assumes 100% percent of the risk of the credibility of their source, the fall of Dan Rather is a good example.    Fiction is slightly different, but not by much. One can write in the style of Shakespeare but they cannot take substantial works from a Shakespearean play and represent it as their own. I can say, "suffer the slings and arrows" without mentioning Shakespeare's name in an original fiction work as long as I haven't tried to represent the play, "Hamlet" while I am doing it, even if I have changed most of the phrases. Credibility and trust between author and reader is important, but so is source confidentiality.

    Violating the intellectual property rights of another is not only unethical, it is a criminal act, but source disclosure is based on a system of meritocracy. For those who receive no merit for the sources they acquire, they have no real obligation to reveal them. They just have the obligation of not claiming the work as their own."

RIDING THE TRAIL WITH BILLY THE KID

by Jim Etter

    Jim Marion Etter of Oklahoma City is the author of "Riding the Trail with Billy the Kid" in the summer issue of Persimmon Hill, the magazine of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. Etter, while living in New Mexico, joined several other riders to report on the "Trail of Billy's Last Ride," a week-long commemorative trip that traced the 1881 flight of the young outlaw when he escaped from the Lincoln County Courthouse in Lincoln and rode a horse to Fort Sumner.

    Billy, also known as William Bonney, had been sentenced to hang for the killing of a sheriff. He made it to the home of a friend in Fort Sumner, but, according to generally accepted reports, was shot and killed there by lawman Pat Garrett. During the 2004 trip, the some 30 men and women went 169 miles from Lincoln to Fort Sumner. On their longest day in the saddle, the riders covered 46 miles.

www.jimetter.com

FLAGS

by Duane Howard

    I like flags. I like how they flutter in the breeze or stand straight out in a brisk wind.
    Several years ago I decided to put a flagpole in my front yard. I checked local retailers and catalogs for price ranges and designs. The ones I could afford were not a design I liked so I thought to make my own flagpole. I called a fellow I know who makes rustic furniture from Lodge Pole Pine and asked him save a nice straight one for me in a sixteen to eighteen foot length. He called me a couple of days later to say he had one ready for me to pick up.
    Next I called a friend who knows his way around concrete and enlisted him to help me pour a pad in which I placed a four inch PVC pipe. The flagpole inserts into the pipe so I can easily remove it for wood treatment or rope changes.
    I rigged the pole for a pull rope, attached a round banister knob on top and to that added a golden, winged, bare breasted lady I took off a bowling trophy yard sale buy.
    As I've traveled I bought flags. I fly my favorites by changing flags ever two to three days. The Alaska State flag is a favorite with the stars of the Big Dipper on a blue background. Indiana's flag has a golden torch surrounded by stars. I like the Betsy Ross American flag with the circle of thirteen stars. There are times when the Skull and Crossbones pirate flag I bought in the Caribbean flies just for the fun of it. Wyoming's flag has a white silhouette of the Plains Bison. I also have several military related flags including the stars and bars of the Confederacy. I really do not have one favorite flag nor do I consider myself a collector of flags. I just like the ones I like and fly each one as the mood strikes me. And it's OK with me if I run it up the flagpole and nobody salutes.

Duane Howard, 2179 Broadway, Grand Junction, CO 81503 Ph: 245-0862

Duane Howard's flag
and magnificent pole


From Africa to the American West

by Allen L. Lee

The Black West and Civil Rights

In an attempt to honor the loss of one of America's greatest bellwethers of Civil Rights, Rosa Parks, I'm writing this small piece on the West and Civil Rights. It's my belief that the American Civil War was not fought to preserve or eliminate slavery in the southeastern states, but to decide if slavery would be extended into the American Western frontier. From Pottowatamie, Kansas to California's Constitutional Convention of 1849, this conflict was ten years in the making, millions of acres of land and millions of dollars in future earning was at stake by this decision and the international community played both sides of the conflict realizing what was at stake.

    The argument over whether a state was free or slave was misleading in that several "free states" voted for Negro exclusion clauses. The status of African-Americans, former Mexican citizens, Native Americans, Asian and under-privileged White European immigrants became the hot button issue in the American West after the Civil War. Although the amendments adopted for freed slaves after the war provided some status for African-Americans, states and individuals often ignored federal statutes, and the ultimate collapse of reconstruction in the late 1870's is a testament to this fact.

    Just as there was African complicity in the slave trade, there was African-American complicity in racial segregation. Black companies were formed to create all-Black towns and universities with the support of liberal-minded whites who admired the self-help philosophy of ex-slaves and Black activists. Thus Civil Rights was muddled between African-American calls for self-determination in their own communities and the movement for equal enfranchisement with the predominant White population. I've chosen three western states to demonstrate this event, California, Kansas, and, Wyoming.

    In California there was an African-American woman known as the "Mother of Civil Rights" well before the birth of Rosa Parks. In fact, Mary Ellen Pleasant gained greater notoriety for doing something very similar to the deed Rosa Parks did when she refused to surrender her seat on a bus, this next excerpt from an article by Hank Donat of San Francisco explains: Notorious SF: Mary Ellen Pleasant

   "...In 1868, a full 83 years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat at the front of the bus to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama, Pleasant successfully sued the City after she was kicked off a streetcar for being black."
www.mistersf.com/notorious/notpleasant.htm

    Mary Ellen Pleasant lived in San Francisco in the 1850's while American California was still struggling with African-American citizenship and the proposal that slavery be permitted south of Salinas, California. California had at least two towns started as African-American communities; one was Allensworth and the other Victorville. I also recall an attempt to establish an African-American University in California similar to Tuskegee, but activists felt they did not want to provide an excuse for exclusion of Afr   ican-American students to the University of California if an African-American University were established.

    Kansas is what I call a vortex for Civil Rights, not only in the West, but all of the U.S. The ironic link between Kansas and California deserves mention in the relationship between Mary Ellen Pleasant and Abolitionist John Brown. There is mounting evidence that suggests that Mary Ellen Pleasant, estimated to be worth millions in her days of Gold Rush, California, assisted in the planning and execution of John Browns insurrection at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. To bring an association between old west Kansas and the days of Rosa Parks, The Kansas State Historical Society has an excellent article that can be visited at:
(www.kshs.org/research/collections/documents/personalpapers/
findingaids/brownvboard/BrownFi...).

    It addresses the school desegregation decision of Brown vs. Board of Ed, Topeka. What is less known about this famous court decision is that Kansas African-Americans had made several attempts to desegregate their schools using court cases that stretch back to the 1800s. The Elijah Tinnon v. the Board of Education of Ottawa (1881) case began with a concerned parent in 1876. Seventy-eight years later and one year before Rosa Parks' belligerence on the bus, the U.S. Supreme court decided for the nation what Kansas Civil Rights activists had been fighting for, desegregated schools.

    I chose Wyoming, known as the "Equality State," because of its early approval of Women's Rights. Wyoming is heralded as the first government in the world to grant female suffrage in 1869, certainly earlier than the Federal 19th amendment women's right to vote in the 1920s. This is one case where states rights worked as an advantage for an underprivileged population. It is noted that women's suffrage did not become an inter-racial idea in the U.S. until the 1960s. At the time of the passage of the 19th amendment, women activists resisted the participation of African-American women for fear powerful Southern White women would not agree to equality with African-American women.

    Wyoming slipped in it's championing of Civil Rights in 1913 when it approved a miscegenation (race marriage restriction) law that wasn't repealed until 1965. According to Carl V. Hallberg's article "African-Americans in Wyoming," Wyoming had several vibrant African-American communities in Casper, Cheyenne, Hanna, Laramie, Rawlins, Rock Springs, Sheridan, and Thermopolis. It's residents including "...single men and women, families, miners, barbers, bartenders, cowboys, businessmen, railroaders and laborers of all kinds. Law-abiding individuals lived alongside criminals and the down and out. ...fraternal and social organizations included Masonic lodges and Elks clubs for men and a Southwestern Federation of Colored Women Clubs for women."
www.wyomingcompanion.com/history/wchh5.html

    Even though Wyoming was one of the last Western states to adopt Civil Rights as a policy, it had it's activists who came from several ethnic backgrounds. An article by Kim Ibach and William Howard Moore titled, " The Emerging Civil Rights Movement:

   The 1957 Wyoming Public Accommodations Statute as a Case Study," discusses how two men, one an Italian-American Democrat named Teno Roncalio and an Anglo-American named Dr. Francis Barrett, son of Republican U.S. Senator Frank A. Barrett, spearheaded the Wyoming Civil Rights movement after witnessing the expulsion of an African-American service man and his wife from a small cafe in Cheyenne, Wyoming in 1954.

    Since I'm on the topic of Women as Civil Rights leaders and also in tribute to Rosa Parks, I will close by pasting an excerpt from this article that discusses an incident where two African-American women were forced to withdraw their children from a beauty contest:
    "...Meanwhile, jarring episodes of racial discrimination continued, revealing the ambivalence of white attitudes in the Equality State. In their sponsorship of a 1947 "beautiful baby" contest, the Women of the Moose in Casper apparently encouraged two African-American women to enter their small sons, but then reneged and asked the two mothers to withdraw their children from the competition. When the two women contacted the Rocky Mountain News about the incident and wrote to popular white singer Kate Smith, the Moose chapters and Casper veteran organizations issued an apology and attempted to shift blame onto their out-of-state contractor. One of the mothers, however, remembered being told by a representative of the Women of the Moose that some chapter members had objected to the entry of the black children in the competition. At the same time, it is clear that one African-American mother had obtained substantial grass roots support for her child from white members in her local Seventh Day Adventist church as well as from other white neighbors. Certainly a strain of racism existed in Casper lodge circles, but so did an element of community embarrassment over that racism.25"
http://uwacadweb.uwyo.edu/RobertsHistory/civil_rights_movement.htm.

    What I find as a constant in race laws is that they are not always telling of the way people actually lived. Some peoples and institutions violated the rights of others, even when there were laws in place prohibiting it, and some peoples and institutions ignored race restriction laws, even at the risk of fines and imprisonment, for people of which they held affection. This last article also contains information of how some African-American Baptists in Wyoming refused to integrate with White Baptists for fear of losing their culture, demonstrating my position that sometimes the issue of Civil Rights was muddled by mutually agreed upon segregation in the West.
Thanks for reading,
Allen L. Lee

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