Page 58 - Ninety Miles From Nowhere

writing a letter telling someone about the things spread out on the extra bed, and the bloody quilt hanging over its foot. A little field mouse ran across the chip box, rattling some papers there, and I almost jumped out of my chair.
Later a man from Magdalena, named Mr. Harvey, brought his mother-in-law (from California) to see me. She explained that her ex-husband, Victor Stotts, and their son, Ray Stotts, had been missing in the Beaverhead area for several months. She had written to the Catron County Sheriff in Reserve, telling him of their disappearance. He did nothing about it and told her the county did not have the funds for a man hunt. Mrs. Stotts told me that although she and her husband were divorced, her son wrote to her regularly. She had not heard from him in about four months. Since the sheriff had been of no help, she came to Magdalena to see what she could find out. In some way they had heard about the things in my cabin, so her son-in-law had brought her out to see me.
I could be mistaken about Mr. Harvey, but my memory of him is that he lived in Magdalena. He was handicapped in an unusual way - his arms were very short, about the length of the average man’s arms to his elbows.
I explained to them how I came to have the articles, and rode with them to the former Butler cabin to show them where the things had been buried. Mrs. Stotts identified her son’s razor and belt buckle, and said the quilt was one of her own.
This tiny woman seemed very brave to me as she sat tearlessly stroking her missing son’s belt buckle.
They took the things with them and returned to Magdalena.
Still later in the year, while Mother was there, Mr. Harvey returned accompanied by two men: John MacDonald, owner of the MacDonald Mercantile Company of Magdalena (where I bought my supplies), and President of the Socorro County Board of Education; and a Federal Marshall named Collins.
I told them everything I knew about the situation, but I wasn’t much help, I’m afraid. I shared with them - at the officer’s suggestion - all of the rumors, conjectures, and gossip I’d heard. I rode with them back into the forest, where the two Stotts men had camped, but the only evidence of their having been there was an iron skillet with a broken handle.
The Federal man asked me if I’d heard about a woman from Texas who had camped out, with her husband, near the Stotts’ camp, or anything about a bloody axe. Unfortunately I had been living at Ed Moore’s until school was out so didn’t realize there was a mystery until later.
As soon as I could after I returned from school, I got together with Chester Warren to hear the details of the case.
It was the same Federal Marshal, Mr. Collins, who found Butler, not because he had committed murder (which crime was not under his jurisdiction), but because he had driven a stolen car across state lines. It was fifteen months after the murder when Butler was apprehended in Louisiana.