Page 60 - Ninety Miles From Nowhere

to collect her snuff. Just as she approached, she saw Mr. Stotts standing on the running board of a car, shading his eyes and looking toward the west. While he stood there, she could hear a shot nearby, and Mr. Stotts left the car and walked toward the shot. She decided she wouldn’t wait for him to return, but would come back the next morning for her snuff. She had’t gone very far when she heard another shot and thought the men were out hunting deer.
The next morning when she returned, the camp had been completely cleared out.
Not a things was in sight except an iron skillet with a broken handle, and a new axe with blood on it. She thought there was no sense in leaving a perfectly good axe, so took it with her, thinking the blood came from butchering a deer.
Mr. Collins had the blood analyzed and found out it was human blood, so the search went on.
In retrospect, and emphasizing the points I already knew but whose significance I was unaware of when they occurred, I learned the explanation for the abandoned car, and the burned and buried articles. I can imagine their panic during the night as they tried to do all of these things and to get away before daylight.
Mr. Warren pointed out to me something that had never occurred to me - how fortunate I was that I was living at Moore’s during that time instead of at my Dad’s cabin. Butler’s motive for the double murder seemed to be that he needed supplies, gasoline, and transportation. If I had been living at Dad’s, I should have had a car, a fifty-five gallon drum of gasoline, and a three-months’ supply of groceries. I
should have been within sight of the gravel road to Magdalena instead of miles back into the Gila National Forest over a dirt road. And lastly, I would have been much easier to do away with than two grown men.
I’m sure I must have paled at the thought of those three essential conditions - all of which I would have innocently fulfilled.