Arkansas Sportsman

Neighbor's tale brings recent rifle find to mind

Richard Walker, a native of Plain Dealing, La., was my friend and neighbor when Miss Laura and I lived in the Searcy County community of Welcome Home in 1989.

Rich is much older than I am and had already retired from the Tampa, Fla., Fire Department when I met him. He had a lot of great stories, but the one I remember most involved something his father claimed to have happened on their Louisiana farm.

When Richard's father was a boy, a stranger arrived at their house on horseback, Richard said. After exchanging pleasantries, the man told Walker that he'd lost something valuable on the property years ago and asked if he could look for it. Old Man Walker was curious, of course, but he gave permission without asking what the man sought. He searched the property for three days, Richard said, but he declined invitations to break bread or visit. Finally Old Man Walker said, "Maybe I can help you find it."

The stranger declined and said there was likely no use. He said years before, he and another man had carried out a big robbery and buried most of the loot under a tree on the Walker's farm. To mark the tree, he had inserted a rifle barrel-first into a hollow, with the butt sticking out.

They split up, but they intended to return after the heat died down. The stranger said he had been caught and served a long prison sentence, Richard said, but his accomplice escaped. The stranger assumed his accomplice had already made off with the money and the rifle. He thanked the Walkers for their patience and hospitality and rode away. He didn't tell them his name, and they never saw him again.

Naturally, the Walkers spent fruitless years trying to find that tree. They finally concluded that the stranger had lied and was up to something else, but they couldn't imagine what.

Many years later, Richard said, his father was coon hunting on a moonless night when he rested against a big oak tree. When he rose, his head crashed into something so hard that he nearly knocked himself out. He shined his light on what he expected to be a low branch, but no, it was the butt end of a rifle that the tree had nearly engulfed through the decades.

Richard said his dad ran home to get a shovel, but he didn't pinpoint the tree's location. He searched and searched, but he never found it again.

A tall tale? Probably, but consider this.

On Nov. 6, Eva Johnson, cultural resource manager at Nevada's Great Basin National Park, was working with the park archaeology team when she noticed an object beneath a juniper tree. It was an unloaded rifle, a Model 1873 Winchester chambered for .44-40 WCF.

The serial number on the lower tang corresponds to Winchester records held at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West Museum in Cody, Wyo. It was manufactured and shipped in 1882. The 132-year old rifle had obviously spent years exposed to the sun, wind, rain and snow, because its stock was cracked and weathered gray. The barrel was rusted and blended with the juniper in the remote, rocky outcrop that kept it hidden.

Winchester's records do not indicate who purchased the rifle from the warehouse or where it was shipped. It is merely one of the 720,610 that were made between 1873 and 1916. In 1882, more than 25,000 were made.

Early Model 1873 rifles cost about $50, but the price fell to $25 in 1882. Like the Model 94 that followed it, the 1873 was considered an "everyman's" rifle and was known as the "gun that won the West." It is also the subject of Jimmy Stewart's 1950 classic, "Winchester '73."

Who abandoned the rifle, and why? Did the owner suffer misfortune that kept him from reclaiming it? Maybe it belonged to Everett Reuss, the "Wild Escalante" who vanished without a trace in the 1930s somewhere in the Southwest. The nomadic poet is said to have disappeared in Utah, but nobody knows for sure.

Maybe the owner was a cavalry veteran or a highwayman that had tired of killing and simply walked away.

Or, maybe there's a pile of cash stashed near that tree.

Sports on 03/08/2015

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