Shoot Out at Willard's Corral

The winter sun lay to the southeast over the rugged benches and canyons that made up the first breaks of the high plateau range as it dropped off in 1,000 foot steps to the main gorge of the Grand Canyon below. The late February day was quiet and the warmth of the sun felt good on my back as I rode north up the west side of Mule Canyon. Patches of snow lay in the shade of great boulders that had broken off from the canyon walls above. I was sure that when I climbed out on top snow would blanket all the land. The canyon here was about three-fourths of a mile wide. Smoky, my little mouse colored horse, was looking at something over on the east side of the canyon. I knew that a trail from another section of this bench land would soon merge with the one I traveled. This lower bench and canyon country was used by ranchers as winter range. Even now the cheat grass and secarty was showing green at the base of the black brush, catclaw, and chaparral.

Early that morning I had left camp at the head of Maverick Canyon where three of us young fellows had spent the winter looking after cows and doing some trapping and wild cow chasing. Soon I caught sight of another rider and waited for him where the trails met. He was a big man astride a powerful bay horse. As I called a cheerful "good morning" he responded with a "Hi-ye-all" in a slow southern drawl, but no change of expression came on his weather beaten face. I knew this man by sight for he had been pointed out to me because of his reputation. I had heard he was wintering stock in this area. Rumor had it that he had left Texas in a hurry just a jump ahead of the law. Also, he had been implicated in a gun battle at Willard's Corrals a few years before. This morning he carried a rifle in a saddle scabbard and a pearl handled six shooter holstered on each hip. He looked me and my horse over, then said, "It appears you're havin' some trouble with your pack." I admitted that I wasn't much of a hand at packing horses. He said: "Maybe I kin help ya." I told him I sure would appreciate that. So he dismounted and he pulled my stuff off the little buckskin pack horse. Then he proceeded to repack it in a neat, professional manner, all the while instructing me in the proper way to do so. The climax of this valuable lesson was when he showed me how to tie the diamond pack hitch, a skill that I have continued to use for the past sixty-five years or so.

We then remounted and I followed him up the canyon trail. As we rode along, I plied him with all the questions a 14 year-old boy can come up with. He wasn't very talkative at first, then he told me his name and some of his history and adventures when he was a youth. He said that the two six-shooters he wore had been given to him by an old man who had been an Indian fighter in the early day history of Texas. He told me of some of his troubles and hardships while traveling from Texas to northern Arizona. He had made the trip by wagon and trailed livestock with him and brought along his family.

The Arizona Strip is a section of land about 200 miles from east to west and about 100 miles from the Utah border on the north to the Grand Canyon on the south, where crossing the Colorado River is possible only at a few places. This beautiful and lonely land has been a haven and refuge for other men harassed by the laws of civilization. Most of them settled down to tending their own business.

We climbed out of Mule Canyon onto the gently rolling hills of the upper plateau above the canyon lands. It was colder up here with about ten inches of hard, crusted snow that slowed our travel. This area was grazed by cattle belonging to the Bundy outfit and my riding partner mentioned that he wasn't too fond of some of them. Friction had developed over his grazing rights as a neighbor to them. Then he told me that he had been bushwhacked and gunned down without warning two or three years before. It took place at Willard's Corral where Jack Finley's outfit was working cattle.

He rode up about noon one day, thinking that maybe he would eat dinner with some of the cowboys who were starting to gather around the chuck wagon. Before he had a chance to dismount, a gun-blast roared from the far side of the wagon and he felt the hot lead whistle by his face. The next shot hit his horse in the neck, almost knocking him to the ground, and my friend was hard-put to stay in the saddle. Trying desperately to get his horse under control, he spurred him toward the crest of a small hill nearby. As the horse lunged up the hill, my friend pulled his six-gun and turned in the saddle to return the gunfire. A terrific blow struck him in the side under his gun arm and he felt like he was torn apart. He remembered no more, until a man's gentle voice asked him if he needed some help. They hauled him 60 miles over a rough dirt road to the hospital at St. George, Utah, in an old Model T Ford truck.

He told me: "I don't remember how long I was there. They saved my life, but now I'm only half the man I was. The bullet went clear through me from my right side. It ticked my heart and then angled upward, tearing my left lung to shreds and emerging below and in front of my arm pit. "I'm lucky to be alive," he said. "I've been thinking on moving to Nevada, where a man might find some peace."

As he talked to me, I listened attentively and he seemed to like me, even though he never smiled. He didn't resent my questions into his affairs, which I'm sure he would have, if asked the same by an older person. As we neared his ranch headquarters, our trails parted. I thanked him for his help and his stories. We said goodbye and I rode toward my Uncle Whip's place, never to see my new friend again.

Raymond Holt and his younger brother, Buster, had drifted north from central Arizona to the Arizona Strip because a cowboy has a natural hankering to see what's on the other side of the ridge, or in this case, the other side of the river. They had worked for the Circle outfit and other cowmen. Raymond was a quiet spoken young man, not given to much talk, while Buster, his brother, was more outgoing and inclined to spread the B.S.

At this particular time they were working for Jack Finely at Willard's Corral, putting together a herd of steers and dry cows to trail north for the market. Raymond was busy at the chuck wagon, fixing dinner for the crew when he glanced south across the flats and saw a rider approaching. Even at a quarter mile away he recognized the man, and knew that he was faced with a life or death struggle.

The Arizona Strip is considered a plateau land, where the elevation ranges from 5,000 to 9,000 feet, except on the extreme western tip where it drops into the hot desert country of about 2,000 feet. The grass and browse is good strong feed and when sufficient rains come for feed to grow, the cattle and horses flourish, outdoing the mountain meadows or cultivated pastures. It is a stockman's paradise, but it lacks water. Creeks are nonexistent and springs are small and far between. Stock water has been developed by building small reservoirs and windmills. Cowboys like the brown pond water, but women do not. Consequently, few families live on the "strip" and very few eligible young single women. Raymond had been riding over to Roy Wood's place to visit his teenage daughter. On the last visit her daddy had told him: "You better go back to where you came from, because the Strip ain't big enough for both you and me. The next time I see you, I'm going to shoot you down like a coyote!"

Now as Raymond watched the rider approach, he knew that Woods was coming to back up his threat with action. The only gun he had was a 30-30 Winchester in his bed roll in the commissary wagon. Desperately he searched for it among the other bedrolls. He threw it out on the ground, jerking the tie straps off. When he examined the rifle, only two cartridge were in the magazine. Frantically he searched through the cupboard on the back of the chuck wagon. He asked some of the other cowboys, who were getting food on their plates, if they knew where some shells were. Finally, he found a box and stuffed his gun full just as Woods rode up.

No words were spoken and none of the cowboys present were able to say afterwards who fired the first shot, but when the shooting started, they all made a mad dash for the back side of a small blacksmith shop, that was about 100 feet from the chuck wagon.

My cousin, Meb Whipple, peeped around the corner to see the horse headed east at a hard run, while Wood's six-gun blasted out over the horse's rump toward the wagon. Raymond Holt had dropped to his knee to help steady his jittery hands. Just as the rider reached the crest of a small hill, he put a shot in that counted. Woods fell off by an old cedar post, out of sight from the cowboys below. Everyone stayed out of Wood's view, sheltered by the blacksmith shop because they didn't know how serious he had been hit. They were afraid he might mistake one of them for Raymond Holt.

My Uncle Roy Whipple wondered how bad Woods was hurt and thought someone ought to go help him. The boss, Jack Finley, said "Naw, don't do that, he might shoot you. Let him bleed awhile. That'll stiffen him up and he won't be so dangerous." Whip kept stewing about it and pretty soon he took off up the hill.

He found Woods doubled over in an awkward position. When asked if he needed help he replied that his other six-gun was hurting him. So Whip straightened him out some, putting the holstered gun in a more comfortable position. They gave him what first-aid they could, then loaded him in Finley's truck and hauled him to St. George. Nobody thought he would reach the hospital alive, but Roy Woods was made out of rawhide and he obviously lived to tell me the story.

Raymond Holt never did find a gal to marry. Years later one of my friends worked for a big cow outfit in Oregon and Raymond, now much older, was cooking for the crew. He found him to be a man of few words, with a sour disposition; a man who had no friends, nor did he want any.