Somerville High School - Radiator Yearbook (Somerville, MA)

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he was suddenly startled by a whiff of smoke from a mesquite fire. An instant later he saw the flame flicker- ing some distance away, partly screened by the heavy underbrush. Turlow eased his horse to a stop and dismounted very care- fully. He moved swiftly but quietly through the mesquite, drawing and cocking his navy Colt as he ran. He feared that the fire might be warning the camp of an Apache raiding party. Now Turlow was almost to the camp. He saw no Apache warriors, but a wagon, some team horses grazing nearby, and two children frying bacon at the fire—a boy of about ten, and a girl, a year or so younger. The girl dropped the frying pan into the campfire as Turlow came into view. He didn’t stop to address her, but strode over to the fire, picked up a nearby bucket of water, and threw it on the fire. Only then did he speak, You kids trying to get scalped? Any Apache in miles could have seen this! And where's your folks ?” “We’re sorry, mister, we didn’t know there were any Injuns around,” the boy said, “And please don’t talk so loud, Ma and Pa are real sick and they’re in the wagon.” “That so? I’d better go see about them then. What’s your names ?” “Joe and Nancy Cotts. Maybe you better not bother Ma and Pa. They’re awful sick,” Joe exclaimed. Turlow climbed into the wagon and looked anyway. He saw at once that the children’s parents were not sick. They were dead. It must have been cholera, Turlow decided. Funny the kids hadn’t caught it. But things happened that way, sometimes. He broke the news to the children as gently as he could. They were as grief-stricken as any kids would be at learning that they had suddenly lost what was most dear to them in all the world. They got over crying surprisingly quickly. They were frontier children, and death was no stranger to them. Turlow buried Mr. and Mrs. Cotts that very night. He did it alone. He tied two sticks together to make a crude cross and put it above the grave. “Guess I’ll stay overnight with the kids, and leave in the morning. I should be out of Injun country by noon tomorrow. “Then,” suddenly an alarming thought occurred to him—“What about the two children? He couldn’t very well leave them here. It would be only a matter of time till the Apaches found them.” And then Turlow, tough as he was, shuddered at the thought. He’d seen what happened to people the Apaches cap- tured. It wasn’t very pretty. “Maybe I can take ’em with me to Silver City,” he thought. No sooner had he con- sidered this than he rejected it. He could slip through the Apaches—if he was alone, but not with two children. They would slow him down fatally. Turlow pondered hard. Was there any army post or trading station any- where close by ? There wasn’t. That left one alternative. “But if I go back. I’ll get hanged for sure!” he thought with alarm. The temptation to leave the two children behind grew steadily stronger. “No! I done some low things in my life, and mebbe I’ll do more, but I ain’t never done nothin so low as that!” At that moment Turlow decided what he must do. “After I get back to Tucson with the kids. I’ll get out of that necktie party someway,” he silently promised himself. They stayed under cover that night and all the next day. Then after sundown the next evening, they stole out of the brush. Turlow was leading his own horse, and Joe and Nancy each had one of the team horses following them. Since they could not hope Twenty-three

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dry. There was very little rain last spring and summer and this, combined with a mild winter in which little snow fell, produced a severe drought. By this time you must be thinking, “What an awful place to live in!” The truth is that I didn’t much mind it, and will take Montana over New England any time. “Why?” Well, for one thing, the weather in Montana isn’t nearly so changeable as it is here, where it can be hot one day and freezing cold the next. Furthermore, when it becomes hot in Mon- tana, it becomes hot, but it doesn’t get humid. I have felt worse here when the temperature was 80 degrees than at home when it was 100°. The same thing happens in winter, only in reverse. Here in Massachusetts it feels colder at the same temperature than in Mon- tana. Don’t ask me why. I like open spaces. You can find them plenty in Montana, but they don’t exist here. It comes as something of a shock to move from a ranch where your nearest neighbor lives three miles away, to the most densely populated city in the United States. You don’t get much privacy in a city. You may wonder how I ever got out here. It is a rather long story but I’ll make it short. My uncle was born and brought up in this area. During the war he was in the Navy and met my aunt on the West Coast. They were married there and moved to Billings, Montana, where they lived until 1956. That year they moved back to Somerville. How does this tie in with me? Well, when I reached the 9th grade I had the choice of going 20 miles to a high school of approxi- mately 200 students or 2,000 miles to a high school of 2,000. I chose the 2,000. This choice is not no strange as it may seem. My older sister went to Portland, Oregon, for her freshman year. So here I am. I enjoy going to S.H.S. very much. However, I wish I could spend more time each summer with my family and had a longer Christmas vacation, so I could l e home at Christmas time. But I get used to it. And it surprises me that I am not as homesick as I thought I would be when I left Montana to start at Southern Junior High School in ’58. RETURN TO TUCSON Janies Curry '62 At last, after miles and miles of frenzied galloping. Bob Turlow thought it was safe to rein in and look back over his trail. He brought his heaving, sweat-covered horse to a stop, turned around, and searched the des- ert carefully with his eyes. No, man nor horse, nor any cloud of dust, save that which his own horse had raised, was to be seen. Bob chuckled, “Looks like I finally shook that posse! Pickle-Face Mac-ready ain’t even goin’ to catch me!” But his moment of happy triumph was short. As he turned his horse about and con- tinued up the trail at a slow walk, he felt faint twinges of regret. Not that he regretted shooting Faro Jim Banks. He’d gun anybody who tried to cheat him at cards. But he really shouldn’t have waited till Banks turned his back before he shot—especially in the middle of a saloon in broad daylight. Sheriff Dan Macready took a dim view of the whole affair, and Turlow had been forced to leave town in something of a hurry, with half the town’s citizens rid- ing hotly after him. “Well, Tucson’s one town I better never go back to! Sheriff Macready’ll see me hanged for sure!” mused Turlow. Then a more ur- gent problem surged into his mind. Apaches! He was heading directly into Cochise’s coun- try around the Dragoon Mountains. But this menace did not deter him, or even worry him as much as it would have most people. Twelve years ago, back in ’61, he’d prospected right in the middle of the Mescalero Country when Mangas Colorados was on the warpath, and no Apache had ever known he was there. Turlow knew how to dodge Indians. He rode steadily up the trail to Silver City, and the mountains loomed ahead. The sun was long down and it was begin- ning to grow very dark. Turlow decided to ride a few more miles and then make camp. He’d have to find a well-hidden brushy spot to camp and he didn’t dare light a fire. That sack of dried beans and bacon would have to do for supper. As Turlow was looking for a place to camp, Twenty-two

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to sneak out with the wagon, they had left that behind. It was a cloudy night, and the moon could not be seen. They had been traveling several hours, and it was now almost midnight. No sound was to be heard except the yapping of coyotes and the hoots of owls. It was then that Turlow, listening care- fully and intently, heard the snap of a dry twig. One of you do that?” he whispered to Joe and Nancy. Not us,” they replied. “Net so loud! Was it any of the horses?” Wasn’t my hoss,” whispered Nancy. “Mine neither.” said Joe. “Mebbe it was just a coyote,” Turlow tried to reassure himself. He stared at the Mountainside above for a full minute before he caught a glimpse of the two figures running wraithlike. He didn’t have to see the long black hair, the rawhhide boots, the breechclouts, or the glittering wolf- like eyes in the broad cruel faces to know that the two runners were Apaches. No one else could move so swiftly and yet so stealth- ily. And they were moving in Turlow’s direc- tion. Real quiet, you kids,” he whispered, one peep, we’re dead!” He eased his Colt from its holster and cocked it slowly. Turlow knew only too well that a shot might bring a howl- ing horde of warriors down on them. But he might soon have no choice. The Apache scouts moved steadily closer. Now he could hear them talking in low gut- teral voices. He leveled the Colt. Joe’s horse let out a snort. The Apache scouts whirled around. He walked swiftly toward the place where the two children crouched with fear- wide eyes. Turlow swung the Colt around to follow the scout. Now the Apache was only a hundred yards away. Turlow could distinguish his squat fea- tures. It was only a matter of seconds now—. Suddenly the Apache shrugged and turned around then they both headed down the mountainside in another direction. Turlow was conscious, for the first time, of his wildly thundering heart. As soon as the hostile scouts were well out of sight, he turned to the children and chuckled, Well you two can start breathin’ again. Let’s get moving!” The sun had risen once more, and the posse had re-discovered Bob Turlow’s trail with the aid of Manuel Turquino, Sheriff Mac ready’s ace halfbreed tracker. Turquino pushed his sombrero up from his eyes, and got up from the horse tracks, over which he had been kneeling. Si, boss, no doubt now, these outlaw heed into Indian country. He not live long there, I theenk!” One of the deputies muttered agreement. He’s goin’ into Cochise Country and the Apaches ’re sure to get him! I don’t wanna go chasin’ into there! — ’sides, I got a store to keep.” Finally, Sheriff Dan Macready was moved to agree. “All right, boys, if that’s the way you want it, I’ll go back. We’ll never catch him now, anyway. But I sure hope the Apaches get him—alive! Faro Banks was my friend!” Hey! Sheriff! Look there! It’s a cloud of dust! Might be Apaches.” All eyes turned to look. But it was not an Apache war party; there were only three riders. Soon they were close enough so that the posse could see the riders were a man and two children. “It’s Turlow!” one of the deputies yelled. Colts came out of holsters and rifles emerged from scabbards. So did Turlow’s Colt. But Turlow did not aim and fire; he threw the re- volver into the dust and raised his hands. For a second a brief smile cracked Mac- ready’s sour features. What made you come back, Turlow? Apaches on your trail? Who’re the kids?” Couple kids I met up in the hills,” Turlow answered. “Had to bury their folks.” “Well, mebbe you figured turnin’ good Samaritan to save your hide.” Macready spoke grimly. “Well, it won’t. You killed a friend of mine and we’ve got a tree limb and a rope waitin’ for you back in Tucson.” I kind of figured it that way,” was Tur- low’s only answer. He realized that he had just gone to his own hanging; that his act of mercy had just cost him his life, but somehow it did not bother Bob Turlow. In fact, he felt strangely happy. Twenty-four