“December 20, 1896. Running for his life, the cowboy slipped on frozen mud in the corral. Scrambling to his feet, he sprinted into the barn and shimmied up a latter into the loft. Ernest Hurd’s breath turned to puffs of white in the frigid air as he squinted through gaps between hay bales, gun drawn. […]
“As I step outside I’m surprised by the dense morning haze. It reminds me of the thick, wet fog along the California coast in my boyhood town of Santa Cruz. Sounds are muffled. Mist cloaks the trees around the ranch house until they are shrouded like ghostly sentinels. I hike far out into the pasture […]
“Nottingham had traveled from Iowa to the Rocky Mountain valleys with his wife and five small children in 1882. He’d met Ernest Hurd and a third settler near the town of Redcliff, and the three men proposed a ranching partnership. The trio bought 480 acres, brimming with all the excitement and hope that a new […]
