The Black Hills union and western stock review. [volume] (Rapid City, S.D.) 1904-19??, 1909-10-15
CHAPTER XVI.
Williams Cache.

VibldtuS rSdSUSs
Ed Banks had been recalled before
daybreak from the middle pass. Two
of the men wanted were now known
to have crossed the creek, which
meant they must work out of the coun-
try through Williams Cache.
"If you will take your best two men,
Ed" said Whispering Smith, sitting
down with Banks at breakfast, "and
strike straight for Canadian pass to
help Gene and Bob Johnson, I'll under
take to ride in and talk to Rebstock
while Kennedy and Bob Scott watch
Deep creek. The boy gives good de-
scription, and the two men that did
the job here are Du Sang and Flat
Nose. Did tell you how we picked
up the trail yesterday? Magpies. They
shot scrub horse that gave out on
them and skinned the brand It
fastened the banquet, but we got there
before the birds were all seated. Great
luck. wasn't it? And it gave us a
beautiful trail. One of the party
crossed the Goose river at American
fork. and Brill Young and Reed fol-
lowed him. Four came through the
Mission mountains; that is cinch and
they are In the Cache-and If they get
out 1t is our fault personally, Ed, and
not the Lord's.''
Williams Cache lies in the form OF
a.great horn, with narrow entrance
at the lower end known as the Door,
and a rock fissure at the upper end
leading into Canadian pass; but this
assure Is so narrow that man with
rifle could withstand regiment. For
100 miles east and west rise the gran.
lite walls of the Mission range. broken
nowhere save by the formation known
as the Cache. Even this does not pen
crate the range; it is a pocket, and
runs not over halfway into it and out
again. But no man really knows the
Cache; the most that may be said Is
that the main valley is known, and 1t
is known as the toughest mountain
fissure between the Spanish sinks and
the Mantrap country. Williams Cache
lies between walls 1900 feet high, and
within it is a small labyrinth of can
yons. A generation ago, when Medi
cine Bend for one winter was the
terminus of the overland railroad, yigi
lantes mercilessly cleaned out the
town, and the few outlaws that. es
capped the shotgun and the. moose a,
Medicine Bend found refuge in far
away and unknown mountain gorge
once named by French trappers the
Cache. Years after these outcasts had
come to infest 1t came one desperate
more ferocious than all that had gone
before. He made frontier retreat OF
the Cache, and left to 1t the legacy OF
his evil name, Williamg. Since his
day it has served, as 1t served before
for the haunt of outlawed men. No
honest man lives in Williams Cache
and few men of any sort live there
long, since their lives are lives Of VIC
lence; neither the law nor woman
crosses Deep creek. But from the day
of Williams to this day the Cache has
had its ruler. and when Whispering
Smith rode with little party through
the Door into the Cache the morning
after the murder in Mission valley he
sent an envoy to Rebstock, whose sue
cess as a cattle thief had brought Its
inevitable penalty. It had made
Rebstock man Of consequence and
of property and a man subject to the
anxieties and annoyances Of such re
sponsibility.
mr. j