Call Me Abner

A Modern Day Orson?
Douglas County News
September 10, 1896
 
Here, for the public interest – and perhaps a humour – we print a letter sent to us by one Abner B., so named, of Castle Rock. We make no claims about its truthfulness or accuracy. – Ed

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Dear Douglas County News,
 
   I thought I would send along to you what follows. It is not a fiction, I can promise you that. I am describing true events, as best as I can recall, that occurred last Saturday night, west of here, not far from Devils Head.
 
   Our search party is geared up to go out again each Saturday until this matter is settled. You are invited to join one of our upcoming excursions if you want to see what is happening down here, first-hand, and make a written account of it. We would respectfully request that you do not send a junior writer, nor one who is too seasoned. Someone in the middle range would do, such that he can keep pace without getting winded, and also be mature enough, with some worldly experience, to take this matter seriously. And he should also bring a rifle if he’s got one.
 
   Well, here it is.
 
   The moon – a white, tilted, broken dish – hovered against the dark blue sky, and a fall breeze blew against the crest of a nearby hill, such that the shadows of the scrub and bushes wavered in odd shapes.
 
   Gorilla shapes.
 
   I had never been on a gorilla hunt before. Neither, for that matter, had the five big coon dogs who trotted half-heartedly alongside us as we made our way through the hollow. The dogs belonged to Sherriff Lawrence, who walked a few paces ahead of me, shouldering his .25-35 Winchester Center Fire.
 
   Lawrence wore heavy trousers, a thick jacket, and cumbersome, squeaky galoshes. He’s a sturdy type with a big-barreled chest. He’s a serious fellow too, a real law and order type. You won’t see him laugh much, but when he does it shakes the entire room. He had a congestion that gave to him some sniffing and throat-clearing as he trudged along, timed with his noisy galoshes. But he kept it all quieter than might be expected, in keeping with our stealthy ambitions. Lawrence looked back at me, winked and said, “Them dogs. [sniff] They don’t act like they want to be gorilla dogs, do they? [sniff, squeak]”
 
   Alderman Adams was with us too, walking along to my left. He’s about the stealthiest in our group. He moves like a ghost through the woods. Or an Indian. He more floats than walks, truth be told. His piece is a sturdy 12-gauge of ancient origin. Us fellows give him a hard time about it. But he’s a darned good shot, so we can’t go too hard on him. Adams replied to Lawrence before I could, saying, “Can’t say I blame ‘em. It’s a hell of a thing for a dog to be doing in the middle of the night.”
 
   Leading our party was Ray McBride. He’s a soft-spoken, shy farrier from around here. He travels about, as farriers do, but we consider him a local. You wouldn’t think much to look at Ray. He’s as skinny as a rail, and shy as a sheep around females. But he was raised in Twin Cedars, so he knows these woods like the palm of his hand. He carries a bolt-action Springfield. His pockets are usually stuffed with bullets, and most times he bites on one too so he can snag that one quick for a re-load. Old McBride can reload his gun faster than a jackrabbit. I’ve seen him get off a dozen shots faster than most men could sneeze and say ‘excuse me.’ While he was getting off those quick shots (it was on a bet that he did it, not to promenade his skills), he was somehow transferring bullets, one-handed, to his mouth and gun at the same time. It was a sight.
 
   McBride had visited the sheriff about five hours earlier in the day with his account of things. The rumours have been spreading all over around here for the last few weeks, most of them wild exaggerations, spun up to grand proportions. You are probably aware of all this talk. But McBride set the sheriff straight, telling him, “Sher'f, this is no gag about the gorilla running loose around here. I wish you’d come out.”
 
   McBride explained some other details too: “Around 4 o’clock I got a good look at The Thing myself from no more than thirty-five yards. It stood on its hind legs and it was about eight feet tall.” McBride also told the sheriff that it was broad daylight when he saw It, and that The Thing was covered in dark hair ‘so black that it sparkled.’ Anyone can vouch for McBride. He’s just not one to spin yarns.
 
   That was about enough detail to get the sheriff’s attention and convince him that this was something that needed looking into. And so, the idea was hatched to get a posse together. That’s how our group got formed in the first place.
 
   I nearly forgot to introduce myself and the other four fellows. But, if I keep introducing everyone, we’ll never get to the heart of the story before I run out of paper and ink! So, I will keep it short. But I do want you to know that we have a trustworthy group put together.
 
   I’m Abner B., and I live in Castle Rock. I work at the CR Mill, and I have done that for fifteen years, and you can ask anyone there about my trustworthiness, if you have any doubts. At work, some fellows call me Abe - so that will be me they are talking about if you ask around. I prefer Abner, though, since it’s my given name. I was named after my grandfather. I grew up with Sherriff Lawrence, so you can say that we are old friends. We’re fishing buddies these days, mostly, since time is tight nowadays with our work and families and such. But we go back a long way, and are that sort of friends.
 
   The other fellows in our group are Doughty, Lewis, Brown, and McCurdy. I won’t say much more about them, except to say that they are all straight arrows. I should mention that both Doughty and McCurdy are older fellows, who are sturdy and sharp. They were both in the War. Doughty is our compass and map man, and McCurdy’s an expert tracker. Lewis and Brown are solid fellows too. You wouldn’t want to be without them in a posse like ours, or in a rough situation.
 
   McBride told more details to the sheriff than what I have so far described. For instance, he also told the sheriff that when he saw The Thing, he let loose with five shots, and The Thing did a kind of backflip into a thicket and began running away at great speed. It ran on two legs like a man. Now, McBride is a calm, sensible sort if you know him, and he sure as St. Peter knows the difference between gorilla-looking things and bear-looking things. He admitted to the sheriff that until he himself squared off with The Thing, he’d had the feeling that the gorilla scare around these parts was pretty much a joke. But now he was sure it wasn’t a tall tale or the like.
 
   I’ll admit that I also felt somewhat on the cynical side until I listened to McBride’s level, unexcited account, and until I had spent a couple of hours stumbling around the hills with our posse, sidestepping shadows with those twitchy dogs. Sheriff Lawrence felt the same as me, of course, and the rest of our group did also. We all, plainly, did not consider the possibility of a gorilla running loose in these woods to be a fiction. Doughty is maybe the only fellow among us who is undecided about the existence of the gorilla. He has a scientific mind, so for him, he can’t fully believe anything until he actually sees it for himself.
 
   By and by, we reached a boggy little area at the bottom of a hill neighboring Devils Head and two of the sheriff’s coon dogs came huffing and puffing and scrambling to us out of the dark. McBride had said that The Thing was given to the habit of beating on his chest, and making bellowing noises, and thumping on trees and such. The dogs in the darkness made noises which could be interpreted as like to those sounds, and I was nervous until I saw the plain, simple dog faces on those two hounds in the torchlight. Beyond the torchlight and beneath the pines it was as dark as all get-out.
 
   “Shine your light this way,” McBride said to Lewis. And Lewis swung his torch over to his left. McBride reached over to a bramble and came out with a big pinch of dark brown, coarse hair, almost black. It had a terrible smell to it. “He left this after I shot at him,” McBride declared.
 
   “What?” I asked.
 
   “The Thing,” McBride said. “This is where I shot at him earlier today. After I shot at it, it ran a-ways and ducked into this here bramble. It must have snagged him and it left this tuft.”
 
   I can’t very well describe the hair beyond the color, texture, and smell of it, since I am not too acquainted with what kind of hair fits what kind of animal. But I can attest that this was not the hair of a bear.
 
   McBride put the pinch of hair in his breast pocket – not his bullet pocket – and strode over to the other side of the bramble. McBride still has the tuft if your experts at the paper want to examine it, first-hand. McBride studied the area carefully. McCurdy went over there with him.
 
   “He went through right here,” McCurdy said. He had identified a track.
 
   McCurdy moved off into the blackness, and we followed him. The dogs were sniffing around and baying in the brush getting hold of the general scent, but not picking up much of it, so Lawrence asked McBride for that hair tuft, and he let his dogs get a good sniff of it, and then yipped at the dogs to get up ahead of McCurdy.
 
   “They’re acting like they’re on a cold trail,” Lawrence reported. It was a curious thing, on account of that hair being so pungent.
 
   We walked a long time after that. McBride said the woods were crawling with rattlesnakes, and Lewis confirmed that this was true.
 
   “A bird dog of mine was bitten around here about two years ago, and he died before we could do anything with him,” Lewis said.
 
   I felt bad about that dog, but I didn’t say anything. I watched my steps for rattlers, though. And I understood Sheriff Lawrence’s galoshes. They didn’t strike me as ridiculous any more, not even the way they creaked when he walked and sniffled. Brown was wearing galoshes too, but his were new and quiet.
 
   Suddenly, the dogs, the entire pack of them, began raising Cain in the area just North of us. We all stopped in our tracks, frozen by the racket.
 
   “They’ve really hit something now!” Lawrence said excitedly.
 
   The yowling gave way to thrashing and cracking in the bushes, angling downwind to us as we waited. Then we heard twigs snapping and the rushing of leaves. There was a heavy-footed thumping coming straight our way, sure enough. It sounded as if The Thing was coming at us fast.
 
   All of us held our guns at port arms, while Lewis’s torch cut a clean, yellow tunnel in the woods in the direction of the dogs as we waited.
 
   “It’s the gorilla,” McBride said calmly. “Get ready to start shooting before he’s too close. They take a lot of shooting. Start firing when I say so.”
 
   We all stayed as calm and ready as we could. I don’t mind admitting that I was quite nervous, and shaking a little too. I had my sights pointed straight down that yellow tunnel.
 
  Not twenty yards ahead of us, in the glare of the torchlight, the bushes and grasses wig-wagged violently, and then all five coon dogs came lumbering into open view, trudging like horses.
 
   We all drew down our guns because there was no gorilla ahead of those dogs. It was just the dogs, running like mad after a ghost of nothing. But they were sure acting determined, as if they were chasing something.
 
   “Cold trail,” Lawrence said. “They’re running after nothing. [sniff]”
 
   “Good old cold trail,” Doughty agreed.
 
   “Dry as dust,” I said. I was simultaneously disappointed and relieved.
 
   McCurdy got down low along the path of the dogs, fingering some broken twigs and such.  But he just shook his head and scratched at his beard.
 
   We poked around a while longer, up the path of the dogs, but didn’t find much of anything.
 
   Then we went on back home.
 
   I had exerted myself physically, and mentally, too, by thinking hard about The Thing – and about rattlers, too, I suppose – so I slept like a baby that night, with nary a toss or tumble.
 
   I had one dream that I can recall from my night’s sleep. I dreamt that that gorilla was watching us the whole time we trudged through those woods. Curiously, in my dream, The Thing was observing us with kind and curious eyes.
 
   I told my wife about my dream and she said it was likely a portent. She doesn’t want me to go back out this coming Saturday, on account that she imagines The Thing to be The Devil himself. But I figure I will go ahead with it. The fellows are counting on me.
 
   I will write back to you if we can take down The Thing and settle, once and for all, what this is all about. And, again, if you want to send someone down from the paper, we’d be happy to have him along. I think a printed news story, penned by someone reputable, will go a long way toward settling some nerves around here.
 
Yours Truly,
Abner B., Castle Rock

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   – O.M. Kelsey