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Sarah.
    “Copper and gold. Just gold now…”
    “What’s with the name?”
    Dan laughed. “No one really knows. The town
sits on the valley floor and there’s been no battle nearby.”
Everyone laughed at that.
    He paused while they all ate more of their
lunches. He continued when Sarah looked over at him.
    “And Elko?”
    “Another strange name,” said the same
man.
    “That one is better explained,” began Dan.
“Elko is a Shoshoni Indian word for ‘rocks piled on one another’.”
He laughed. “Look around. You’ll probably still see evidence of
that name.”
    “Was it also along some pioneer trail?” asked
a woman who’d been sitting in the back of the van.
    “Yes, ma’am. It lies along the route of the
California Trail, later becoming a railroad town. It’s big on
ranching, gold mining and rail freight.”
    Sarah thought about that while munching her
salad. Something was nagging her, some partially remembered
thought. What was it?
    “Dan,” began Sarah. She wiped her mouth with
her napkin. “Isn’t there a story about Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance Kid being here in Winnemucca? Some bank robbery,
maybe?”
    Dan laughed. “Right you are, Sarah.” Everyone
leaned in to hear this one. “The Hole in the Wall Gang, including
Butch and Sundance share one of the most exciting moments in
Winnemucca history… The Gang came here to rob the local bank. The
story goes that Butch put a knife to the bank president’s throat
and ordered him to open the safe.”
    “How much did they get?” asked the lady by
Sarah.
    “$2,000 in gold coin.” Someone whistled.
    “That was a lot of money back then.”
    “A lot now…” someone added.
    Dan continued. “It’s a great story, but we’re
not sure that it’s all true.”
    “Why is that, Dan?” asked Sarah.
    “The Pinkerton Detective Agency found a
picture of the Gang in a photographer’s display window in Ft.
Worth, Texas. They sent it to the banker to see if he could
identify who robbed him. He wasn’t able to ID Butch Cassidy as one
of the men who robbed him.”
    Everyone leaned back and smiled.
    “I love these Old West stories,” said the man
next to Dan. “They’re so colorful and interesting…”
    “Anyway,” continued Dan, “that was good
enough for the town and they’ve always claimed that Butch did
indeed rob the bank here, back in 1900.”
    “Great story,” smiled Sarah. Dan winked at
her.
    After traveling through Battle Mountain and
Elko, it was another hour to Wells and then a bit more out to the
ranch. Bouncing along the gravel road, Sarah knew her point of no
return was when she saw the sign -- Walker Ranch. It was on a huge
metal gate, stretching across the road with a wagon wheel emblem.
She was a very long ways from Baltimore and her destination in the
big country had come at last…
     
     

 
    CHAPTER EIGHT
     
    Traveling up that gravel road, Sarah
continued to marvel at the landscape around her. The big sky was
overcast now with dark clouds slowly pushing out the white ones.
Rain was coming… She rolled down her window to breathe in the air.
It actually smelled damp.
    Cattle loitered on one side of the road, up a
ways on a low hill. Maybe forty head of brown mixed with black cows
chewed and swallowed, as they looked around lazily and at one
another. A cowboy on a gray and white spotted horse trotted towards
them to encourage movement. After a while, they paid some attention
to him and the lead cattle began to move up and over the hill. The
rest began to follow… Sarah rested her chin on one hand and smiled
in reverence at the pastoral sight.
    The ranch house came into view. It looked
massive, especially since it was the only building around for
miles. The house backed up against a low hill that probably looked
lovely with snow on it. Sarah saw a decorative, wooden fence on the
front perimeter. As Dan drove closer, she could see that it was
built of a light kind of wood – cedar maybe -- with a dark green
roof.