Aron Ralston - Between a Rock and a Hard Place

He was a better boatman than a cowboy, and a better cook than a train robber, but John Griffith, with the distinguishing mark of one blue eye and one brown eye, became a favored extra hand with the Wild Bunch, Butch Cassidys gang, during his time in the Robbers Roost country of eastern Utah. Blue John, as his first employer called him, found entry into the area as a cook for the Harris cattle operation near Cisco, about sixty miles west of Grand Junction. After fewer than two years of legitimate work, the thirty-five-year-old fell in with Jim Wall, alias Silver Tip, and Indian Ed Newcomb on a cattle roundup for the 3B outfit in the spring of 1890. The 3B herd ranged the Roost under the infamous foreman Jack Moore, who proffered hospitality to the Wild Bunch during their frequent gatherings in that country bounded by the Dirty Devil, San Rafael, Green, and Colorado rivers. Sometimes dropping into the Roost for the entire winter, to set up a base camp prior to or after a raid, or to help with the 3B stock, the Bunch always had a welcome in the Roost.

Silver Tip, Blue John, and Indian Ed circulated with the Bunch as a trio of second-tier accomplices, contributing their skills to whatever was in the works, be it horse thievery, robbery, or wrangling. In 1898 they helped Moore rope in the remaining 3B cattle of J. B. Buhrs failing operation before they left for a horse-rustling escapade in Wyoming. The return trip cost Moore his life in a shoot-out. Early the next year, as the group returned to the Roost after delivering the stolen horses to Colorado for sale, Silver Tip, Indian Ed, and Blue John lifted another batch of the countrys choicest horseflesh from ranches around Moab and Monticello. Not that the Wild Bunch boys paid much attention to posseswho were careful not to get too close to the Roost in generalbut the outlaws knew that the law was after them for this most recent spree.

In a side canyon of Roost Canyon, on a late February morning, Indian Ed climbed across the rocks below the overhang where the team had spent the night with their cache of stolen goodstwo pack animals and a half-dozen head of horses. Suddenly, a rifle shot split open the morning stillness, the .38.55 slug flattening against a rock before ricocheting to pierce Eds leg above the knee. He dropped to the sandy wash and crawled behind brush to the alcove where Blue John and Silver Tip were exchanging fire with the posse who had found the outlaws via their tracks and evening campfire. Blue John kept the posse engaged while Silver Tip sneaked out from the alcove and climbed to the canyon rim, where he put three shots just over the heads of the sheriffs men. The posse bolted back down the main wash of Roost Canyon to their horses and fled at full speed to their ranches and homes with a tall tale of their shoot-out with the Wild Bunch.

It was the last time the three bandits worked together or participated in any outlawry. They hung up their rifles and changed their ways, each peaceably fading into history after shaking things up, leaving their trails for others to follow. Indian Ed Newcomb healed his leg and was thought to have returned to Oklahoma, disappearing into obscurity. Silver Tip escaped from custody after serving two years of a ten-year sentence in Wayne County, Utah; he eventually settled in Wyoming to quietly pass the rest of his days. Blue John Griffith was last spotted in the fall of 1899, departing Hite on the Colorado River, heading for Lees Ferry down one of the most beautiful and intimidating stretches of river in the West. While it is speculated that he quit the river along the way to head for Arizona or even Mexico, he was not seen to arrive at Lees Ferry and was never heard from again.

Of the three, only one left a permanent mark on the land. Blue John Canyon and Blue John Springs, across the watershed from the site of the fateful ambush attempt, are named for the sometime cook, sometime wagon driver, sometime horse thief who roamed the Roost for a decade just before the turn of the twentieth century.

This is the most beautiful place on earth.

There are many such places. Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, known or unknown, actual or visionary. Theres no limit to the human capacity for the homing sentiment. Theologians, sky pilots, astronauts have even felt the appeal of home calling to them from up above, in the cold black outback of inter-stellar space.