All that remain unchanged are three huge trees flanking the highway in
front. What tales they could tell, if they would, of what passed by the
junction of two roads beneath them. Of the long and weary caravans from
across the plains crawling up from the bridge at Whiskey Bar, below
Rattlesnake, glad that their six months' struggle was nearly over: of
horsemen on beautiful Spanish horses riding furiously, whither no one
knew nor dared ask; of dark deeds in the old stone house below, that was
so inscrutably quiet by day and so mysteriously alive by night; of
ghastly doings by the Tom Bell gang which ranged all the way from the
Oregon border to the southern lakes.
They will never tell all they know - these big old trees - of those who
went in by the door and "came out by the cellar" of Tom Bell's
stronghold. In the end the place fell, in the war between order and
lawlessness and, as the pessimists love to assert, a woman, as usual,
was the cause of it. The tale is told:
Rosa Phillips sat in the Mountaineer House strumming a Spanish guitar,
and singing,
"There's a turned down page, as some writer says, in every human life,
A hidden story of happier days, of peace amidst the strife.
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