Cedar City Rendezvous

Most folks would not trifle with the Hart brothers. Such folks walked. Some folks did not know better. They are planted—not so deep as to keep the cold of the high country from their bones, but deep enough to keep the wolves from their place of repose. That would do. They were well known as gun men, as shootists, as bounty hunters. Their first loyalty was for each other. Their honor was kept for themselves. Wherever they rode the people knew them and their deadly skills. The Hart brothers were going to the Cedar City Rendezvous. The territory was infested with renegades and outlaws; nearly all of them far less honorable and far more rapacious than the very capable Hart brothers. Death and rape and robbery seemed to come out of the ground with the rippling heat like surf against a shore. There seemed to be little that the law and decent citizens could do to stem the tide . . . Until the sheriff of Cedar City, Utah Territory, decided to let the criminal element take care of itself and send out invitations to the Rendezvous. Hundreds of killers showed up. “You are all here by invitation. There be five miles ‘tween here and town. The object is for you to get from here to there . . . alive enough to claim the fortune in gold. Those of you what make it that far will get an equal share. And the Governor’s unconditional pardon goes with the loot.” A murmur ran thorough the great company armed to its blackened teeth, Some of the shootists thought of saloons and every painted woman between Memphis and Frisco. The Hart Brothers thought of fertile farm land where a body could take root and grow along with crops and children, :Men, the rules be simple: Every man for hisself from here to the edge of town. You have until I get to town to find your place and cover. When I signal with my rifle, this shoot starts!” Before the sheriff was out of sight, the throng exploded in all directions toward rocky hills, scrub brush cover, and small box canyons. For fifteen long minutes there was silence. Then a shot rolled lazily through the stifling hear. A heartbeat later, the thin air erupted with musketry. In the first moments of the Cedar City Rendezvous, a dozen men fell from their saddles and dropped to the salty ground.

This is the most comprehensive guidebook to the state of Utah, with information on historic attractions, festivals, cultural events, outdoor activities, accommodations, and restaurants. 139 photos. 9 maps.

THE DEAD MAN’S JOURNEY—Journada del Muerte, the locals called it: the blistering ocean of sand and sage between the Rio Grande River to the west and the Sacramento mountain range to the east. The bones of men and horses had bleached in the mile-high desert for three hundred years. Spanish conquistadors were the first white men to explore this new furnace of the Southeastern New Mexico Territory—and the first to perish. In the thin air, the riders coming down the mountain were sharply etched against the blue sky. Steam, blowing out of the ice-encrusted nostrils of their mounts and their two pack horses, surrounded the horsemen in a white veil. Descending the eastern face of the Sacramento mountains, the horses walked slowly and painfully on cracked hooves. The icy earth offered only a steep path paved with shards of glass; blood seeped around well-worn iron horseshoes. When the riders looked to the sky, they saw that the white sun would stay high enough for them to make Fort Stanton, ten miles into the valley. The riders knew the trail since boyhood. Words were not wasted in country where a man’s mouth would crack and bleed like his horse’s hooves. Beyond the fort lay the clapboard settlement of Lincoln. When Grady Rourke died, his sons, Sean, Patrick, and Liam, came back to claim the family land . . . What was left of it. It was January, 1878, when the Rourke brothers came back to this hard and dangerous land. They thought they were coming home. What they didn’t know was that they were about to become part of a vicious struggle for power. And that they would be forced to choose sides with either John Tunstall and Alexander McSween or J. J. Dolan and Sheriff William Brady. The battle would quickly become the infamous Lincoln County War—a dirty little war with no rules, no heroes, and no happy endings. Douglas Savage, the acclaimed author of Cedar City Rendezvous and Highpockets has taken the historical facts surrounding the Lincoln County War and its fascinating characters, and fashioned one of the most readable and revealing tales of the American frontier.