THE LONE TREE DANCE

 

WRITTEN BY

 ART DAVIDSON

 

           

            Up in the Idaho area where Dad's Uncle Lorenzo lived, four outlaws had stolen a herd of horses and driven them out onto the Lost River Desert .  The posse chasing them shot two of the outlaws but the other two escaped and appeared to be making their way back to Wyoming .  It was expected that the two men would go up the Bear River and then cross the divide in an effort to get to Browns Park .  From what Dad wrote, it appears the sheriffs in Uinta County and in Sweetwater County were not at all interested in apprehending the two fugitives.

            However, during the afternoon before the scheduled Thanksgiving Dance, a Pinkerton Detective came to the R. J. Gregory store in Lone Tree and organized a posse to go out and capture the outlaws at Hole-in-the-Rock Springs.  I only know two of the posse members, Josh Gregory who ran the store, and a cowboy working for Eugene Hickey who ordinarily played the fiddle for the dances.  The posse, led by the Pinkerton, went up to Hole-in-the-Rock to ambush the two horse thief's, one of whom the Pinkerton man said was also a train robber, wanted far and wide under the name of Harry Longabough.

            Not very long after the posse rode out, families from up and down the Henry's Fork of the Green River began to arrive for the Thanksgiving Dance, unaware that the fiddler had gone with the posse.  The women and children went into the school house, but some of the men went across the road to the Gregory store, which Mr. Greggory left in charge of Bill Donahue who had a crippled arm

            The two outlaws hadn't done what the Pinkerton man expected them to do.  They hadn't gone by the upper trail past the springs, but instead had followed the main road from Robertson to Lone Tree.

            Bill Donohue was the only man that looked up when the two outlaws entered the Lone Tree store, and he found himself face to face with the man who had murdered John Jarvie at Browns Park only three years before.  The next moment one outlaw lay dead on the store floor and Harry Alonzo was in custody.  Meanwhile, across the road, the dance could not begin because there was no fiddler.  Time passed and people wandered back and forth between the store and the school house.  In the meantime, the women had learned that Mrs. Luckey (whom no one thought could do anything) was able to chord the piano, but she couldn't play a tune.

            After a time the uninjured outlaw, Harry Alonzo, offered to fiddle for the dance if they would turn him loose.  No one trusted him that far, but it was finally decided to carry the dead outlaw over to the school house and put him on top of the piano.  One of his wrists was then chained to the wrist of Harry Alonzo, who was then able to fiddle for the dance, only slightly hampered by the upheld wrist.  Mrs.  Luckey chorded the piano for accompaniment, missing a beat now and then.

            When the dance was finally over, Harry Alonzo demanded he be paid for fiddling.  When he was told it was a school dance and the school board had no money to pay fiddlers, he said he would consider he had been fully paid off if he be permitted to dance one dance with the woman of his choice in the school house.  At last, it was decided the men could keep him from escaping, so he was released from the dead outlaw.

            When Harry Alonzo was released, he strolled twice around the room, looking each woman over, as if he were trying to pick out a house he would like to purchase.  On the second trip around the room, he stopped and asked Grandma Stoll to dance, but she said she was too old.  Next he asked the wife of Corey Hanks to dance, but she replied that she never danced because her crippled and blinded husband was unable to dance.  Then Harry Alonzo stopped in front of Mother, bowed like a Frenchman, and asked if she would dance with him.  Mother refused, but just then Mrs. Luckey announced that while she could chord passable well and did not know any other dance tunes, she could play La Varsuvvienne.  At this all the people in the school house began to clap, and urge Mother to dance.  Reluctantly she agreed, while Dad looked like black thunder and shook his head.

            As Mother began to dance with Harry Alonzo to the faltering strains of La arsuvvienne, the other people began to sing the words of the tune: “Do you see my, do you see my, do you see my new shoes?  With Buckle and bow, and the hole in the toe?”  Dad was about to begin “weeping and waillin and gnashing his teeth” and there would have been “Hell to Pay”, except...except...]        

            When the dancing couple was down near the outside door, and while the crowd was still singing, the door was pushed open and the Pinkerton Detective entered the school house.  Harry Alonzo abandoned Mother there on the dance floor, grabbed the detective's gun and out the door.  He shot at two members of the returning posse, mounted a horse and disappeared into the night.  The posse members remounted and chased him up on top of Cedar Mountain (once called Phil Mass Mountain)  Riding east, two of the posse saw a rider go by in the half light of the coming dawn.  They riddled the rider with bullets, and then found the downed man was the Pinkerton Detective.  This appeared to be a ticklish situation for several people. So, for the good of all, it was decided to bury the Pinkerton man as Harry Alonzo.  His grave, covered with rocks, can still be seen on top of Cedar Mountain .  No one expected to ever see Harry Alonzo again..

 

 

 

The History of Lone Tree Wyoming