Part two

Let's digress for a moment and set some background to this epic. Phil
and I met years ago shortly after I had retired from Vietnam. We both had
an affinity for guns and through the heat of a summer afternoon we drank beer
at a bar in Apache Junction while discussing ballistics and shooting. It came out
that Phil and some friends owned a local horse ranch and when called, worked
as stuntmen for whatever Hollywood movie set that needed them. We got along
famously and over the course of the next two years, I learned horses-how
to ride, how to care for them…how to do stunt falls…trick mounting and
dismounting; and guns. They taught me how to fast draw, shooting two hundred
rounds a day and reloading them in the evening. They had a quick draw
holster rig that was handmade for me and periodically I would join them in the
little skits doing stunt shoots and falls they put on at Rawhide.

Conversely, I taught them long range shooting; being the expert, and at the end of
two years, all five were as deadly at 800 yard shots, as I had become at 50
feet with my Long Colt 45. We had fun.
From time to time the men would disappear for a few weeks at a time to
do movie stunts leaving the operation of the ranch to me. More often, Phil
would go with some of the men and some others that I didn't know into the
Superstition Mountains. When I would ask about it, I was told simply, "Don't
ask!" - and I accepted that. In May of '75 Phil came to me and explained what
they were doing. Phil had spent his entire life researching and prospecting
in the Superstitions. He spent months in northern Mexico in libraries,
monasteries and in family archives researching Spanish land grants looking
for information on what others thought were only rumors, the mysterious Peralta gold mines. These were the mines that the Peralta family supposedly had developed between the mid 1700's and the early 1800's. Phil spent twenty years of his life being rich one-year and then dirt poor the next. He found 9 of the 12 reported mines. It was at this
point that Phil decided he needed my help. After an afternoon and most of one evening explaining what he had accomplished and what he wanted me to guard, Phil offered me what appeared at the time to be an exorbitant amount of money for the job. I was to move into the mountains with them and literally live there; sleeping days and doing the
guard job at nights. I would be guarding against would be claim jumpers and the
occasional weekend warrior who had stumbled off the beaten path who needed
guidance to forest service trails ........and against the Others.

Phil then told me what he had seen over the years. Only
fleeting looks and occasional glances of men who looked like lizards.
Apparently the mines, No.'s 7 , 8 and 9 were nestled in the middle of a whole community
of them. I had a hundred questions none of which Phil could answer. Two
things came out,

number 1- they did not attack the miners unless they went down to the stand of pinions near the end of the arroyo at night and--

number 2- there were unspeakable horrible screams, growls and sounds that came up the arroyo for hours on end.

I was to ignore them and under no circumstance leave the
safety of the camp. I knew Phil Allen; and despite the disbelief running
around inside my head, knew that he believed what he had just told me. I then
suggested that the authorities be called in and was promptly told that the
mining operation was covert at best, since owning bulk gold was illegal. Phil
had worked too long and too hard all of his life for this fortune to lose it
over some "anthropological throw back". I went to bed that night doubting Phil
Allen for the first time since knowing him. But for $5000 a month, I'll stay
up nights and listen to anything scream a little.
At dawn the next morning we were on our way to the base camp with a
small convoy of supply trucks, pickups pulling horse trailers and a new crew
to replace those at the base camp. The operation lacked for nothing. At the
main camp we had steak, beer, water, tents with comfortable bunks and beds,
generators and the fuel to run them with electric lights-there were barbecue
grills, hibachi's and ice; Sweet wonderful ice. 105 temperatures were a
daytime norm and 110+ were too frequent to count. We lived on ice. I was
told that at least half of the supplies muled in to us every few days was ice.
We arrived at the mining camp about 4pm on my first day. As we rode
up the arroyo the stand of pinions was pointed out to me. I stopped to have
a look around and everything appeared to be normal. There were no signs of
anyone or anything having ever been there. Off to the north in the canyon
wall could be seen the entrance to what Phil called their cave. It was
slightly larger than 4' in diameter and was perfectly round. Nature doesn't
do straight lines or round ones. That was obviously man made. As I turned
to go back to my horse and continue up to the camp, something caught my eye
between two clumps of scrub grass. Moving one aside I saw what immediately
scared the living hell out of me. It was a footprint...... three toed, wide and
long enough for my size 11 Cochran's to fit inside the print.This brought goosebumps up along my arms and a chill to my spine. "Lets go." I said. I suddenly didn't want
to be there anymore. My mind was having a hard time absorbing what I'd
just seen and making it come out normal. One part said that what you just saw
cannot be, and the other part said, well, there it is. It was then too, as we
rode up the arroyo, I understood the Hollywood movie term we've all heard,
"I need a drink". Phil had some cold Beam at the camp.

onward to part 3 or back to part 1