BY: SUE WATSON

Rene Fairchilds was brought up to be a gracious, lovely lady and she was indeed a beautiful one. She was schooled in all the refined arts of the Victorian era with all the accepted social graces of her day. She married well and had four small sons in four years and her life was serene and safe in the small Ohio town in which she lived.

Then her tall handsome father came charging back from the gold rush after having been away nine long years and his enthusiasm for the west combined with his great restlessness was like a shot in the arm to the whole town. Soon he had organized a wagon train of innocents and was trailing west to a glory that lived only in his fertile and fiery imagination.

In the first Indian skirmish Rene's husband was killed leaving her a heritage of four small boys and monumental bewilderment. She was helpless as a babe in the face of pioneer hardships, but on and on and on they came.

Rene's mother, Katherine, was a kind and cultured gentle woman and her father, John Fairchilds, was a powerful man who would right gladly lend a hand wherever his great strength was needed. It was some place in Wyoming that they came to that steep sand pitch and the first wagon was nearly to the top when the horses faltered, straining, heaving, blowing, trying, trying their hearts out in the ungrateful service of man.

The wagon started slowly to inch back when John hurried up to put his mighty shoulder to the wheel and lend his strength to that of the team. Slowly the trend reversed and the team went ahead and finally over the top, but John Fairchilds, the leader, the strength of the wagon lay writhing in agony in the dust of the trail. At Fort Bridger John insisted that the rest of the wagon train go on to California without them.

There was not much relief for a double hernia in those days, but a military doctor at Fort Bridger made a truss that helped. Winter was sneaking up like a hungry coyote before John felt able to travel again. There was a heavy conestoga wagon with four horses and a buckboard with two. The hired drivers had gone on with the wagon train leaving John and Katherine with their widowed daughter and her sons and their two younger daughters Lilly and Cora.

Cora, the most aggressive of the girls and the one most like her father, declared she could drive the buckboard anywhere her father could drive the conestoga and the set out from Fort Bridger in late October, veering south, but ever westerly, on an old Indian trail that led over Taylor Mountain and on down into Ashley Valley.

John's strength was spent as they made camp on the banks of Ashley Creek and he wondered what was next for he knew he could drive no further.

Then a man named Dodds came riding into camp on a blazed face sorrel horse and the Fairchilds family were glad to be persuaded to stay until spring. And by spring John's restless heart had grown deep roots here. He loved the deep sandy loam "apple growing" soil along Ashley creek", the crystal trout streams, the sun rises over the canyon. He spent the rest of his long life here.

Then along came Jones, a great blustering bear of a man, trapper, hunter, frontiersman. His strength seemed to make up for all of Rene's weaknesses. They were married and their first born was a girl. Rene had gone to her mother's home for her confinement and then had refused to go back to Jones.

"He needs an ox, not a wife" was Rene's calm appraisal of the situation. She was no match for his brute strength and her helplessness and refinements were infuriating to him. He pleaded, he begged, he tried to be patient, but Rene said "no" firmly but in a lady-like manner. Jones was completely baffled. He could have managed a woman who would scream or fight, or throw tantrums, or dishes or even lead, but one who kept her voice low was beyond his understanding. His frustrations festered for three months before the boil of his annoyance came to a head.

Rene and her boys were out in the garden when she saw Jones coming and she knew that the show down was at hand. She rushed the children into the heavy log corn crib and bolted the door. Hank and May Ruple had come over from Island Park to help put up the Fairchilds hay.

May's baby boy was only a few days older than Rene's baby girl and they had fed the babies and put them down for their morning nap just before Jone's explosive arrival. The hired man, Charles Bangledorf, and the ailing John Fairchilds were cooking hay near by and Hank Ruple was running the mowed down in the lower forty, when Jones erupted into the yard.

He charged the corn crib like a battering ram but the plank door held firm and his booming bellowed threats failed to move the terrified corn crib inmates. May Ruple's voice, that usually carried authority was brushed aside like the wing of a mosquito.

Fairchilds and Bangledorf came on the run to help the besieged women and boys. A man was just what Jones needed right now. He might not be able to manage a woman but by gosh he could deal with a man.

In just about the time it takes to tell it he slashed Bangledorf to ribbons. Then with a mighty roar of satisfaction he made for the house, grabbed up a baby and left, on his already tired horse.

With one horrified look May Ruple saw that he had her baby. There was her red flannel blanket whipping in the wind over the rump of Jone's horse. She ran shrieking and squalling to the lower forty. The noise of the mower had kept her husband from hearing the ruckus up at the house but he heard his wife's terrified shrieks long before she got to him and by the times she had told him that Jones had murdered Charley Bangledorf and stolen their baby he had a horse out of harness and was pounding along hot on Jones trail, and only the fact that Jones' horse was tireder than his horse did he finally catch up. "Why the ---did you have to kill Bangledorf, you--" roared Ruple. "And what do you want with my boy?"

"Your boy", gasped Jones incredulously, and the baby had to be undressed to convince him. This was defeat for Jones. He rode away like a man seeing a ghost. He didn't want to kill Bangledorf. He didn't even want to kill Rene any more.

Back at the house the women had dumped a hundred pound sack of flour into a blanket and placed it along side poor old Charley and gently rolled him over into it and wrapped him up snugly to stem the tide of the blood. He lived.

Early the next spring Abe Coon, Ruple's brother-in-law, was taking a herd of cattle up to the wild mountain range when suddenly in the trail ahead he saw an apparition of Jones, slimmer by at least 60 pounds, drawn and haggard. The change from the blustering bully was hard to believe. His frantic questions about Rene and the baby were pathetic and finally Abe Coon told him that Bangledorf had lived in spite of the senseless slashings he had received. Jones was incredulous and incoherent in his stammerings. "Then I can leave this hole and go back to my family?" he asked eagerly and from that day in about 1883 to this it has been universally called Jones' Hole.

Yes, there was a happy ending--and several more children, all girls, Mable, Ora, Flossie, etc. who remembers them? Compiled Dec.10,1996, by Forrest D. Linderman