It was a dark and stormy night.
That was last Saturday. And since we won’t know the outcome of that particular stormy night for another week, and since this is the last Pique until Halloween, this is a spooky story.
Actually, it was a dark and crystal clear night. The moon was new, the temperature near freezing and the fire was large and warm.
At 9,000 feet above sea level shone bright, twinkling, Christmas-like lights. But Christmas was still two months away. This was Halloween and the second best night of the year to be deep in the wilderness of northern New Mexico with a roaring bonfire, a bottle of mescal and ghost stories.
We were where we always were at Halloween: Rancho Viejo, the sprawling ruin of what was once a proud homestead, a tourist ranch, the focus of greed and political corruption, the scene of one of New Mexico’s most grisly mass murders. For the past several years, the only place we wanted to be on the eve of the night of the dead.
Fifteen crow-flying miles from Pueblo Chimayo, in the morning shadows of Truchas Peak, in a broad valley of the Rio Medio, Viejo’s found us one drizzly, overcast day several years earlier.
We’d been watching thunderheads develop from the 13,000-foot vantage of East Truchas peak. With the whole of the Rio Medio’s watershed visible below us, we could easily trace a bushwhacking route back to the trailhead, a route only a third as long as the trail back. The approaching storm pressed the urgency of egress but short-circuited our better judgment.
Rule No. 1: No shortcuts. Viejo’s found us several hours later, exhausted and with no idea where exactly we were.
It was an intriguing place. A large manor main house built from arrow-straight ponderosa pine logs was composting back into the earth near the edge of a clearing made in the forest. There was no glass in openings that had once been windows and half the roof was either strewn about the floor of the large main room or simply missing. A river rock fireplace still stood in what was surely the main room.
Surrounding the house were half a dozen smaller, adobe buildings, a fire pit with the broken remnants of a very large spit, and a nearby cottonwood stump for chopping. The largest of the adobes had clearly been a stable, the others, perhaps living quarters; it was hard to tell in their advanced state of decay.
We stayed the night, enjoying a raging fire in the massive fireplace, wondering what the devil we’d stumbled upon. Next day, we hiked to a small pueblo and bought a ride from an old Chicano named Jesus back the 50 miles by rough dirt road to where we’d left our car. On the ride there, Jesus told us a bit about where we’d been.
Señor Viejo’s story was a common one in northern New Mexico, albeit with a gruesome ending. In the years before the Second World War, outside interests—Anglo interests—squeezed land from the grip of Chicano subsistence farmers who’d owned it courtesy of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848.
A Texas cattle rancher named Dumont was apparently taken with Viejo’s spread, some 160 acres of wilderness 10 miles from the nearest dirt road, accessible only by pack horse, with no redeeming features except its remote beauty, the trout in the Rio Medio and the good hunting for big game seeking the shelter of the valley each autumn. As was not unknown, Dumont ended up buying Viejo’s land for specious unpaid taxes and a sizable bribe to the county commissioner, consisting of several hundred dollars, a comely young woman and a new DeSoto.
Dumont built the large house and most of the outbuildings and “graciously” retained Señor Viejo as a caretaker. He ran a few cattle on the land, but mostly operated it as a retreat for stressed-out businessmen in need of some huntin’ and fishin’. Dumont was famed for his annual elk hunts. After successful hunts, Viejo would spend hours turning the large spit outside the main house, a haunch of elk barbecuing slowly over mesquite embers.
Dumont’s shut down during the war and Viejo had the land pretty much to himself again. But with peace and prosperity again reigning and the world safe for democracy, Dumont came back. Viejo couldn’t stand it. The intervening years had rekindled his longing for his land.
Three years after the war, near Halloween, he snapped. In the archives of the Santa Fe Times, a series of macabre stories explain what happened next. In a blood rage, Señor Viejo grabbed an axe and systematically slaughtered seven guests unlucky enough to be staying at Dumont’s that weekend. Dumont himself—or what was left of him—was found beheaded, roasted and partially eaten, on the spit Viejo had spent so many hours turning for the guests’ table. He was never seen again.
Since Viejo’s was damn near impossible to find and still abandoned, we decided it was our spot for annual Halloween camping trips. We’d light up the big fireplace and tell each other ghost stories.
This particular year, in the middle of a compelling story, we heard a THWACK. We all froze, straining our ears in the silence. Nothing.
THWACK again. We weren’t hallucinating; the sound was unmistakable. An axe chopping. Wood?
Grabbing lights, we ran outside. We saw no one, just freshly split wood around the great cottonwood stump.
Back inside, we stoked the fire, hoping light and heat would calm us.
THWACK. Shining a light outside, we thought we saw a dim figure, a man raising an axe high.
THWACK. It was gone.
For a couple of minutes, nothing more happened. As our fire morphed steadily toward embers, we mused about staying up all night.
Suddenly outside, WOOSH. A great, bright ball of fire erupted. We screamed, scrambled, grabbed our knives and ran outside.
We were greeted with a roaring fire burning in the pit below the spit. A fire large enough to roast a man-size side of meat.
Before any of us could say, “Maybe we’d better get outta here,” a blood-curdling cry, a banshee-like scream came from the dark corner of the building behind us and we could hear footsteps running our direction. We pivoted, knives in hand, only to see our missing friend running at us, axe raised, half screaming, half laughing.
“Sorry I’m late guys. Miss anything?” he said... just before we killed him.
