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It was just my good luck to be somewhere else during most of the day when there was some bad news here. The bad news, as you doubtless know by now, was the rampage that started with a dog shooting in Penrose and ended with two suspects being captured near the mouth of Bear Creek, about three miles east of Salida.
The two suspects are 24-year-old twins, Joel and Micheal Stovall, who had lived in Florence and Penrose, where they reportedly shot a neighbor's dog and were arrested Friday night by Jason Schwartz, a Frémont County deputy sheriff.
They were handcuffed and put in the back of his patrol car, which had a barrier between the front and back seats. What happened after that is speculation, but it appears that they were able to unlock their cuffs and kill Schwartz. They left the car at an intersection about 10 miles east of Cañon City, and took off on foot with Schwartz's shotgun.
By 11:30 p.m. Friday, they had walked nearly five miles to a mobile home park in Florence where one of the brothers had rented a place three months ago. There they accosted a man and demanded, at gunpoint, keys to his pickup.
Florence police, after hearing about the Penrose incident, were already on their way to the mobile home park because they thought the Stovall brothers might be headed there. From the stolen pickup, one brother started shooting into the rear of the police car.
The driver, Florence police officer Tony Bethel, was hit by three rounds and crashed the car. He was in critical condition at last report.
The Stovall brothers headed out of town, with Florence Police Chief Mike Ingle in pursuit. Ingle said he was about 60 yards behind them when the pickup tailgate came down and someone started shooting and shattered his windshield.
The stolen pickup headed west on U.S. 50, and along the way, they got in a few more shots at their pursuers. Police set some road spikes on a bridge at Swissvale, just a few miles east of Salida. With two tires ripped to shreds, the brothers kept going until they saw a gravel trailer blocking the road at Bear Creek. They ditched the truck and ran into the mountains.
That was all Friday night. Saturday morning, just about everybody but the Coast Guard was in on the hunt.
That morning, I did notice more airplane and helicopter noise than usual, or at least it seemed that way, but it was hard to be sure, given the variations in air traffic lately.
We didn't give it much thought, though. We were headed
west, to the apex of Marshall Pass for the start of a
4.5-mile christening hike
to the summit of the
11,862-foot mountain that deserved a name and now has one:
Headwaters Hill.
There were about 30 people on the hike, including the two main movers on the project -- Dale Sanderson of Denver and George Sibley of Gunnison -- and I am pleased to report that the christening went well.
I know this because the other participants were considerate and waited until the last hiker, an out-of-shape gasping couch potato from Salida whose name modesty forbids me to mention, reached the summit of this rare triple divide -- one of only five in the United States, according to Sanderson.
To cover all the bases, we had champagne and a Ute prayer, along with brilliant sunshine and something white that fell out of the sky. It wasn't snow, hail or sleet, but it did turn into water when it melted.
Just after we got back to Salida, our younger daughter Abby called. She works at the library, and she said the police had been by to tell them to tell people to lock their houses if they went out, because there were two armed and dangerous fugitives on the loose, and they had last been seen just a couple of miles from town.
The main worry, from what she said, was that the fugitives might sneak into town, find a house they could walk into, and hole up there.
I can think of better uses for my house, and we had been planning to go out, since we had company who had gone on the hike with us -- Bill Hays, an old college friend who now lives in Salida, and his daughter, Annie, a senior at Colorado College and in September an intern at our little magazine.
They were amused by how long it took me to find the house keys and remember how to operate the locks, but eventually we got out for dinner and some live bluegrass.
While we were enjoying that on Saturday night, the Stovall brothers were spotted along Bear Creek by Casey Swanson, a state parks ranger, and he and his backups got them to come out with their hands up.
It was bad enough, but it could have been a lot worse -- the twin fugitives were already facing the Big Needle, so what did they have to lose by engaging in a running firefight through town?
I do my share and more of complaining about the local cops. But they had a containment strategy Saturday, and it worked, and I am sure I speak for all my neighbors when I express gratitude and admiration for their courage and hard work last weekend.
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