The Hour Before Sunlight

The mountains wore the winter dark,

The canyon held its breath;

A cabin stood above the mine,

Its windows dim with firelight.

The horses stirred; a dog began

To bark into the cold.

The mountains watched the dawn arrive.

The lawmen had ridden through the night,

From Klondyke to the hills,

And gathered round the timber walls.

Their warrants named the Power sons;

The sheriff sought Jeff, too,

And questions still surrounded Ola May's death.

The mountains watched the dawn arrive.

A door swung open. Voices called.

A rifle broke the morning.

From window, wall, and doorway came

The answering reports of gunfire.

No witness could afterward

Make every version one.

The mountains watched the dawn arrive.

McBride fell. Kempton fell.

Wootan would not rise again.

Jeff Power took a bullet to the chest;

His sons were wounded, but survived.

Haynes rode away to summon help,

The only lawman left alive.

The mountains watched the dawn arrive.

By evening Jeff himself was dead.

His sons and Sisson disappeared

Across the border into Mexico.

A manhunt spread through Arizona;

In March the fugitives were caught,

And prison doors received them.

The mountains watched the dawn arrive.

Yet even now the cabin stands,

A witness made of timber,

A place where certainty gives way

To testimony and dispute.

Some say the lawmen called a warning;

Some say the first shots came without one.

The mountains watched the dawn arrive.