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Sample
Excerpt
Excerpt from
Chris Evans’ Account
of the Fight at Young’s Cabin
“A bullet sped past my left eyebrow”
Just why Hollywood has yet to
discover the story of Christopher Evans and John Sontag is difficult to
understand. It is one of the true, classic tales of the Old West. All
the elements of epic drama are there—the greedy railroad barons robbing
the farmers of the San Joaquin with their high freight rates; familial
love and devotion; farmers accused of train robbery and beset by bounty
hunters after blood money; gunfights and ambushes and finally the
showdown shootout between a posse and the two outlaws.
Year after year Hollywood churns out films based on far lesser
material. Perhaps the story of Evans and Sontag is just too much of a
cliche, even for Hollywood. After some one hundred years of “Western”
novels and films, the material is perhaps too familiar. At first glance
it appears to have all been done before.
Oddly enough, a version of the saga was filmed in 1914 by one of the
participants, following his release from prison. But that is getting
ahead of our story.
A rough log cabin near Ottawa, Canada, was the birthplace of
Christopher Evans in 1847. Like so many others, his Catholic parents had
probably emigrated from Ireland during the great potato famine. Chris
claimed to have left home at an early age, crossing the border and
enlisting in the U.S. Army during the Civil War. Since no records of
service have ever surfaced, he may have joined a Minnesota unit that
chased Indians, rather than Confederates. Later there were stories that
he served with Custer’s cavalry. If so, his service would have been
brief since Chris himself once stated he had lived in Tulare County
since 1869.
In California Evans labored at lumbering, mining, farming and
teamstering. In November 1874 he married fifteen-year-old Molly Byrd
whose family owned a ranch 25 miles northeast of Visalia in the southern
San Joaquin Valley. In 1876 Chris operated a steamboat on Owens Lake in
Inyo County, but moved back to Visalia after a brief sojourn in
Washington state. He bought some land on the edge of town and here built
his home and outbuildings for a farm. Although he lacked much formal
education, Evans read prodigiously and grew to love quoting the classics
and great poetry.
Although their first born had died in infancy, Chris and Molly’s
daughter Eva grew up to be very close to her father. Young Elmer also
died at an early age, but daughters Ynez and Winifred added to the joy
of the young couple. The family saw hard times and Chris did whatever
work he could find. From 1878 to 1882 he worked in a mine in San Luis
Obispo County. Later he would pilot gang-plows, work harvesters, and do
warehouse work for the Bank of California. On occasion he even worked
for the Southern Pacific railroad, supervising Chinese track crews.
At this time the Southern Pacific was thoroughly despised in the vast
San Joaquin Valley because of excessive freight rates and the bloody
1880 Mussel Slough shootout. Five settlers died in that fight, slain by
a U.S. marshal’s party in a dispute over railroad land titles. Two of
the marshal’s party had been shot and killed, also. |
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