Some stories are so strange that you almost hate to believe them. But when they are told by someone you know, someone you respect, and someone who has spent a lifetime exploring one of Wyoming’s most mysterious places, well, you listen.
This is a ghost story told to me by my legendary desert rat friend, the late Jimmy Smail.
Cowboy State Daily has been featuring ghost stories during the month leading up to Halloween. I cannot think of a better one than the story Jimmy told me about three Indian braves who appeared at the foot of his bed one night.
Jimmy was a bona fide expert on Wyoming’s Great Red Desert. He was born in Farson, and his family started taking him into the desert when he was just a little fellow. His father once hoisted him up into a notch high on Boar’s Tusk north of Rock Springs when Jimmy was only 18 months old.
That ought to get a kid interested in the desert!
Jimmy spent the rest of his life exploring that vast, mysterious country. I was fortunate enough to be taken on a number of wonderful trips with him. He was a nonstop storyteller, and every trip seemed to reveal another fascinating piece of this remarkable place.
Jimmy died at age 82 a few years ago. I sure miss him.
But I will never forget his ghost story.
Three Indian Braves At Foot Of Bed
The Great Red Desert was home to Indigenous peoples for thousands of years.
It is difficult for me to imagine living out there in that enormous, often unforgiving landscape, particularly in the days before horses. Yet these people survived and thrived there, leaving behind countless reminders of their lives.
Jimmy made it his business to find those ancient sites.
On one expedition, he took me to a remarkable place where he believed he had discovered a gigantic medicine wheel. It was round, it was huge, and it featured cairns in what appeared to be all the right places.
A cairn is simply a pile of rocks, sometimes marking a trail or a special location. In some archaeological settings, arrangements of stones can tell us something about the people who built them. Jimmy believed this particular site was something special.
He told me he had discovered the place many years earlier. He carefully mapped the site, identifying the various spokes and cairns. He even placed flags to mark the different features.
He spent a satisfying day documenting what he had found. Then he went home, climbed into bed, and went to sleep.
In the middle of the night, he awoke to find three Indian braves standing at the foot of his bed. They were looking down at him. Their faces were very, very serious.
Jimmy did not recall hearing any of them speak. There was no conversation, no explanation, and no argument. But he said the message was unmistakable.
He was not supposed to be messing around with that ancient site.
Jimmy got out of bed, dressed, and headed straight back to the desert. He arrived around dawn and went to work removing the flags he had placed around the site. He did his best to cover up the cairns and restore the area to the way he had found it.
Finally, he was satisfied that the site was no longer obvious to a casual visitor. Then he went home.
And, according to Jimmy, he was never bothered by those three scary Indian ghosts again.
Now, I cannot tell you what happened in Jimmy’s bedroom that night. I was not there. I can only tell you what he told me.
But he related that story with such conviction that you knew he believed every word of it.
Jimmy was not a man given to making up stories for the fun of it. He knew that desert better than almost anybody I ever met, and he approached its ancient inhabitants with tremendous respect.
Whatever happened that night, it left a lasting impression on him. And it certainly left one on me.
Mystery Of Vision Circles
Jimmy’s ghost story was just one of many reasons I came to appreciate the mysterious nature of the Red Desert.
All across that country are ancient rock formations, including what are commonly called teepee rings. These are circular arrangements of stones often associated with holding down the edges of traditional tipis.
Jimmy had a different theory about some of them. He preferred calling them “vision circles.”
He believed certain circles might have been places where young Indian braves went to seek visions or where medicine men attempted to communicate with the spirit world.
Some were not perfectly round. Others had openings or spiraling arrangements of rocks that Jimmy thought might have been designed to allow spirits to enter.
Those were his theories, based on years of exploring the desert. They were not established archaeological conclusions, but they certainly gave us something to think about as we wandered among those ancient stones.
One summer, Jimmy and I were exploring a lonely knob about 25 miles southwest of Jeffrey City. Strange rocks covered the landscape, and powerful gusts of wind would suddenly come out of nowhere, nearly knocking us over.
We would look at each other and ask, “What the heck was that? Did you feel that?”
Was it just the wind?
Or, as we joked and wondered, could it have been the ghosts of the vast herds of bison that once roamed this country? Perhaps the cry of a lonely Indian brave seeking a vision? Maybe the imagined voice of a gold prospector caught in a snowstorm, realizing he might never make it out alive?
The desert has enough history to fuel anybody’s imagination.
Bill can be reached at Bill@CowboyStateDaily.com
