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Mysterious Monsters around to observe them. The men stopped, or not, largely unexplored. Sure, you
mixed emotions raging within them. look at a map and see roads, names of
(Continued from page 25)
Fear told them to run. And at the same peaks, and what-not, and it looks civil-
Just as the world-wide legend of a time, they were urged forward by the ized. But the country is so difficult to
Deluge appears to have basis in fact, instinct of the hunter-the desire to bag penetrate that the maps probably were
so might the Thunder Bird legend be the damndest trophy of them all ! made by a process known to engineers as
a racial memory of an actual creature Before they could get within accurate "papering." They survey around the
that lived in ancient times. Was the range, the creature took off again. The edges, take sights on high peaks and
strange flying monster of Tombstone the men ran back to their horses, hastily other landmarks inside the area, mark
last one? Was it a lone-and lonely- mounted, and again took up their pursuit. them on the map, and never go in at all.
relic of another age which somehow had As before, it flew only a short distance A fairly accurate description of the
managed to live on in the unknown coun- before coming down. Sasquatch can be assembled from the
try of northwestern Mexico or in an un- This time, as the men approached, the reports of persons who claimed to have
explored cranny in the Rockies? We can creature made no move to escape. They seen the creature. (One authority main-
only speculate. saw why. It had come down with one tains that there have been many more
wing folded under and trapped beneath sightings of the Sasquatch than of the
WHEREVER it came from, the minds its body. It was powerless to fly. But Abominable Snowman!)
of those two cowboys reeled at the the other wing was free, and one swipe This creature is said to be between six
sight of it. They had been jogging along, of it could crush a man. Or a flick of and eight feet tall, weighing between
slumped easily in the saddles as their the giant tail ·could send one spinning 400 and 1,200 pounds, man-like in stat-
horses clop-clopped steadily across the across the sand, a lifeless rag doll. Those ure except for unusually long forearms,
bleak Arizona desert. It was the spring enormous jaws lined with sharp teeth with receding forehead, protruding lips,
of 1890. Already tall yuccas had sent could bite a cowboy in half. prominent brows, and covered with a
skyward their bloomstalks festooned with Staying clear, the men began firing thick growth of inch-long hair.
delicate pear-sized white blossoms. Green at the beast. When it was dead, they The first white explorers heard of the
leaves were peeping from buds on the approached to examine their · quarry. Sasquatch from the Indians. But the In-
dead-looking branches of scraggly mes- They could hardly believe the evidence dians soon learned to keep their mouths
quite bushes. of their own eyes. Straightening the shut about the creature because the white
One of the men had raised his head bent-under wing, they paced off the man merely said the Indians were crazy.
and swept the horizon with keen hawk wingspan, which totaled about 160 feet. The situation hasn't changed much.
eyes. Although the Indian troubles were That, friends, is considerably longer Many people· still refuse to place any
over-Geronimo and his murderous band than that of the. huge B-47 Air Force credence in Sasquatch stories.
had been subdued just a handful of bomber of just a few years ago. The But no one in the world could have
years before-long and close association eel-like body measured ninety-two feet in convinced members of a train crew of
with danger had made it habitual to length and fifty inches in diameter. The the California Pacific Railroad that
keep a wary eye peeled. head was eight feet long. The wings were there was no such thing. Because, in
As his head swung around he had of a thick translucent membrane like 1884, they captured one!
caught a movement in the corner of his those of a bat and had no feathers, It was a young male, not quite five
eye and had wheeled in the saddle for scales or hair. The skin of the body was feet high and weighing about 130 pounds,
a better look. And that was when he had smooth. caught afte1· a chase by the engineer and
seen the monster. The men sliced off the tip of · one four other crewmen. He was christened
As if its staggering size weren't wing and took it with them. They arrived "Jacko" and kept in a cage in a baggage
enough, its configuration was something in Tombstone late in the evening of car and exhibited in towns along the
out of a nightmare. Those incredible April 25, 1890 to make preparations to railroad. '
wings were attached to a long, snake- skin the creature and ship the hide for Stories of Sasquatch sightings persist
like body. Two legs, with feet sporting examination by scientists. right down to the present day. The
formidable bony claws, grew from in And that's the only mention of this creatures occasionally are reportedly
front of the wings. The head .resembled extraordinary event this author has been seen around remote logging camps, as
that of an alligator, but with protrud- able to find. are their enormous tracks. A few years
ing eyes the size of plates. Did the ranchers really return and ago a band of Sasquatches, evidently re-
As they watched, frozen with fear and skin the thing? If so, where is the hide senting an intrusion into its territory,
amazement, the creature stirred. Evi- today? Or did the carcass of this amazing attacked a camp at night and demon-
dently rested, it began preparing to take creature finally turn to dust under the strated their disapproval by vandalism,
flight. Again the sand swirled as those burning desert sun? Or was the whole which included picking up a number of
giant wings fanned the air, slowly at incident a hoax? full fifty-five-gallon gasoline drums and
first, then more rapidly. It started to (I'd like very much to obtain more hurling them over a cliff! However,
run, awkwardly dragging its clumsy information on this almost unbelievable there are no known instances of their
elongated body. As it gained speed, it event and will welcome letters from read- attacking human beings, of whom they
lifted its tail to reduce the drag. Sud- ers knowing anything about it.) apparently are afraid.
denly it was airborne ! Startling in its implication is · the
The horses tried to bolt. The spell was THE WEIRD flying monster of Tomb- August, 1965, Sasquatch incident near
broken. With whoops and yells, the cow- stone is not the only outlandish crea- Monroe, Michigan, a small town on the
boys spurred their mounts in pursuit. ture said to exist, or to have existed in shore of Lake Erie between Detroit and
At first they thought their .chase was the past, in America. In the Pacific Toledo. Miss Christine Van Acker, then
hopeless. But the monster stayed low, Northwest there are numerous stories seventeen, and her mother, Mrs. George
gaining just enough altitude so that the of a huge hairy ape-man called the Owens, were driving through the area.
downstrokes of its wings would clear the Sasquatch. Aquatic monsters have been Apparently they had stopped, for they
brush. It flew perhaps half a mile, then reported in lakes in the western United reported that a seven-foot, 400-pound,
came down again. States and Canada. And the stories of ape-like man covered with black hair
The men galloped to within several the enormous "thing" that lived in south- reached through the car window and
hundred yards of the exhausted creature. ern California during the last century put its hand on Christine's head, giving
Then the horses refused to go any closer. are nearly beyond belief. her a black eye in the process. Probably
No amount of spurring, whipping or The Sasquatch from earliest times it was just curious about Christine's
yelling could induce the fear-stricken has been reported in the vast crescent- blonde bouffant coiffure, and the shiner
animals to advance. So the cowboys dis- shaped forest stretching from northern merely an accidental result of the crea-
mounted, slid their rifles out of the California up and around into western ture's awkwardness.
scabbards, pumped shells into the cham- Canada. The startling aspect of this incident
bers, and cautiously approached on foot. This part of the country is moun- is the fact that never, as far as I've
The creature laboriously maneuvered tainous, densely forested and, believe it been able to determine, has such a re-
Fall, 1969 37