Beautiful Dixie Canyon, Cochise County, Michael Shoen. Bisbee, AZ.

This is the start of the rough road section which traverses the last three miles of Rattlesnake Mesa to the drop off into Rattlesnake Canyon at Power's Hill. My Suburban is parked off to the right. I was carrying a 26-pound pack and walked these last three miles of "road," the first three miles of the hike. The date was February 9, 2005. I wanted to make it into Power's Cabin for the anniversary of the Feb. 10, 1918 shootout.

This is the drop off into Rattlesnake Canyon which bends to the left in about two miles. Power's Hill is in the foreground on the right. I had never been in here before and my only guide was an internet hiking account by a gal with the moniker "Red Roxx". I figured that, if she could do it, I could too. It had been raining and was threatening rain again, but I had two USGS maps and a GPS with fresh batteries.

After about 8 miles from the start on Rattlesnake Mesa, I reached Power's Garden Cabin, the site of the Power's family main settlement. I crossed the stream maybe 11 times and couldn't believe that I did so without getting wet. There were many places I could have gone swimming had it not been so cold. I would sleep here two nights in the white cabin in the foreground, left.

This is a representative shot of the riparian area of Rattlesnake creek, a bit south of Power's Garden, taken the morning of Feb. 10. I was hiking with a day pack about 5 miles south down Rattlesnake to the junction with Kielberg Canyon and then over the saddle to the head of Kielberg canyon and thence about one-half mile to Power's Mine and Power's Mine Cabin, the shootout cabin. It had rained pretty hard the previous night but was now raining only lightly.

This is the front door to Power's Mine Cabin, the site of the shootout. The lean to on the right of the cabin, there at the shootout, has been removed. Four law enforcement officers had snuck up on the cabin as it was startng to get light. Federal Marshall Haynes was on the right-rear corner, (County) Sheriff McBride on the right-front corner, local rancher and volunteer deputy Kane Wootan was on the left-front corner. County deputy Martin Kempton was on the left-rear corner. Thomas Jefferson Powers stepped out the front door and the rest is history.

No, this is not an audition shot for the cover of Vogue Magazine. It is a portrait of myself standing in the doorway where old Jeff Powers died, taken with a throwaway camera held in my left hand. By this time that morning, I had done about 6 miles in the rain, forded the river a bunch and had seen a lot of fresh bear scat. It was also spooky up there alone, standing in the spots where four men died, where two others each lost sight in one eye and where the burgeoning national security state ran into some pretty independent citizens, including the Power's hired man, Tom Sissons, an ex-Cavalryman and Indian fighter.

This is the entrance to Power's Mine about 100 yards west of Power's Mine Cabin. No, I did not go in, but my friend Kernahan Buck and I did on a later trip (see photos following). It was in the entrance to the mine that they lay the body of old Jeff Power and it was here his son John Power lived after he was released from prison some 42 years later.

This is an old I-don't-know-what, about 100 feet from the mine entrance. You have to hike up here to appreciate how unbelievably hard it was to have drug this thing up. Just to drag a gallon of gas up here will bust your ass. You would have had to have made your own road and the Power family did just that. The Power family were real workers, workers who could have put my father to the test, and I never met a man who could stand with my father when it came to work.

This is the view old Jeff Power had when he stood in his front doorway and was blown away by a large caliber rifle at about 10 feet. His gravestone still stands in Klondyke, AZ with this inscription: "T.J. Power Sr., 1918-- Age 54. Shot down with his hands up in his own door."

This is the beginning of what was supposed to have been my second hike into Power's Cabin, the following year, Feb. 9, 2006. O.K., so I had a dumb idea. I thought I could do the first three miles of the hike (the last three miles of the old wagon road) across Rattlesnake Mesa with my BMW two-wheel drive motorcycle. My buddy Kern says I was blinded because I was in love with my motorcycle. Whatever.

I got about 1/2 mile, thrashing and tossing in the air, till I realized I had made a pretty big mistake. I turned around to go back but got stuck ascending this little valley. The weather was beautiful. My motorcycle was maybe another 50 foot down the hill in this photo. After I realized that the motorcycle would never make it up that joke of a road, I hiked back to my Suburban, drove the four hours back to Phoenix and assembled about 200 pounds of tools, timber, rope, winches and cable, plus something to eat.

I returned early the next morning after having spoken with Dan Lackner who leases this land from the Feds for his ranching operation. Dan drove out with me to assess the situation and we agreed that the motorcycle could not be pulled out by another vehicle (ATV or monster truck) without busting it up. So I set about to hand-winch it out 15 feet at a time. I suppose the hill was over 100 yards long. The winch line is visible in the photo, running diagonally from the motorcycle in the lower right up towards a winch-set boulder at the top left. By the time of this photo, I had combined two 15-foot winches for maybe a 24-foot pull. Very good exercise.

I was deep in my work, sweating and filthy, when I heard an unmistakeable "clip-clop" and thought, "That has to be a horse." It came from the wildnerness end of the road, not the "civilization" end (if one could consider Klondyke civilization). It was Don Lackner's son, Mike, out searching for lost cattle. Mike helped me set winch lines for over an hour. The Lackner brothers, Don, Dan and Wayne, run cattle on this land, as their parents did before them, and as the Power family before them. The following day, Wayne Lackner happened by and helped me as well. It was the Lackner family that accepted the Powers boys into their home after they were released from prison in 1960. God bless them.

The view from Rattlesnake Mesa looking south toward a full moon, Monday evening, after I had loaded the motorcycle back on my trailer and was heading back towards Klondyke. Dan Lackner had invited me to watch his son Kyle's high school basketball game in Safford and I made it just in time. Kyle was one of the starting players for Thatcher which almost beat Safford in a truely excellent game, the best basketball I had seen in two years.

This is a later, May 6 2006, hike into Rattlesnake Canyon and Power's Cabin, this time with my friend Kern Buck. We slept two nights at Power's Garden Cabin and day-hiked to Power's Mine and Power's Mine Cabin. Don Lackner kindly transported our backpacks the first three miles over Rattlesnake Mesa with his ATV. This photo shows me looking northeast across the field which surrounds Power's Garden Cabin. The weather was just beautiful and there was good water in the spring about 1/4 mile south of Garden Cabin. Kern and I worked together well. It is reassuring to be with another competent person, in this very beautiful, but challenging, environment.

We hiked up to Powers Mine Cabin on May 7. This is Kern standing in the doorway with his hands up, much as old Jeff Power must have appeared in 1918. Kern is a criminal defense attorney, and I worked most of my life as an attorney, so we had a lively discussion about the evidence and trial. Don Lackner told us that John Power said he thought his life had been a waste -- 42 years in prison, blinded in one eye, father killed, everything they had worked for taken. But I think the lives of the Power family have caused the Lackner family and certainly Kern and I to think. What I have thought about most is the Power family's incredible freedom and hard work. Kern has thought about what it means to have a fair trial.

Kern is standing in the window where John Power was blinded in one eye. Kane Wootan was standing at this corner when Jeff Power came out the door. "Throw up your hands," Wootan hollered. Wootan died at the spot in the lower-right foreground where there are a couple scraggly bushes. Dan Lackner later brought up a forensic scientist who analyzed the scene, including the bullet holes in the cabin. There are two books worth reading on this subject: "Shoot Out At Dawn" by Tom Power and "The Evaders" by Darvil McBride. And yes, Kern and I are coming back.

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Click on the image to read text about the firearms used in the shootout. Nick Gavrilles sent me this two-page letter just before he died. I had visited Nick right after my first hike into Power's Cabin and gave him a full set of photos plus pages from the books about the firearms used. Nick was a historic firearm collector. He was also a hard-working, honest, decent and courageous man who led an honorable life. Nick was terminally ill, which accounts for his poor handwriting. His wife Helen told me Nick enjoyed the opportunity to write this letter. Nick always loved a good story.

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Click on the image to read more about firearms. What I learned from the books and from Nick was that the shootout took place with large caliber, large-powder load rifles at very close range. This was a brutal shootfest. Next time I will measure out the distances from the cabin door and windows to the corners where the officers first started shooting and to where they ended up dead, but I think the distances are going to be between 10 and 20 feet. And why did the Federal Marshall travel from Globe, pick up two deputies in Safford, ride one day to Klondyke to pick up a third deputy and then ride all night to sneak up to this cabin at dawn, all heavily armed and with guns drawn?