Real Ghost Stories Chapter 9 - The Cabin in Browns Park, a supernatural fanfic

ooOoo

The Supernatural characters belong to Kripke Enterprises and the CW, not me. No money is being made from this story. It is for entertainment only.

Real Ghost Stories

Chapter 9

The Cabin in Browns Park

"This is a horse."

"Yes, Dean," Sam repressed a smile. "It definitely is a horse. So is this animal." Sam pounded the dust out of the rump of his own horse.

Dean Winchester turned to his little brother, reins held loosely in a gloved hand. "Why am I getting on a horse? The car is right there." He waved a hand at the Impala, parked under a stand of cotton wood trees outside the corral.

"We're going to go on a 20 mile ride into a place called Browns Park. There are no paved roads close to the site. I didn't think you would want to drive the Impala on old dirt roads, cut through with rain formed gullies and strewn with the boulders that wash down from the hills. There's also an old wooden suspension bridge to cross. Last I heard to get a pick-up truck over it, you would have to fold the side mirrors down."

Dean just stared at Sam. "Where the hell are we going? Or, better yet, why are we going to this place?"

Sam grinned. "You haven't questioned why we have been driving around Colorado for the past week without a goal and now you're going to get fussy? All I'm going to say is that this is a present for you. "

"For me?" Dean grimaced. "I just want to know where we going. I didn't say anything about our aimless wandering because I like Colorado."

"Since I ruined your hero Wild Bill Cody for you I thought you might like to see another western legend's vacation spot. We're going to go investigate Butch's cabin. It's supposed to be haunted."

"Butch's cabin. Butch who?" Dean responded.

"Robert LeRoy Parker, and his friend Harry Longabaugh, that's who," Sam smiled. "Better known as Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid."

XXXXXXX

They saddled up and Sam handed up bedrolls and camping supplies to hang off the backs of their saddles.

"Oh, goody," Dean snarked. "A 20 mile horseback ride with a chance to sleep on the ground at the end. This is a great present."

The brothers turned the horses' heads west and started forward. The valley lay peacefully dreaming in the warm summer sun. The tall grass whispered and far in the distance the foothills of the Rocky Mountains rose into the clear Western sky.

Sam spoke in his lecture voice, "This is a portion of the Green River Basin. The Green River flows out of Wyoming, jogs into Colorado for about 40 miles of river bed then flows into Utah to join up with the Colorado River. Browns Park was a station on the old Outlaw Trail that can be followed from Canada to Mexico. The northern end in Saskatchewan follows the Big Muddy Creek into Montana. The southern end of the trail will take you into Mexico. Dotted along the trail are famous Outlaw stopping places like The-Hole-In-The-Wall in Wyoming and the Robbers Roost."

Sam continued, "This cabin in Browns Park was owned by two sisters, Anna and Josie Bassett. The women were acknowledged members of Cassidy's Wild Bunch, the legendary bank and train robbers that were led by Butch. After the gang became famous they were continuously pursued by Pinkerton Detective Agents and this cabin became a retreat. It is remote today and it was even more remote a hundred years ago. It was a place to rest and refuel, to recover from wounds and to relax. "

"The Bassett sisters kept horses and beef cattle in the pastures around the cabin. There was plenty of wild game to hunt and space to breath and slow down." Sam stopped talking and the quiet of the countryside invaded.

The brothers rode through the day and as evening began to fall they arrived at the weathered cabin. The doors and windows were long gone and the roof was caved in. The silence stretched far over endless rolling hills and, since the cabin was built on top of a rise, you could see for miles in any direction. A perfect place for people on the run; you could see anyone approaching, like a posse, for miles before they arrived.

They built a fire ring outside the cabin. It didn't look like it was wise to try and use the fireplace inside. The walls still standing didn't look like they would be standing long.

Dean stood and looked out over the empty landscape. In his mind's eye he could imagine the horsemen of a hundred years ago. They rode the hills, laughing and calling to each other. He felt almost as if their ride today had not just been covering distance. With every mile traveled the years had dropped away. Standing outside of the old outlaw cabin he felt closer to those long dead robbers than he did to the pulse and drive of the modern day.

Dean turned to Sam and asked, "Ok, what's the hunt here? Do you have details?"

Sam looked up from his place by the fire. "It's an old story. It seems that there is still a cowboy here, most likely one of the Wild Bunch but he has never been named. In 1983 a man named Jeff Goldsmith stopped at this cabin. He was a writer of Western novels and he was visiting his son who worked cattle on this range."

Sam poked at the fire and sparks swirled up and died. There was almost no wind and the sound of the night calling insects was all that broke the silence.

"Goldsmith visited this cabin and stood in the doorway, resting against the frame. He felt for a moment as if someone else looked out through his eyes, watching the antelope graze in the fields. It only lasted a moment and then the feeling was gone."

"Not much to go on, Sam." Dean responded.

Sam shrugged. "Never said it was much. I just wanted to take you to visit Butch's cabin. I thought you would like to connect with the legend."

Dean dropped a hand onto Sam's shoulder. "I appreciate it, Sam. You're right; this is the perfect place for me. I sometimes feel as if I was born in the wrong century. A hundred years ago I might have joined Cassidy's bunch and ridden the prairies from Montana to Mexico. There was a freedom then that we have lost. Life was hard and there were a lot of draw backs; a lot of ways you could die out here alone but at least the horses didn't have license plates on their asses and you could move over the land without caring about what border you crossed."

They walked about the hillside and checked out the cabin but there didn't seem to be even a trace of that cowboy that Jeff Goldsmith had met in 1983. As the moon rose higher they laid out their bedrolls and went to sleep.

In the early morning Dean woke first and set up their pot to boil water for coffee. He poked at Sam and his brother's eyes flickered open. "What the hell, Dean? Go back to sleep." Sam pulled his blanket over his head.

With a hot cup of coffee in his hand Dean strolled about, waiting for the grounds to settle. He stood in the cabin doorway, comfortably leaning on the frame. The rising sun tickled his skin with warmth and he breathed in the morning air. Down slope an antelope broke cover and Dean focused on the slender, delicate animal.

Then he felt it, the touch of a stranger. Someone else was looking out of his eyes. A stranger was watching the deer through him and enjoying the caress of the morning sun. There was no fear, there was only the feeling of contentment; an acceptance of his place in the world. Dean simply stood still and let the possession go on. There was no feeling of danger, only peace.

After a while the stranger went away and Dean moved back to tend their fire.

Sam awoke a little later, yawned and stretched and smiled at his brother.

"We can go now, Sam." Dean said. "I found your ghost while you were snoozing away. There's nothing here for us to do. The spirit won't hurt anyone; he's content in this place. This is his heaven. We should just let him be."

"Thanks for finding this place for me. I can only hope at the end of my days I can find a shelter like this for my ghost to wait for eternity to pass."

Later that morning they saddled up and left the cabin in Browns Park and its resident ghost. They left the place to the wind and the sunlight, isolated on the hill rise and at peace.

ooOoo

Notes and References:

"Ghosts of the Old West" by Earl Murray, 1988

Wikipedia: Articles on Butch Cassidy and on The Wild bunch

Browns Park is now the Browns Park National Wildlife Refuge, a designated habitat for migratory waterfowl. Although the park contains the remains of several historic sites, Butch's Cabin fell down long ago. Nothing is left of the outlaw refuge. Amazingly the single lane suspension bridge still exists and is in use by the exceptionally brave. It is known as the "Swinging Bridge".