Chapter 17 Postscript A Thousand Miles From Home: Ben Snow's Journey

In the story "The Headless Horseman of Buffalo Creek," a woman remarked that Ben Snow was "a thousand miles from home.""I'm always far away from home," says Ben, a man dubbed by the creator with a "prodigal smile".Trouble followed him like an eagle lingering and waiting to swoop down to prey, and he knew he would wander all over the world... The accompanying book list includes the locations of Snow's previous adventures, and the story also reveals that he is still alive Been to some other states.During Ben's travels, he gets caught up in some important historical events.

He was in the Indian Territory in 1889, just after the famous wave of territorial expansion that eventually led to the Territory's admission to the Union as the state of Oklahoma.In the first published Ben Snow story, we know that he fought in Wounded Knee in 1890, the battle that ended the American Indian War. (We'll never know whether Ben was a soldier or a militiaman.) In 1898, Ben went to the Yukon, just as the gold rush was receding, and in 1901, when President McKinley was assassinated, he was there to track down the killer. In 1903, he witnessed the test flight of the Wright Brothers' airplane at Kitty Hawk. At Teddy Roosevelt's swearing-in ceremony in 1905, Ben was ordered to protect and befriend the great Indian warrior, Jerome Nimmo.

Ben even met Zhong Bao, the famous circus elephant, in 1885, and met Lizzie Burton after her acquittal in 1894. Although Ben Snow worked mostly as a cowboy or stockman, he worked a variety of jobs.He constantly denied that he was a shooter, but because of his outstanding marksmanship, he was often hired as a bodyguard.In the end, he opened a security company in the East, retired his faithful steed Oats for fifteen years, and bred him at the age of nineteen. Ben is always on the move, often through many dangerous situations in his search for a new job.As an amateur detective, he is always ready to stop by to solve crimes and serve justice.Indeed, as he said in the case of The Man in the Alley, "My profession is that of a judge." He used an old word for judge or magistrate.

In "The Haunted Yurt," one of my favorite Snow stories, the seventy-six-year-old Ben asks Dr. Sam Hawthorne, another outstanding historical detective from Hawke's book, for advice on a story that happened in the Soviet Union in 1890. The mystery of the ethnic campsite.From this story, we learn that Ben opened a security firm in Richmond, Virginia, and married in 1905, although he does not mention his wife by name.It was only revealed in one of the latest Snow stories, "The Tusks Out," that he was married to Tamia Ponter.In the year Geronimo made his choice, she followed the Indian commander Geronimo to Washington, where she met Ben.

A thread that runs through Snow's story is the suspicious resemblance between him and Billy the Kid.Ben's fast gun made him the famous bandit.Whenever people called him Belgium, he always retorted, but the possibility often led him to fistfights and even duels with a gun.The resemblance to Billy the Kid raises questions about Ben's birth and upbringing.Ben once claimed to have been born in the Midwest, but usually he introduced himself as coming from New Mexico, where he spent his first eighteen years. In almost half of the stories, Ben consistently introduces himself as born in 1859.But, in the Ghost Town case, he says he was born in 1861!To drive home the point, in the case of "Morning Madness," Hawke asked Ben to answer a question about his age: "My family always says I was born in 1961, but if I were Billy, I was born in 1959. Sometimes I get confused myself. Anyway, I'm either twenty-eight or thirty." Perhaps Hawke kept up the possibility that he was Billy the Kid, buried in Someone else in Fort Sumner, New Mexico.After all, Hawke describes Ben as a man with a "gunner's grin."

[Note: SMM = Sacred Mystery Magazine, EQMM = Ellery Quinn Mystery Magazine] "Arrow Valley" SMM (UK), March 1961; SMM (US) September 1961 "Street on the Frontier" SMM (UK), May 1961; SMM (US), February 1962 " Ghost Town" SMM (England), September 1961; SMM (US), January 1963 "Flying Man" SMM (UK), September 1961; SMM (US), July 1962 "Man in the Lane" SMM (England), April 1962; SMM (US), June 1963 SMM (UK), September 1962; SMM (US), December 1963 "Snow in Yucatan" SMM (US), January 1965 "The Vanishing Steamboat" EQMM, May 1984

The Beach Brothers, EQMM, August 1984 "The Five Hundred Hours of Dr. Winston" EQMM, December 1984 "The Ring of the Bell" EQMM, April 1985 The Phantom Stallion, EQMM, October 1985 Sacramento Wax Museum, EQMM, March 1986 The Only Tree in Taxco, EQMM, October 1986 Poker at the Nugget Casino, EQMM, March 1987 "Golden Heart Coffin" EQMM, October 1987 Nudes in the Bar, EQMM, February 1988 The Victorian Hangman, EQMM, August 1988 "The Gold of Saca Javier", EQMM, January 1989 Murder at the Circus, EQMM, August 1989 "Walking Ben Snow" EQMM, January 1990

"Pirates of Death Valley" EQMM, July 1990 "The Haunted Yurt" (with Dr. Sam Hawthorne), EQMM, December 1990 "Edge of 1900," EQMM, February 1991 "The Headless Horseman of Buffalo Creek" EQMM, June 1991 "Five Days in Texas Town" EQMM, January 1992 "The Mystery of the Golden Cross" EQMM, September 1992 Geronimo's Choice, EQMM, January 1993 "The Passion of Lizzie B" EQMM, September 1993 "Morning Madness" EQMM, April 1994 "Rest of Horse Thieves" EQMM, December 1994 "Granite Idol" EQMM, June 1995

"Blood Flag" EQMM, February 1996 issue "Making Money with a Knife" EQMM, January 1997 "Fangs Out" EQMM, August 1997 "Golden Cross Lost" 1882, New Mexico The Five Hundred Hours of Dr. Winston November 1883, circa Oklahoma Sacramento Wax Museum Sacramento California 1885 Murder at the Circus September 1885 Windsor Ontario Canada The Only Tree in Taxco, New Mexico, 1886 "The Ring of the Bell" 1887, New Mexico The Lost Way of Ben Snow, 1887, New Mexico "Pirates of Death Valley" 1888, California "Morning Madness" April 1889, Indian Territory (rear, Oklahoma) "Haunted Yurt" (pre-event) Summer 1890 Dakota Sioux Campground "Victoria Executioner" August 1890 September, south of Los Angeles, CA "Gold of Sacajaville" Early 1891, Yellowstone Park, Wyoming "Border Street" Late winter and early spring 1891, Arizona

Arrow Valley, Arizona, 1891 "Phantom Stallion" circa 1892, Texas "Rest of Horse Thieves" December 1892, Utah and Arizona "Coffin of the Golden Heart" 1893 Tombstone, Arizona The Passion of Lizzie B., Nebraska, July 1894: Omaha, "Ghost Town," circa 1895, California The Headless Horseman of Buffalo Creek October 1895, Montana Nude in a Bar July 1896 Oklahoma Flying Man Arizona or Texas September 1896 Granite Idol "Spring 1897, Las Cruces, New Mexico "Poker at the Nugget Casino" Summer 1898, Yukon Territory Money by a Knife Spring 1899 Arizona

"Edge of 1900" Arizona, December 31, 1899 "Flag of Blood" June 1900, El Paso, Texas, Mexico "Snows in Yucatan" circa 1900, Texas and Mexico Five Days in Texas Town, November 1900, Texas (near the Louisiana border) The Man in the Lane, 1901, New York: Buffalo Missouri Kansas City; New York City 1901, Texas; Louisiana Anna: New Orleans, The Vanishing Steamboat, 1902, Vicksburg, Mississippi "Beach Brothers" December 1903, Kitty Hawk, North Carolina "Jeronimo's Choice" February-March 1905 Virginia and Washington DC "Foods Out" August 1908 Utah "Haunted Yurt" (later events) September 1935, Northmond, a small town in New England

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