I wrote about Mr. King previously.  (See That Ye May Learn Wisdom, pg. 3).  I have a new theory about his disappearance.  This story puts two local mysteries together, and would explain them both, if the story was true.  It's not.  It's just a plausible theory.

In July 1960 I stood out on the deck of the yellow house that used to sit in the field above our current home.  I was counting lightning strikes.  The storm was spectacular.  I counted 200 flashes of lightning in just eight minutes.  No rain accompanied the lightning, and five fires were started up toward Anthony Lakes.  The fires from those five lightning strikes joined and became what is known as the Anthony Lakes Fire.

Two firefighters on that fire discovered the skeleton of a man in a rocky nook or alcove where he seemingly had taken shelter.  With the skeleton were a rifle, a coffee pot, a saddle, and an 1883 coin.  His remains had lain there undisturbed for perhaps 75 years.

In 1883 white men had only lived in the valley for just 20 years.  The first settlers came in 1863.  In 1883 the area was new and sparsely populated.

Who was that man?  Why was he there?  Some conjectured that he was a miner or a trapper, but if so, where were his mining or trapping tools?  Others said that he was a traveler, but people didn't travel at that elevation.

The man's rifle, with the stock partially rotted away, is on display in the Baker museum.

This is mystery number one.  If I was an English teacher I would tell my students these facts, and then have them write the man's story.  This article constitutes my own fictional attempt.

Mystery number two is, what happened to Mr. King?  Mr. King was a man who lived on upper Willow Creek, west of Haines in the late 1800s.  He lived somewhere on my property.  No one knows his first name.  One day he disappeared, and was never found.  I can find no mention of him in Baker County history.

I quizzed Denver Markle about him.  Denver was born in 1903 on Willow Creek, and lived his whole life in the neighborhood.  He was unable to tell me anything about Mr. King.  Mr. King and his legend preceded Denver's birth.

All that is known about Mr. King is that he had no family.  He had a business partner, and one theory is that the partner did him in.  That's possible, but it's also possible that Mr. King had a debilitating accident in the woods.  Having no one to worry about him, no one would have gone looking for him, nor would have even known where to look.  Mr. King was probably a wood cutter and a rail splitter.  No one knows.  No one cared.  Mr. King simply went missing.

Denver Markle told me that when he was young, it was a newsworthy event to find a deer track here in the valley.  The reason was that big game could not overwinter in the valley because of the deep snows.  Deer and elk had to overwinter in the breaks of the John Day River, on the other side of the Blue Mountains.

Putting all of these facts together, I theorize that the skeleton found below Anthony Lakes was Mr. King.  The time was late fall, about 1885.  He needed to lay in his winter's supply of meat.  The only place game could be found was high on the mountain.

Mr. King was hunting.  Snow had fallen, and he was following the tracks of a deer across the steep mountain side.  His horse slipped and rolled down the hill.  In doing so, it rolled over Mr. King, injuring him.  The horse broke its leg in the accident.  Mr. King unsaddled his horse, shot it, and carried his gear to the rock shelter.  It was snowing.  He was badly hurt.  No one missed him, no help was available, and he was unable to walk and to help himself.

Mr. King died there on the mountain.  Had it been in the spring or in summer, scavenging animals and birds would have scattered his bones, but being close to winter, nothing disturbed his remains.  By spring the body would have been desiccated, and animals would have taken no interest.

Thus it was that Mr. King laid undisturbed on Twin Mountain for the next 75 years.