Upshur 1877

William Upshur and friends fi nally had life at the mountain going their way. Th e bridge through the bat caves large entrance was at last fi nished, as well as the massive wall of logs surrounding it. Th e Trading Post was in operation, their homes built and occupied. Rodney Taylor, and Peter Birdsong were busy with their duties as Federal Marshals.

They were settled in and happy. But as we all know, as did they, nothing ever stays the same. Th ere are always those who get in the way of progress, or happiness, no matter how set in concrete. If not some one, then some thing will always interfere, and in this case, it was fi re. Upshur;s beloved Paris, Texas was on fi re, started by a drunken stepson, and so it happened that they were all visiting their families there at the time.

Th fire, however, was not all they were to contend with, there was a retreating gang of renegades, led by a Mormon fugitive, hiding out in the old abandoned shipping port of Jonesboro when the fi re broke out. Th e group of men had been chased across three states by both the army, and local law enforcement agencies for months before losing the trail in Texas. A town on fi re would furnish just the cover they needed to blow the burned-out banks iron safe and fi nance their escape to Mexico. But there was an unexpected obstacle in place....UPSHUR was in town, as was Marshal Rodney Taylor.