This was Dutch

Dear Editor,

This was Dutch. He rode into our Valley in the summer of '8l. I was a kid then, barely topping the backboard of father's old chuck-wagon. I was on the upper rail of our small corral, soaking in the late afternoon sun, when I saw him far down the road where it swung into the valley from the plains beyond.

He rode easily, relaxed in the saddle, leaning his weight lazily into the stirrups. Yet even in the easiness was a suggestion of tension. It was the easiness of a coiled spring, of a trap set.

Even his name was mysterious. Just Dutch, nothing else. We never knew whether that was his first name or last or, indeed any name that came from his family. "Call me Dutch," and that was all he ever said.

This was Dutch. A stranger who rode out of the heart of the great glowing West -- into the Washington valley in the summer of 1981. The spring of the coil unwound with a snap.

He knew what to do. And when his work was done rode back whence he had come and he was Dutch.

Sincerely,

Thomas Kope

Baldwin Park, Calif.