Passing Encounter - Alferd Packer



As the party is riding the trail somewhere between Phoenix and the California border, they will encounter an unusual convayance.

They will see an 8 horse train pulling an iron coach. It is surrounded by 12 soldiers from the 82 Calvery out of California. There are 8 soldier in the front of the group and 4 in the rear. There are also 4 civilians that turn out to be law men. They are deputies from Santa Anna where their prisoner was apprehended.

The iron coach has a barred window and as the party is passing by they will hear (if they make a listen roll on 12)
"In the name of the Almighty help me please! I am an innocent man wrongly accused of a heinous crime that no sane man would commit. My name is Alferd Packer and I swear I have been a law abiding man for all my days!"

One of the deputies looks real friendly and will willingly come over and talk to the party if they seem interested. His name is Clark Nederson and is a red faced large man riding a horse that looks to small for him. He will tell them:

Their prisoner is Alferd Packer
In Feb. about 9 years ago, Alferd Packer and 5 other men ventured into the San Juan Mountains. In the best of times it was a 75-mile trip but they started out thinking it was only 40 miles and they carried only 10-days supply of food. Trapped in the mountains with snow to their shoulders and piling higher daily, they ran out of food and energy on a gravel terrace. Only one man emerged on the other side of the mountains arriving at the Los Piños Indian Agency building that next April.
He gave them a false account of what happened and led investigators to the wrong spot. He was arrested and take to the jail in Saguache.

That August, while he was in jail,  a Harper's Weekly Magazine artist named John Randolph found five sets of human remains in a cluster on the gravel terrace. It looked like one of them had put up a fight but the others had been killed in their sleep. Two of the bodies had pieces of flesh cut out of them, one from the breast, the other from the thigh. He reported his discovery and a posse of 20 men visited the site and burried the dead men.

Filled with revulsion and anger, the posse arrived back at Saguache to find he had escaped with the help of a local sympathizer who beleave his lies.
He has been on the run for the last 9 years and was caught at last in a saloon just outside of Santa Anna. They are bringing him to Phoenix to trial as the case has received so much publicity.

There are some folks say that he is a man who becomes an animal, but only the foolishly superstious beleave such nonsense.