The Creature in the Desert

My dad, Marvin Mabbutt, was one of those men who could handle anything nature could throw at him. If he had lived in the early 1800’s, he would have been one of the explorers finding the other side of the American continent. But since he grew up in a coal camp during the depression, making a living was a high priority instead.

He eventually became a construction carpenter. They had to be tough too. I remember one of the things he would say about jobs in the winter was that when he hit his thumb with a hammer, it wouldn’t hurt until it thawed out at the end of the day. But a good side of his job was that it was “feast or famine” most of the time. A job might require six tens (six days a week, ten hours a day) for a month or so. Then he would be laid off for a week or two. He used the down time to hunt rocks in the desert.

The desert can be a deadly place, but my dad was always up to that challenge. His job as a construction carpenter was the thing that got him. One day, he was working about forty feet up on a scaffold. His tool belt caught on a nail and pulled him off the scaffold and he fell to the ground, breaking both legs.

The open break in the ankle of one leg became infected. Unconscious in the coal town hospital where we lived, he was sinking fast. But good friends stepped up and saved his life. His friends and my mom, who provided the legal authority, checked him out of the hospital and drove over a hundred miles to Salt Lake City with my dad in the back seat to get him competent medical care.

One leg healed fine, but the ankle bones in the other became infected and it took about ten years to overcome the infection. Eventually, using borrowed bone from his hip, the ankle bones were fused together into a single, solid piece. That leg ended up about an inch and a half shorter than the good leg.

It wasn’t long before my dad was back in his beloved garage workshop while he was healing. One of the first things he did was to modify his truck so he could drive it with one leg. Then he started to go out into the desert again, traveling around with two crutches and one good leg. His friends said it was dangerous to be out there alone with his other leg in a walking cast. Avoiding risk was never much of a priority for him. There were rocks to find out there.

One of his friends, Bill Branson, was also a big-time rockhound. At a local rock club meeting, Bill sought out my dad to find out if my dad knew anything about something strange Bill had noticed in his own desert trips.

“Marv!” Bill said, “I don’t know what’s going on out there. It’s just weird! It might be some kind of strange creature. I don’t know what it is. Have you seen anything just plain strange out there?”

“No. Nothing out of the ordinary. What did you see?”

“Well, I’ve been out in some of the baddest parts. Places that a jack rabbit couldn’t get to. But no matter where I go, I see tracks.”

“What kind of tracks?”

“Never seen anything like them before. I know it sounds impossible.”

With a serious look and downcast eyes, Bill continued.

“Marv. It looked to me like a one legged man was chasing a two legged deer.”

(Bill was a real joker. He was also the guy who drove my dad to Salt Lake and saved his life.)