*AI generated photos were created to add visuals to the story. These are not actual photos from the time period. 

This is based on a true story…

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The Protagonist

Our story takes place in the American West circa 1895. 

Some said Jacob was tough as nails, but Jacob himself would just laugh that off. 

“You do what you got to do” he’d say to those who marveled at what he built from nothing. 

Jacob wasn’t a tall man, but he made up for it with his lean muscular physique. He was no longer a young man, but had some boyish charm now in his early 30s. 

Jacob was one of the first settlers in the Oklahoma territory. He bought the fastest horse he could find and rode it to literally stake his land in the great rush of 1893. He used the skills he learned while a hired hand on a big ranch out East. Without that experience he would have never survived in the harsh conditions of  Oklahoma.

In 1894 he married Susan, but a terribly cold winter caused respiratory infections and took her life. Jacob buried her near their home and never tried to find another, instead focusing on making a successful living. 

At first he tried growing cotton, but the post war prices were low, and he found it impossible to harvest without an abundance of cheap labor, so he switched to corn. The first year was rough, but the corn crop proved more profitable.

A Hired Hand

By the spring of 1895, his operation grew so much, he needed to hire full time help. Someone with farming experience and knowledge of operating a cattle herd.  

Jacob put an ad in the local paper, but only 2 people applied, a Spaniard that couldn’t speak English with no references and a quiet lad about 20 years old who spoke fluent English with only one recommendation from a store clerk out East.  

The lads name was Charles. He stood about 6 feet tall with a strong build, rough face and simple features. He spoke softly but intelligently. Jacob decided he could try to teach the boy and see how it went. 

Charles was eager to learn and ambitious in his duties. The first year went by quickly, with a better than expected crop and strong prices for their beef cattle. 

At first Charles slept on a cot, in a small room he prepared in the barn, but as the weather got colder, Jacob made a place for him in the house. Charles had also become a good cook, preparing the majority of the meals.

Jacob was beginning to think of Charles more as a son and Charles who was longing for a father-figure hoped that one day Jacob would fill that void. Charles had assumed that if things continued as they did, maybe one day the farm would become his. 

A New Arrival

In the Spring of 1896, Jacob took a wagon into town some 15 miles away. Charles stayed behind as it was calving season, but Jacob hinted he’d have a surprise when he returned.

A few days later, Jacob arrived, pulling behind the wagon something on a steel cart Charles had never seen. It had big wheels on either side and a large metal tank.  

Jacob explained this was a new internal combustion engine that would replace some of their manual labor. Charles was fascinated by the machine and quickly learned all he could about it, absorbing every word from the instruction manual. 

Within a few days, Charles was an expert at starting and running the engine. They used it for a variety of applications, but mostly for grinding corn, pumping water and cutting firewood. It proved to be worth every penny, the new efficiencies meant more time for planting, harvesting and taking care of the livestock, all of which meant more profit. 

A Dark Turn

Then in the winter of 1896 things took a dark turn. 

It was the coldest winter yet, with brutal gusting winds that shook the house and blew bristering cold air in through every crack. As the weeks dragged on, food grew scarce, and livestock began to perish from hunger and exposure.

No one knows what happened next, but most suppose something inside Charles’ head snapped, maybe it was cabin fever, maybe it was greed or maybe something else. But when spring arrived in 1897, Jacob was nowhere to be found. 

Those that knew Jacob well knew he would never just walk away from an operation he built from the ground up and made so many sacrifices to keep. Neighbors assumed something was amiss, but there was no way to prove it. Without a body, nothing could be done. By all accounts Jacob may have gone crazy and walked out into the snow one night where his body was ravaged by wolves and spread to the four winds. 

The years past, as Charles continued with the farming operations. 

It’s Only A Hacksaw

One day a sales man arrived, looking for Charles to question him about some new equipment he had for sale. 

The salesman found him in the barn with a hacksaw in his hand slowly cutting away on something. While approaching he saw Charles cutting on the flywheel of an engine. 

“Hello”, the salesman said, causing Charles to abruptly stop and quickly move into the doorway. 

The salesman would later tell others he saw used and well worn hacksaw blades spread out all over the floor. It appeared to the salesman that Charles had been sawing on that engine for sometime. 

The salesman never returned and the farmstead fell into disrepair. Charles got rid of all his livestock and then one year he didn’t even grow a crop. 

As the salesman’s story grew, those in the town spread rumors that Charles had killed Jacob, sawed up his body and fed it to the pigs. The harsh winter in 96 had left the hogs starving and would have left behind no incriminating evidence. 

The Great Depression

The depression hit Oklahoma hard. There were so many families that lost everything and the bank to possession of their land. The same happened to Charles. One night he was found wandering through the town with no hat and no shoes.

After that no one ever saw him again. The farm was bought by a wealthy banker from the east who purchased a dozen properties in the area. They were combined into a large ranch and many buildings like Charles’ barn were left to rot. 

The Discovery

In the late 1960s, a group of men were out hunting and stumbled across a dilapidated old barn. Most of the roof had caved in, but one of the more curious men went inside when he saw a flywheel peeking out from under the rubble created by the collapsing roof.

He moved some of it away to see an early 1900s internal combustion engine, a rare model that was highly desirable to collectors, but there was something truly wrong. The engine was mutilated. Charles, who had probably gone insane, had used a hacksaw to make cuts all over the engine. 

Despite the engine’s condition, the man decided it should be saved. An extensive inquiry was made to learn who owned the engine and finally after several years the engine was recovered and now sits in a museum with a sign giving some of the gruesome history. 

We’ll never know what happened to Jacob or Charles or what caused him to spend so much time cutting away on an engine that had meant so much to him. Is the engine haunted? One wonders if you visit the museum on a quiet dark night, would you hear Charles cutting away with his hacksaw? 

*Although this story is a work of fiction many of the basic elements are true. 

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