Hippies on Horseback

About the Book

Ruth Calley, a semi-retired secretary, is chased by a large band of mounted hippies while riding her old Arabian gelding in the unsettled eastern foothills of the Catalina Mountains outside Tucson, Arizona.  She outdistances her pursuers and they turn back, locate the last of their cache of marijuana and load it into their saddlebags. When they find a package of cocaine under a fallen tree a short way from their own cache, their leader won't let them take it to sell, pointing out it no doubt belonged to some of the local drug dealers who would have no qualms about killing them all if they found out about it.

A little searching finds the dugout hole from which the summer rains had washed the package of cocaine. They put the package back into the hole with the several other packages still there and take their marijuana back to their camp.

Alerted by the Calleys, the sheriff sets out to round up the little band of hippies to find out what provoked their chase after Ruth.

Meanwhile, at the hippies' encampment near Sabino Canyon there is a problem. One of the young women is direly ill and their leader and several of the group take her to the emergency room at one of the local hospitals where she is found to have contracted hepatitis. The doctor gives her medication and explains just what must be done to help her to their leader. With misgivings, the doctor agrees they can probably care for the sick young woman at their camp if they follow his directions, and lets them put her on a cot in their van and leave.

Jim Blackstone, the leader of the little group of hippies, goes into Tucson to get some money from the bank where the trust his father had set up for him deposits funds every quarter. The teller gives him a telegram sent to him by his sister. His father has died and his mother wants him to come home to Michigan and attend the funeral. Jim has been having long and uncomfortable thoughts about his dropping out of the university in Tucson and eventually joining this small band of flower children, even though his reliable quarterly income has helped them all to live more comfortably in their chosen lifestyle. Now he makes arrangements to leave at once for Michigan, withdrawing a larger sum of money to pay for his plane tickets, and to leave with his second-in-command to pay not only for their living expenses, but for the purchase of medicine and special food for Sally, their sick member.

Blackstone also is reminded forcibly by a view of himself in a store window that he can't go home looking as he does. When he gets back to camp, his shorn hair and the loss of his beard startle his friends. He has time for a good meal before he must hurry to catch his plane. He leaves a couple of hundred dollars with George, who looks after the group when Jim isn't there, checks on Sally's condition, then promises to be back in about a week and leaves on his motorcycle for the airport.

Not long after, Sally becomes much worse and George and some of his band take her back to the hospital where she is admitted, and them must leave most of their $200 as a token deposit for her expenses. They have agreed to bring in the rest of the needed deposit amount in a couple of days, and try for several days to raise the money by selling a couple of their best motorcycles. When they find they can't raise enough money that way, George tells them he thinks he knows where he can get the necessary funds and takes off.

Quickly, he rides his motorbike to the entrance of the wash where their old marijuana cache, now empty, had been. Tucking his bike out of sight, George walks up the wash past the empt ????? ?? ????? ?? ????????? ??? ??? ???????? ??? ?????? ?? ??????? ???? ??? ?????? ?? ?? ???? ?? ???? ?? ???? ?? ???? ???? ??? ??????? ??? ?????? ????? ?? ??? ??? ??????? ???????? ????????????? ????? ? ??? ??? ??? ??????? ???????? ?????? ???????? ?? ?? ?????? ???? ???? ??? ???? ??? ???????? ??? ??????? ?? ??????? ???? ?????? ??? ????? ???? ????

About the Author

LEE COE, pen name for Nancy Lee Tinker, was born in Milwaukee, WI but spent several of her pre-teen and early teen years on a farm in Poygan Township near Oshkosh, WI, where she learned to milk cows, drive a team of horses and do other farm chores. She reveled in the life, and considered the aging but devoted ex-race horse she was given adequate reward. Nancy took secretarial training in Milwaukee after graduating from high school. She worked as a legal secretary in Milwaukee, and became an interpreter for the Bracero Program during WWII, working in Chicago, IL. She married Frank A. Tinker, a USAF pilot and free-lance writer. They have three children, two girls and a boy. Having worked as a medical transcriber in Ogden, Utah to help support the two saddle horses she and her oldest daughter owned, it was an easy transition, when she found work as a veterinarian's assistant. Later, her husband encouraged her to write of her experiences with animals; and many of her articles appeared in national magazines. She never lost her enthusiasm for animals, but recently has branched into mystery story writing, another of her interests. The Tinkers, now retired, live in Sunsites, AZ, and continue their pursuits of writing and camping, golfing (Mr. Tinker), horseback riding (Nancy), hiking and traveling.