He wandered up the street on that cold December
day
Not knowing what fate would bring
And when he left the post office just to say
hey
Before he turned around the gun shots ring
He wandered up the street on that cold December
day
Not knowing what fate would bring
The feirce wind made the buildings sway and
sway
But the whistle that he heard was a gun shot
ring
William “Billy” Crapo shot Thomas Boland dead
From a shack less than sixty feet away
John Thomas ducked but his wrist still filled
with lead
It made the Inyo newspapers the next day
The town was dying and there weren’t many
around
The saloons and the girls mostly gone
No one expected a man to fall dead on the
ground
Man for breakfast days were long done
William “Billy” Crapo was a respectable man
For the most part everyone agreed
But his politics were different than Thomas
Boland
It’s said that’s why he did the dirty deed
A posse went out from Keeler to Cerro Gordo
Looking to see that justice was done
But no one ever heard again from that Crapo
And his poster hangs on the hotel cause he run
William Billy Crapo shot Henry Boland in the
back
The last shoot out on the old Fat Hill
And though the centuries have gone since the
attack
Thomas Boland haunts the mined out mountain
still
William Billy Crapo still wanted in the town
Though centuries have long gone
The gun shots echo with the wind sound
Though the population and the ore is next to
none
|
No
likenesses of Billy Crapo are known to exist.
The wanted poster shown above was created by
Mary Grimsley.
The Sacramento Daily
Union newspaper
reported,January 3,
1893, that a reward of $500 had been offered for William Crapo, the
presumed killer of Henry Boland. Crapo was never found.
The Crapo House is the
single story structure to the immediate left of the American Hotel in
this view of Cerro Gordo prior to 1911. |