John Wayne Found An Old Man Losing His Wife's Grave Over $340 In Wyoming 1957 — Thn He Paid It

October 1957. The Powder River country of northern Wyoming. Asa Coombs is seventy-eight, and every morning he tends the grave under the big cottonwood where he buried Etta, his wife of fifty-four years. He filed on this quarter section in 1898 and held it through sixty winters — but Etta's long final illness drained everything, the taxes fell three years behind, and the county has nailed a notice to his gate: the place sells for $340 in back taxes on the 26th. When the land goes, so does Etta's grave, and Asa will never get to lie beside her. Then a tall man in a tan Stetson comes up the road looking for directions, finds an old man at a grave, and hears the worst kind of arithmetic. He paid the taxes, paid them ten years forward, and fixed it so no notice would ever go on that gate again. Asa lived two more years on his place, and when he died they laid him under the cottonwood, right beside her.