Chapter III: Part 3

He was a curious character as he became older. Sometimes he would stay away from Phoenix for several months and then one day he would appear with a few thousand dollars, more or less, spend every cent of it in treating the boys in my house and "blow back" home again generally in my debt. He used to sing La Marseillaise--it was the only song he knew--and after the first few drinks would solemnly mount a table, sing a few verses of the magnificent revolutionary song, call on me to do likewise, and then "treat the house." Often he did this several times each night, and as "treating the house" invariably cost at least thirty dollars and he was an inveterate gambler, it will be seen that in one way or another I managed to secure considerable of old Dupper's fortune. His partiality to the Marseillaise leads me to the belief that he was banished for participation in one of the French revolutions; but this I cannot state positively.

On one occasion I remember that I was visiting with Dupper and we made a trip together somewhere, Dupper leaving his cook in charge. When we returned nobody noticed us and I happened to look through a window before entering the house. Hastily I beckoned to Dupper.

The Frenchman's cook was sitting on his bed with a pile of money--the day's takings--in front of him. He was dividing the pile into two halves. Taking one bill off the pile he would lay it to one side and say:

"This is for Dupper."

Then he'd take the next bill, lay it in another spot, and say:

"And this is for me."

We watched him through the window unnoticed until he came to the last ten-dollar bill. It was odd. The cook deliberated a few moments and finally put the bill on top of the pile he had reserved for himself. Then Dupper, whose face had been a study in emotions, could keep still no longer.

"Hey, there!" he yelled, "play fair--play fair! Divvy up that ten spot!"

What happened afterwards to that cook I don't remember. But Dupper was a good sport.

VENTURES AND ADVENTURES

_Hush! What brooding stillness is hanging over all?
What's this talk in whispers, and that placard on the wall?
Aha! I see it now! They're going to hang a man!
Judge Lynch is on the ramparts and the Law's an "Also-Ran!"_
--WOON.

Reader, have you ever seen the look in a man's eyes after he has been condemned by that Court of Last Appeal--his fellow-men? I have, many times. It is a look without a shadow of hope left, a look of dread at the ferocity of the mob, a look of fear at what is to come afterwards; and seldom a hint of defiance lurks in such a man's expression.

I have seen and figured in many lynchings. In the old days they were the inseparables, the Frontier and Judge Lynch. If a white man killed a Mexican or Indian nothing was done, except perhaps to hold a farce of a trial with the killer in the end turned loose; and if a white man killed another white man there was seldom much outcry, unless the case was cold-blooded murder or the killer was already unpopular. But let a Mexican or an Indian lift one finger against a white man and the whole strength of the Whites was against him in a moment; he was hounded to his hole, dragged forth, tried by a committee of citizens over whom Judge Lynch sat with awful solemnity, and was forthwith hung.

More or less of this was in some degree necessary. The killing of an Apache was accounted a good day's work, since it probably meant that the murderer of several white men had gone to his doom. To kill a Mexican only meant that another "bad hombre" had gone to his just deserts.

And most of the Mexicans in Arizona in the early days were "bad hombres"--there is no doubt about that. It was they who gave the Mexican such a bad name on the frontier, and it was they who first earned the title "greaser." They were a murderous, treacherous lot of rascals.

In the Wickenburg stage massacre, for instance, it was known that several Mexicans were involved--wood-choppers. One of these Mexicans was hunted for weeks and was caught soon after I arrived in Phoenix. I was running my dance hall when a committee of citizens met in a mass-meeting and decided that the law was too slow in its working and gave the Mexican too great an opportunity to escape. The meeting then resolved itself into a hanging committee, broke open the jail, seized the prisoner from the arms of the sheriff and hung him to the rafters just inside the jail door. That done, they returned to their homes and occupations satisfied that at least one "Greaser" had not evaded the full penalty of his crimes.

Soon after a Mexican arrived in town with a string of cows to sell. Somebody recognized the cows as ones that had belonged to a rancher named Patterson. The Mexican was arrested by citizens and a horseman sent out to investigate. Patterson was found killed. At once, and with little ceremony, the Mexican with the cattle was "strung up" to the cross of a gatepost, his body being left to sway in the wind until somebody came along with sufficient decency to cut it down.

Talking about lynchings, reminds me of an incident that had almost slipped my mind. Before I went to Wickenburg from Tucson I became partners with a man named Robert Swope in a bar and gambling lay-out in a little place named Adamsville, a few miles below where Florence now is on the Gila River. Swope was tending bar one night when an American shot him dead and got away. The murderer was soon afterward captured in Tucson and lynched in company with two Mexicans who were concerned in the murder of a pawnbroker there.

* * * * *

In Phoenix I married my first wife, whose given name was Ruficia. Soon afterwards I moved to Tucson, where, after being awarded one child, I had domestic trouble which ended in the courts. My wife finally returned to Phoenix and, being free again, married a man named Murphy. After this experience I determined to take no further chances with matrimony. However, I needed a helpmate, so I solved the difficulty by marrying Paola Ortega by contract for five years. Contract marriages were universally recognized and indulged in in the West of the early days. My relations with Paola were eminently satisfactory until the expiration of the contract, when she went her way and I mine.

Before I leave the subject of Phoenix it will be well to mention that when I left I sold all my property there, consisting of some twenty-two lots, all in the heart of the city, for practically a song. Six of these lots were situated where now is a big planing mill. Several lots I sold to a German for a span of mules. The German is alive today and lives in Phoenix a wealthy man, simply because he had the foresight and acumen to do what I did not do--hang on to his real estate. If I had kept those twenty-two lots until now, without doing more than simply pay my taxes on them, my fortune today would be comfortably up in the six figures. However, I sold the lots, and there's no use crying over spilled milk. Men are doing today all over the world just what I did then.

I had not been in Tucson long before I built there the largest saloon and dance-hall in the Territory. Excepting for one flyer in Florence, which I shall speak of later on, this was to be my last venture into the liquor business. My hall was modeled after those on the Barbary Coast. It cost "four-bits" and drinks to dance, and the dances lasted only a few minutes. At one time I had thirteen Mexican girls dancing in the hall, and this number was increased on special days until the floor was crowded. I always did good business--so good, in fact, that jealousy aroused in the minds of my rivals finally forced me out. Since then, as I have said, with the single Florence exception, I have not been in the dance-hall business, excepting that I now have at some expense put a ballroom into my hotel at Patagonia, in which are held at times social dances which most of the young folk of the county attend, the liquor element being entirely absent, of course.[2]

Besides paying a heavy license for the privilege of selling liquor in my Tucson dance hall, I was compelled every morning, in addition, to pay over $5 as a license for the dance-hall and $1.50 collector's fees, which, if not paid out every morning as regularly as clockwork, would have threatened my business. I did not complain of this tax; it was a fair one considering the volume of trade I did. But my patronage grew and grew until there came a day when "Cady's Place," as it was known, was making more money for its owner than any similar establishment in Arizona. The saloon-keepers in Tucson became inordinately jealous and determined to put an end to my "luck," as they called it. Accordingly, nine months after I had opened my place these gentlemen used their influence quietly with the Legislature and "jobbed" me. The license was raised for dance halls at one bound to $25 per night. This was a heavier tax than even my business would stand, so I set about at once looking for somebody on whom to unload the property. I claim originality, if not a particular observance of ethics, in doing this.

One day a man came along and, when he saw the crowd in the hall, suggested that I sell him a share in the enterprise.

"No," I replied, "I'll not sell you a share; but, to tell you the truth, I'm getting tired of this business, and want to get out of it for good. I'll sell you the whole shooting-match, if you want to buy. Suppose you stay tonight with my barkeep and see what kind of business I do."

He agreed and I put two hundred dollars in my pocket and started around town. I spent that two hundred dollars to such good purpose that that night the hall was crowded to the doors. The prospective purchaser looked on with blinking eyes at the thought of the profits that must accrue to the owner. Would he buy the place? Would he? Well, say--he was so anxious to buy it that he wanted to pass over the cash when he saw me counting up my takings in the small hours of the morning. The takings were, I remember, $417. But I told him not to be in a hurry, to go home and sleep over the proposition and come back the next day.

After he had gone the collector came around, took his $26.50 and departed. On his heels came my man.

"Do you still want to buy?" I asked him.

"You bet your sweet life I want to buy," he replied.

"You're sure you've investigated the proposition fully?" I asked him.

The customer thought of that four hundred and seventeen dollars taken in over the bar the night before and said he had.

"Hand over the money, then," I said, promptly. "The place is yours."

The next morning he came to me with a lugubrious countenance.

"Well," I greeted him, "how much did you make last night?"

"Took in ninety-six dollars," he answered, sadly. "Cady, why didn't you tell me about that $25 tax?"

"Tell you about it?" I repeated, as if astonished. "Why, didn't I ask you if you had investigated the thing fully? Did I ask you to go into the deal blindfold? It wasn't my business to tell you about any tax."

And with that he had to be content.

* * * * *

I was now out of the dance-hall business for good, and I looked about for some other and more prosaic occupation to indulge in. Thanks to the deal I had put through with the confiding stranger with the ready cash, I was pretty well "heeled" so far as money went, and all my debts were paid. Finally I decided that I would go into business again and bought a grocery store on Mesilla street.

The handing out of canned tomatoes and salt soda crackers, however, speedily got on my nerves. I was still a comparatively young man and my restless spirit longed for expression in some new environment. About this time Paola, my contract-wife, who was everything that a wife should be in my opinion, became a little homesick and spoke often of the home she had left at Sauxal, a small gulf-coast port in Lower California. Accordingly, one morning, I took it into my head to take her home on a visit to see her people, and, the thought being always father to the action with me, I traded my grocery store for a buckboard and team and some money, and set forth in this conveyance for Yuma. This was a trip not considered so very dangerous, except for the lack of water, for the Indians along the route were mostly peaceable and partly civilized. Only for a short distance out of Tucson did the Apache hold suzerainty, and this only when sufficient Papagos, whose territory it really was, could not be mustered together in force to drive them off. The Papago Indians hated the Apaches quite as much as the white man did, for the Papago lacked the stamina and fighting qualities of the Apache and in other characteristics was an entirely different type of Indian. I have reason to believe that the Apaches were not originally natives of Arizona, but were an offshoot of one of the more ferocious tribes further north. This I think because, for one thing, the facial characteristics of the other Arizona Indians--the Pimas, Papagos, Yumas, Maricopas, and others--are very similar to each other but totally different from those of the various Apache tribes, as was the language they spoke. The Papagos, Pimas, Yumas, Maricopas and other peaceable Indian peoples were of a settled nature and had lived in their respective territories for ages before the white man came to the West. The Apache, on the other hand, was a nomad, with no definite country to call his own and recognizing no boundary lines of other tribes. It was owing to Apache depredations on the Papagos and Pimas that the latter were so willingly enlisted on the side of the White man in the latter's fight for civilization.

Reaching Yuma without any event to record that I remember, we took one of the Colorado River boats to the mouth of the Colorado, where transfers were made to the deep-sea ships plying between the Colorado Gulf and San Francisco. One of these steamers, which were creditable to the times, we took to La Paz. At La Paz Paola was fortunate enough to meet her padrina, or godfather, who furnished us with mules and horses with which we reached Sauxal, Paola's home. There we stayed with her family for some time.

While staying at Sauxal I went to a fiesta in the Arroyo San Luis and there began playing cooncan with an old rancher who was accounted one of the most wealthy inhabitants of the country. I won from him two thousand oranges, five gallons of wine, seventeen buckskins and two hundred heifers. The heifers I presented to Paola and the buckskins I gave to her brothers to make leggings out of. The wine and oranges I took to La Paz and sold, netting a neat little sum thereby.

Sixty miles from La Paz was El Triunfo, one of the best producing silver mines in Lower California, managed by a man named Blake. Obeying an impulse I one day went out to the mine and secured a job, working at it for some time, and among other things starting a small store which was patronized by the company's workmen. Growing tired of this occupation, I returned to Sauxal, fetched Paola and with her returned to Yuma, or Arizona City, where I started a small chicken ranch a few miles up the river. Coyotes and wolves killed my poultry, however, and sores occasioned by ranch work broke out on my hands, so I sold the chicken ranch and moved to Arizona City, opening a restaurant on the main street. In this cafe I made a specialty of pickled feet--not pig's feet, but bull's feet, for which delicacy I claim the original creation. It was some dish, too! They sold like hot-cakes.

While I was in Lower California I witnessed a sight that is well worth speaking of. It was a Mexican funeral, and the queerest one I ever saw or expect to see, though I have read of Chinese funerals that perhaps approach it in peculiarity. It was while on my way back to Sauxal from La Paz that I met the cortege. The corpse was that of a wealthy rancher's wife, and the coffin was strung on two long poles borne by four men. Accompanying the coffin alongside of those carrying it were about two hundred horsemen. The bearers kept up a jog-trot, never once faltering on the way, each horseman taking his turn on the poles. When it became a man's turn to act as bearer nobody told him, but he slipped off his horse, letting it run wherever it pleased, ran to the coffin, ducked under the pole and started with the others on the jog-trot, while the man whose place he had taken caught his horse. Never once in a carry of 150 miles did that coffin stop, and never once did that jog-trot falter. The cortege followers ate at the various ranches they passed, nobody thinking of refusing them food. The 150 mile journey to San Luis was necessary in order to reach a priest who would bury the dead woman. All the dead were treated in the same manner.

While I was in Yuma the railroad reached Dos Palmas, Southern California, and one day I went there with a wagon and bought a load of apples, which, with one man to accompany me, I hauled all the way to Tucson. That wagon-load of apples was the first fruit to arrive in the Territory and it was hailed with acclaim. I sold the lot for one thousand dollars, making a profit well over fifty per cent. Then with the wagon I returned to Yuma.

On the way, as I was nearing Yuma, I stopped at Canyon Station, which a man named Ed. Lumley kept. Just as we drove up an old priest came out of Lumley's house crying something aloud. We hastened up and he motioned inside. Within we saw poor Lumley dead, with both his hands slashed off and his body bearing other marks of mutilation. It turned out that two Mexicans to whom Lumley had given shelter had killed him because he refused to tell them where he kept his money. The Mexicans were afterwards caught in California, taken to Maricopa county and there, after trial by the usual method, received the just penalty for their crime.

From Yuma I moved to Florence, Arizona, where I built a dance-hall and saloon, which I sold almost immediately to an Italian named Gendani. Then I moved back to Tucson, my old stamping-ground.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 2: Since this was written the State has abolished the sale of liquor from within its boundaries.]

INDIAN WARFARE

_When strong men fought and loved and lost,
And might was right throughout the land;
When life was wine and wine was life,
And God looked down on endless strife;
Where murder, lust and hate were rife,
What footprints Time left in the sand!_
--WOON.

In the seventies and early eighties the hostility of the various Apache Indian tribes was at its height, and there was scarcely a man in the Territory who had not at some time felt the dread of these implacable enemies.

By frequent raids on emigrants' wagons and on freighting outfits, the Indians had succeeded in arming themselves fairly successfully with the rifle of the white man; and they kept themselves in ammunition by raids on lonely ranches and by "jumping" or ambushing prospectors and lone travelers. If a man was outnumbered by Apaches he often shot himself, for he knew that if captured he would probably be tortured by one of the fiendish methods made use of by these Indians. If he had a woman with him it was an act of kindness to shoot her, too, for to her, also, even if the element of torture were absent, captivity with the Indians would invariably be an even sadder fate.

Sometimes bands of whites would take the place of the soldiers and revenge themselves on Apache raiders. There was the raid on the Wooster ranch, for instance. This ranch was near Tubac. Wooster lived alone on the ranch with his wife and one hired man. One morning Apaches swooped down on the place, killed Wooster and carried off his wife. As she has never been heard of since it has always been supposed that she was killed. This outrage resulted in the famous "Camp Grant Massacre," the tale of which echoed all over the world, together with indignant protests from centers of culture in the East that the whites of Arizona were "more savage" than the savages themselves. I leave it to the reader to judge whether this was a fact.

The Wooster raid and slaughter was merely the culminating tragedy of a series of murders, robberies and depredations carried on by the Apaches for years. Soldiers would follow the raiders, kill a few of them in retaliation, and a few days later another outrage would be perpetrated. The Apaches were absolutely fearless in the warfare they carried on for possession of what they, rightly or wrongly, considered their invaded territory. The Apache with the greatest number of murders to his name was most highly thought of by his tribe.

When the Wooster raid occurred I was in Tucson. Everybody in Tucson knew Wooster and liked him. There was general mourning and a cry for instant revenge when his murder was heard of. For a long time it had been believed that the Indians wintering on the government reservation at Camp Grant, at the expense of Uncle Sam, were the authors of the numerous raids in the vicinity of Tucson, though until that time it had been hard to convince the authorities that such was the case. This time, however, it became obvious that something had to be done.

The white men of Tucson held a meeting, at which I was present. Sidney R. De Long, first Mayor of Tucson, was also there. After the meeting had been called to order De Long rose and said:

"Boys, this thing has got to be stopped. The military won't believe us when we tell them that their charity to the Indians is our undoing--that the government's wards are a pack of murderers and cattle thieves. What shall we do?"

"Let the military go hang, and the government, too!" growled one man, "Old Bill" Oury, a considerable figure in the life of early Tucson, and an ex-Confederate soldier.

The meeting applauded.

"We can do what the soldiers won't," I said.

"Right!" said Oury, savagely. "Let's give these devils a taste of their own medicine. Maybe after a few dozen of 'em are killed they'll learn some respect for the white man."

Nobody vetoed the suggestion.

The following day six white men--myself, De Long and fierce old Bill Oury among them, rode out of Tucson bound for Tubac. With us we had three Papago Indian trailers. Arrived at the Wooster ranch the Papagos were set to work and followed a trail that led plain as daylight to the Indian camp at Fort Grant. A cry escaped all of us at this justification of our suspicions.

"That settles it!" ground out Oury, between his set teeth. "It's them Injuns or us. And--it won't be us."

We returned to Tucson, rounded up a party consisting of about fifty Papagos, forty-five Mexicans and ourselves, and set out for Camp Grant. We reached the fort at break of day, or just before, and before the startled Apaches could fully awaken to what was happening, or the near-by soldiers gather their wits together, eighty-seven Aravaipa Apaches had been slain as they lay. The Papagos accounted for most of the dead, but we six white men and our Mexican friends did our part. It was bloody work; but it was justice, and on the frontier then the whites made their own justice.

All of us were arrested, as a matter of course, and when word reached General Sherman at Washington from the commander of the military forces at Fort Grant, an order was issued that all of us were to be tried for murder. We suffered no qualms, for we knew that according to frontier standards what we had done was right, and would inevitably have been done some time or another by somebody. We were tried in Judge Titus' Territorial Court, but, to the dismay of the military and General Sherman, who of course knew nothing of the events that had preceded the massacre, not a man in the jury could be found who would hang us. The Territory was searched for citizens impartial enough to adjudge the slaying of a hostile Apache as murder, but none could be found. The trial turned out a farce and we were all acquitted, to receive the greatest demonstration outside the courtroom that men on trial for their lives ever received in Arizona, I think. One thing that made our acquittal more than certain was the fact, brought out at the trial, that the dress of Mrs. Wooster and a pair of moccasins belonging to her husband were found on the bodies of Indians whom we killed. Lieutenant Whitman, who was in command at Fort Grant, and on whom the responsibility for the conduct of the Indians wintering there chiefly rested, was soon after relieved from duty and transferred to another post. General George Crook arrived to take his place late in 1871. The massacre had occurred on the last day of April of that year.

Other raids occurred. Al Peck, an old and valued friend of mine, had several experiences with the Apaches, which culminated in the Peck raid of April 27, 1886, when Apaches jumped his ranch, killed his wife and a man named Charles Owens and carried off Peck's niece. Apparently satisfied with this, they turned Peck loose, after burning the ranch house. The unfortunate man's step-niece was found some six weeks later by Mexican cowpunchers in the Cocoapi Mountains in Old Mexico.

The famous massacre of the Samaniego freight teams and the destruction of his outfit at Cedar Springs, between Fort Thomas and Wilcox, was witnessed by Charles Beck, another friend of mine. Beck had come in with a quantity of fruit and was unloading it when he heard a fusilade of shots around a bend in the road. A moment later a boy came by helter-skelter on a horse.

"Apaches!" gasped the boy, and rode on.

Beck waited to hear no more. He knew that to attack one of Samaniego's outfits there must be at least a hundred Indians in the neighborhood. Unhitching his horse, he jumped on its back and rode for dear life in the direction of Eureka Springs. Indians sighted him as he swept into the open and followed, firing as they rode. By luck, however, and the fact that his horse was fresher than those of his pursuers, Beck got safely away.

Thirteen men were killed at this Cedar Springs massacre and thousands of dollars' worth of freight was carried off or destroyed. The raid was unexpected owing to the fact that the Samaniego brothers had contracts with the government and the stuff in their outfit was intended for the very Indians concerned in the ambuscade. One of the Samaniegos was slain at this massacre.

Then there was the Tumacacori raid, at Barnett's ranch in the Tumacacori Mountains, when Charlie Murray and Tom Shaw were killed. Old Man Frenchy, as he was called, suffered the severe loss of his freight and teams when the Indians burned them up across the Cienega. Many other raids occurred, particulars of which are not to hand, but those I have related will serve as samples of the work of the Indians and will show just how it was the Apaches gained the name they did of being veritable fiends in human form.

* * * * *

After the expiration of my contract with Paola Ortega I remained in a state of single blessedness for some time, and then married Gregoria Sosa, in the summer of 1879. Gregoria rewarded me with one child, a boy, who is now living in Nogales. On December 23, 1889, Gregoria died and in October, 1890, I married my present wife, whose maiden name was Donna Paz Paderes, and who belongs to an old line of Spanish aristocracy in Mexico. We are now living together in the peace and contentment of old age, well occupied in bringing up and providing for our family of two children, Mary, who will be twenty years old on February 25, 1915, and Charlie, who will be sixteen on the same date. Both our children, by the grace of God, have been spared us after severe illnesses.

* * * * *

To make hundreds of implacable enemies at one stroke is something any man would very naturally hesitate to do, but I did just that about a year after I commenced working for D. A. Sanford, one of the biggest ranchers between the railroad and the border. The explanation of this lies in one word--sheep.

If there was one man whom cattlemen hated with a fierce, unreasoning hatred, it was the man who ran sheep over the open range--a proceeding perfectly legal, but one which threatened the grazing of the cattle inasmuch as where sheep had grazed it was impossible for cattle to feed for some weeks, or until the grass had had time to grow again. Sheep crop almost to the ground and feed in great herds, close together, and the range after a herd of sheep has passed over it looks as if somebody had gone over it with a lawnmower.

In 1881 I closed out the old Sanford ranch stock and was informed by my employer that he had foreclosed a mortgage on 13,000 head of sheep owned by Tully, Ochoa and De Long of Tucson. This firm was the biggest at that time in the Territory and the De Long of the company was one of the six men who led the Papagos in the Camp Grant Massacre. He died in Tucson recently and I am now the only white survivor of that occurrence. Tully, Ochoa and De Long were forced out of business by the coming of the railroad in 1880, which cheapened things so much that the large stock held by the company was sold at prices below what it had cost, necessitating bankruptcy.

I was not surprised to hear that Sanford intended to run sheep, though I will admit that the information was scarcely welcome. Sheep, however, at that time were much scarcer than cattle and fetched, consequently, much higher prices. My employer, D. A. Sanford, who now lives in Washington, D. C., was one of the shrewdest business men in the Territory, and was, as well, one of the best-natured of men. His business acumen is testified to by the fact that he is now sufficiently wealthy to count his pile in the seven figures.

Mr. Sanford's wishes being my own in the matter, of course, I did as I was told, closed out the cattle stock and set the sheep grazing on the range. The cattlemen were angry and sent me an ultimatum to the effect that if the sheep were not at once taken off the grass there would be "trouble." I told them that Sanford was my boss, not them; that I would take his orders and nobody else's, and that until he told me to take the sheep off the range they'd stay precisely where they were.

My reply angered the cattlemen more and before long I became subject to many annoyances. Sheep were found dead, stock was driven off, my ranch hands were shot at, and several times I myself narrowly escaped death at the hands of the enraged cattlemen. I determined not to give in until I received orders to that effect from Mr. Sanford, but I will admit that it was with a feeling of distinct relief that I hailed those orders when they came three years later. For one thing, before the sheep business came up, most of the cattlemen who were now my enemies had been my close friends, and it hurt me to lose their esteem. I am glad to say, however, that most of these cattlemen and cowboys, who, when I ran sheep, would cheerfully have been responsible for my funeral, are my very good friends at the present time; and I trust they will always remain so. Most of them are good fellows and I have always admitted that their side had the best argument.

In spite of the opposition of the cattlemen I made the sheep business a paying one for Mr. Sanford, clearing about $17,000 at the end of three years. When that period had elapsed I had brought shearers to Sanford Station to shear the sheep, but was stopped in my intention with the news that Sanford had sold the lot to Pusch and Zellweger of Tucson. I paid off the men I had hired, satisfied them, and thus closed my last deal in the sheep business. One of the men, Jesus Mabot, I hired to go to the Rodeo with me, while the Chinese gardener hired another named Fernando.

Then occurred that curious succession of fatalities among the Chinamen in the neighborhood that puzzled us all for years and ended by its being impossible to obtain a Chinaman to fill the last man's place.

DEPUTY SHERIFF, CATTLEMAN AND FARMER

_You kin have yore Turner sunsets,--he never painted one
Like th' Santa Rita Mountains at th' settin' o' th' sun!
You kin have yore Eastern cornfields, with th' crops that never change,
Me--I've all Arizona, and, best o' all, the Range!_
--WOON.

About this time Sheriff Bob Paul reigned in Tucson and made me one of his deputies. I had numerous adventures in that capacity, but remember only one as being worth recording here.

One of the toughest characters in the West at that time, a man feared throughout the Territory, was Pat Cannon. He had a score of killings to his credit, and, finally, when Paul became sheriff a warrant was issued for his arrest on a charge of murder. After he had the warrant Paul came to me.

"Cady," he said, "you know Pat Cannon, don't you?"

"I worked with him once," I answered.

"Well," returned Paul, "here's a warrant for his arrest on a murder charge. Go get him."

I obtained a carryall and an Italian boy as driver, in Tucson, and started for Camp Grant. Arrived there I was informed that it was believed Cannon was at Smithy's wood camp, several miles away. We went on to Smithy's wood camp. Sure enough, Pat was there--very much so. He was the first man I spotted as I drove into the camp. Cannon was sitting at the door of his shack, two revolvers belted on him and his rifle standing up by the door at his side, within easy reach. I knew that Pat didn't know that I was a deputy, so I drove right up.

"Hello," I called. "How's the chance for a game of poker?"

"Pretty good," he returned, amiably. "Smithy'll be in in a few moments, John. Stick around--we have a game every night."

"Sure," I responded, and descended. As I did so I drew my six-shooter and whirled around, aiming the weapon at him point blank.

"Hands up, Pat, you son-of-a-gun," I said, and I guess I grinned. "You're my prisoner."

I had told the Italian boy what to do, beforehand, and he now gave me the steel bracelets, which I snapped on Cannon, whose face bore an expression seemingly a mixture of intense astonishment and disgust. Finally, when I had him safely in the carryall, he spat out a huge chew of tobacco and swore.

He said nothing to me for awhile, and then he remarked, in an injured way:

"Wa-al, Johnny, I sure would never have thought it of you!"

He said nothing more, except to ask me to twist him a cigarette or two, and when we reached Tucson I turned him over safely to Sheriff Paul.

* * * * *

You who read this in your stuffy city room, or crowded subway seat, imagine, if you can, the following scene:

Above, the perfect, all-embracing blue of the Arizona sky; set flaming in the middle of it the sun, a glorious blazing orb whose beauty one may dare to gaze upon only through smoked glasses; beneath, the Range, which, far from being a desert, is covered with a growth of grass which grows thicker and greener as the rivers' banks are reached.

All around, Arizona--the painted hills, looking as though someone had carefully swept them early in the morning with a broom; the valleys studded with mesquite trees and greasewood and dotted here and there with brown specks which even the uninitiated will know are cattle, and the river, one of Arizona's minor streams, a few yards across and only a couple of feet deep, but swift-rushing, pebble-strew'd and clear as crystal.

Last, but not least, a heterogeneous mob of cowboys and vaqueros, with their horses champing at the bit and eager to be off on their work. In the foreground a rough, unpainted corral, where are more ponies--wicked-looking, intelligent little beggars, but quick turning as though they owned but two legs instead of four, and hence priceless for the work of the roundup. In the distance, some of them quietly and impudently grazing quite close at hand, are the cattle, the object of the day's gathering.

Cowboys from perhaps a dozen or more ranches are gathered here, for this is the commencement of the Rodeo--the roundup of cattle that takes place semi-annually. Even ranches whose cattle are not grazed on this particular range have representatives here, for often there are strays with brands that show them to have traveled many scores of miles. The business of the cowboys[3] is to round up and corral the cattle and pick out their own brands from the herd. They then see that the unbranded calves belonging to cows of their brand are properly marked with the hot iron and with the ear-slit, check up the number of yearlings for the benefit of their employers, and take charge of such of the cattle it is considered advisable to drive back to the home ranch.

So much sentimental nonsense has been talked of the cruelty of branding and slitting calves that it is worth while here, perhaps, to state positively that the branding irons do not penetrate the skin and serve simply to burn the roots of the hair so that the bald marks will show to which ranch the calf belongs. There is little pain to the calf attached to the operation, and one rarely if ever even sees a calf licking its brand after it has been applied; and, as is well known, the cow's remedy for an injury, like that of a dog, is always to lick it. As to the ear-slitting, used by most ranches as a check on their brands, it may be said that if the human ear is somewhat callous to pain--as it is--the cow's ear is even more so. One may slice a cow's ear in half in a certain way and she will feel only slight pain, not sufficient to make her give voice. The slitting of a cow's ear draws very little blood.

While I am on the subject,--it was amusing to note the unbounded astonishment of the cattlemen of Arizona a few years ago when some altruistic society of Boston came forward with a brilliant idea that was to abolish the cruelty of branding cows entirely. What was the idea? Oh, they were going to hang a collar around the cow's neck, with a brass tag on it to tell the name of the owner. Or, if that wasn't feasible, they thought that a simple ring and tag put through the cow's ear-lobe would prove eminently satisfactory! The feelings of the cowboys, when told that they would be required to dismount from their horses, walk up to each cow in turn and politely examine her tag, perhaps with the aid of spectacles, may be better imagined than described. It is sufficient to say that the New England society's idea never got further than Massachusetts, if it was, indeed, used there, which is doubtful.

The brand is absolutely necessary as long as there is an open range, and the abolishment of the open range will mean the abandonment of the cow-ranch. At the time I am speaking of the whole of the Territory of Arizona was one vast open range, over the grassy portions of which cattle belonging to hundreds of different ranches roamed at will. Most of the big ranches employed a few cowboys the year around to keep the fences in repair and to prevent cows from straying too far from the home range. The home range was generally anywhere within a twenty-mile radius of the ranch house.

The ear-slit was first found necessary because of the activities of the rustlers. There were two kinds of these gentry--the kind that owned ranches and passed themselves off as honest ranchers, and the open outlaws, who drove off cattle by first stampeding them in the Indian manner, rushed them across the international line and then sold them to none too scrupulous Mexican ranchers. Of the two it is difficult to say which was the most dangerous or the most reviled by the honest cattlemen. The ranches within twenty or thirty miles of the border, perhaps, suffered more from the stampeders than from the small ranchers, but those on the northern ranges had constantly to cope with the activities of dishonest cattlemen who owned considerably more calves than they had cows, as a rule. The difficulty was to prove that these calves had been stolen.

It was no difficult thing to steal cattle successfully, providing the rustler exercised ordinary caution. The method most in favor among the rustlers was as follows: For some weeks the rustler would ride the range, noting where cows with unbranded calves were grazing. Then, when he had ascertained that no cowboys from neighboring ranches were riding that way, he would drive these cows and their calves into one of the secluded and natural corrals with which the range abounds, rope the calves, brand them with his own brand, hobble and sometimes kill the mother cows to prevent them following their offspring, and drive the latter to his home corral, where in the course of a few weeks they would forget their mothers and be successfully weaned. They would then be turned out to graze on the Range. Sometimes when the rustler did not kill the mother cow the calf proved not to have been successfully weaned, and went back to its mother--the worst possible advertisement of the rustler's dirty work. Generally, therefore, the mother cow was killed, and little trace left of the crime, for the coyotes speedily cleaned flesh, brand and all from the bones of the slain animal. The motto of most of these rustlers was: "A dead cow tells no tales!"

Another method of the rustlers was to adopt a brand much like that of a big ranch near by, and to over-brand the cattle. For instance, a big ranch with thousands of cattle owns the brand Cross-Bar (X--). The rustler adopts the brand Cross L (XL) and by the addition of a vertical mark to the bar in the first brand completely changes the brand. It was always a puzzle for the ranchers to find brands that would not be easily changed. Rustlers engaged in this work invariably took grave chances, for a good puncher could tell a changed brand in an instant, and often knew every cow belonging to his ranch by sight, without looking at the brand. When one of these expert cowboys found a suspicious brand he lost no time hunting up proof, and if he found that there had actually been dirty work, the rustler responsible, if wise, would skip the country without leaving note of his destination, for in the days of which I speak the penalty for cow-stealing was almost always death, except when the sheriff happened to be on the spot. Since the sheriff was invariably heart and soul a cattleman himself, he generally took care that he wasn't anywhere in the neighborhood when a cattle thief met his just deserts. Even now this rule holds effect in the cattle lands. Only two years ago a prominent rancher in this country--the Sonoita Range--shot and killed a Mexican who with a partner had been caught red-handed in the act of stealing cattle.

With the gradual disappearance of the open range, cattle stealing has practically stopped, although one still hears at times of cases of the kind, isolated, but bearing traces of the same old methods. Stampeding is, of course, now done away with.

During the years I worked for D. A. Sanford I had more or less trouble all the time with cattle thieves, but succeeded fairly well in either detecting the guilty ones or in getting back the stolen cattle. I meted out swift and sure justice to rustlers, and before long it became rumored around that it was wise to let cattle with the D.S. brand alone. The Sanford brand was changed three times. The D.S. brand I sold to the Vail interests for Sanford, and the Sanford brand was changed to the Dipper, which, afterwards, following the closing out of the Sanford stock, was again altered to the Ninety-Seven (97) brand. Cattle with the 97 brand on them still roam the range about the Sonoita.

* * * * *

It was to a rodeo similar to the one which I have attempted to describe that Jesus Mabot and I departed following the incident of the selling of the sheep. We were gone a week. When we returned I put up my horse and was seeing that he had some feed when a shout from Jesus, whom I had sent to find the Chinese gardener to tell him we needed something to eat, came to my ears.

"Oyez, Senor Cady!" Jesus was crying, "El Chino muerte."

I hurried down to the field where Mabot stood and found him gazing at the Chinaman, who was lying face downward near the fence, quite dead. By the smell and the general lay-out, I reckoned he had been dead some three days.

I told Mabot to stay with him and, jumping on my horse, rode to Crittenden, where I obtained a coroner and a jury that would sit on the Chinaman's death. The next morning the jury found that he had been killed by some person or persons unknown, and let it go at that.

Two weeks later I had occasion to go to Tucson, and on tying my horse outside the Italian Brothers' saloon, noticed a man I thought looked familiar sitting on the bench outside. As I came up he pulled his hat over his face so that I could not see it. I went inside, ordered a drink, and looked in the mirror. It gave a perfect reflection of the man outside, and I saw that he was the Mexican Fernando, whom the Chinese gardener had hired when I had engaged Mabot. I had my suspicions right then as to who had killed the Chinaman, but, having nothing by which to prove them, I was forced to let the matter drop.

Two or three years after this I hired as vaquero a Mexican named Neclecto, who after a year quit work and went for a visit to Nogales. Neclecto bought his provisions from the Chinaman who kept the store I had built on the ranch, and so, as we were responsible for the debt, when Bob Bloxton, son-in-law of Sanford, came to pay the Mexican off, he did so in the Chinaman's store.

The next morning Neclecto accompanied Bloxton to the train, and, looking back, Bob saw, the Mexican and another man ride off in the direction of the ranch. After it happened Neclecto owned up that he had been in the Chinaman's that night drinking, but insisted that he had left without any trouble with the yellow-skinned storekeeper. But from that day onward the Chinaman was never seen again.

Bloxton persuaded me to return to the ranch from Nogales and we visited the Chinaman's house, where we found the floor dug up as though somebody had been hunting treasure. My wife found a $10 gold piece hidden in a crack between the 'dobe bricks and later my son, John, unearthed twelve Mexican dollars beneath some manure in the hen-coop. Whether this had belonged to the Chinaman, Louey, who had disappeared, or to another Chinaman who had been staying with him, we could not determine. At any rate, we found no trace of Louey or his body.

Even this was not to be the end of the strange series of fatalities to Chinamen on the Sanford ranch. In 1897 I quit the Sanford foremanship after working for my employer seventeen years, and turned the ranch over to Amos Bloxton, another son-in-law of Sanford. I rented agricultural land from Sanford and fell to farming. Near my place Crazy John, a Chinaman, had his gardens, where he made 'dobe bricks besides growing produce.

We were living then in the old store building and the Chinaman was making bricks about a quarter of a mile away with a Mexican whom he employed. One day we found him dead and the Mexican gone. After that, as was natural, we could never persuade a Chinaman to live anywhere near the place. I later built a house of the bricks the Chinaman was making when he met his death. The Mexican escaped to Sonora, came back when he thought the affair had blown over and went to work for the railroad at Sonoita. There he had a fracas with the section foreman, stabbed him and made off into the hills. Sheriff Wakefield from Tucson came down to get the man and shot him dead near Greaterville, which ended the incident.

In the preceding I have mentioned the railroad. This was the Benson-Hermosillo road, built by the Santa Fe and later sold to the Southern Pacific, which extended the line to San Blas in Coahuila, and which is now in process of extending it further to the city of Tepic. I was one of those who helped survey the original line from Benson to Nogales--I think the date was 1883.

In future times I venture to state that this road will be one of the best-paying properties of the Southern Pacific Company, which has had the courage and foresight to open up the immensely rich empire of Western Mexico. The west coast of Mexico is yet in the baby stage of its development. The revolutions have hindered progress there considerably, but when peace comes at last and those now shouldering arms for this and that faction in the Republic return to the peaceful vocations they owned before the war began, there is no doubt that the world will stand astonished at the riches of this, at present, undeveloped country. There are portions of the West Coast that have never been surveyed, that are inhabited to this day with peaceful Indians who have seldom seen a white face. The country is scattered with the ruins of wonderful temples and cathedrals and, doubtless, much of the old Aztec treasure still lies buried for some enterprising fortune-seeker to unearth. There are also immense forests of cedar and mahogany and other hard woods to be cut; and extensive areas of land suitable for sugar planting and other farming to be brought under cultivation. When all this is opened up the West Coast cannot help taking its place as a wonderfully rich and productive region.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 3: The term "cowpuncher" is not common in Arizona as in Montana, but the Arizona cowboys are sometimes called "vaqueros."]

IN AGE THE CRICKET CHIRPS AND BRINGS--

_A faltering step on life's highway,
A grip on the bottom rung;
A few good deeds done here and there,
And my life's song is sung.
It's not what you get in pelf that counts,
It's not your time in the race,
For most of us draw the slower mounts,
And our deeds can't keep the pace.
It's for each what he's done of kindness,
And for each what he's done of cheer,
That goes on the Maker's scorebook
With each succeeding year._
--WOON.