INDIAN WARFARE

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

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.

Cady's Sheep Camp on the SonoitaCADY'S SHEEP CAMP ON THE SONOITA, DECEMBER 8, 1914. BUILT IN 1884ToList

CADY'S SHEEP CAMP ON THE SONOITA, DECEMBER 8, 1914. BUILT IN 1884ToList

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 longtime 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 outof 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, tothe 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 foundsome 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 CharlieMurray 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 naturallyhesitate 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 camethree 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.

You kin have yore Turner sunsets,—he never painted oneLike 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 aremore 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 thebald 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 Englandsociety'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 morecalves 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!"

Cady and his Third Family, 1915CADY AND HIS THIRD FAMILY, 1915ToList

CADY AND HIS THIRD FAMILY, 1915ToList

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 waslying 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 bricksthe 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 thosenow 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:

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

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 scorebookWith each succeeding year.—Woon.

While I was farming on the Sanford ranch a brother-in-law of D. A. Sanford, Frank Lawrence by name, came to live with me. Frank was a splendid fellow and we were fast friends.

One day during the Rodeo we were out where the vaqueros were working and on our return found our home, a 'dobe house, burned down, and all our belongings with it, including considerable provisions. My loss was slight, for in those days I owned a prejudice against acquiring any more worldly goods than I could with comfort pack onmy back; but Frank lost a trunk containing several perfectly good suits of clothes and various other more or less valuable articles which he set great store by, besides over a hundred dollars in greenbacks. We hunted among the ruins, of course, but not a vestige of anything savable did we find.

Three days later, however, Sanford himself arrived and took one look at the ruins. Then, without a word, he started poking about with his stick. From underneath where his bed had been he dug up a little box containing several hundred dollars in greenbacks, and from the earth beneath the charred ruins of the chest of drawers he did likewise. Then he stood up and laughed at us. I will admit that he had a perfect right to laugh. He, the one man of the three of us who could best afford to lose anything, was the only man whose money had been saved. Which only goes to prove the proverbial luck of the rich man.

Not long after this experience I moved to Crittenden, where I farmed awhile, running buggy trips to the mines in the neighborhood as a side line.

One day a man named Wheeler, of Wheeler & Perry, a Tucson merchandise establishment, came to Crittenden and I drove him out to Duquesne. On the way Wheeler caught sight of a large fir-pine tree growing on the slope of a hill. He pointed to it and said:

"Say, John, I'd give something to have that tree in my house at Christmas."

It was then a week or so to the twenty-fifth of December.

I glanced at the tree and asked him:

"You would, eh? Now, about how much would you give?"

"I'd give five dollars," he said.

"Done!" I said. "You give me five dollars and count that tree yours for Christmas!" And we shook hands on it.

A few days later I rigged up a wagon, took along three Mexicans with axes, and cut a load of Christmas trees—I think there were some three hundred in the load. Then I drove the wagon to Tucson and after delivering Wheeler his especial tree and receiving the stipulated five dollars for it, commenced peddling the rest on the streets.

And, say! Those Christmas trees sold like wildfire. Everybody wanted one. I sold them for as low as six-bits and as high as five dollars, and before I left pretty nearly everybody in Tucson owned one of my trees.

When I counted up I found that my trip had netted me, over and above expenses, just one thousand dollars.

This, you will have to admit, was some profit for a load of Christmas trees. Sad to relate, however, a year later when I tried to repeat the performance, I found about forty other fellows ahead of me loaded to the guards with Christmas trees of all kinds and sizes. For a time Christmas trees werecheaper than mesquite brush as the overstocked crowd endeavored to unload on an oversupplied town. I escaped with my outfit and my life but no profits—that time.

On December 15, 1900, I moved to Patagonia, which had just been born on the wave of the copper boom. I rented a house, which I ran successfully for one year, and then started the building of the first wing of the Patagonia Hotel, which I still own and run; together with a dance-hall, skating rink and restaurant. Since that first wing was built the hotel has changed considerably in appearance, for whenever I got far enough ahead to justify it, I built additions. I think I may say that now the hotel is one of the best structures of its kind in the county. I am considering the advisability of more additions, including a large skating rink and dance-hall, but the copper situation does not justify me in the outlay at present.

I am entirely satisfied with my location, however. Patagonia is not a large place, but it is full of congenial friends and will one day, when the copper industry again finds its feet, be a large town. It is in the very heart of the richest mining zone in the world, if the assayers are to be believed. Some of the mining properties, now nearly all temporarily closed down, are world-famous—I quote for example the Three R., the World's Fair, the Flux, theSanta Cruz, the Hardshell, the Harshaw, the Hermosa, the Montezuma, the Mansfield and the Mowry.

This last, nine miles from Patagonia, was a producer long before the Civil War. Lead and silver mined at the Mowry were transported to Galveston to be made into bullets for the war—imagine being hit with a silver bullet! In 1857 Sylvester Mowry, owner of the Mowry mine and one of the earliest pioneers of Arizona, was chosen delegate to Congress by petition of the people, but was not admitted to his seat. Mowry was subsequently banished from Arizona by Commander Carleton and his mine confiscated for reasons which were never quite clear.

My purpose in writing these memoirs is two-fold: First, I desired that my children should have a record which could be referred to by them after I am gone; and, secondly, that the State of Arizona, my adopted home, should be the richer for the possession of the facts I have at my disposal.

I want the reader to understand that even though the process of evolution has taken a life-time, I cannot cease wondering at the marvelous development of the Territory and, later, State of Arizona. When I glance back over the vista of years and see the old, and then open my eyes to survey the new, it is almost as though a Verne or a Haggard sketch had come to life.

Who, in an uneventful stop-over at Geronimo, Graham county, would believe that these same old Indians who sit so peacefully mouthing their cigarros at the trading store were the terrible Apaches of former days—the same avenging demons who murdered emigrants, fought the modernly-equipped soldier with bow and arrow, robbed and looted right and left and finally were forced to give in to their greatest enemy, Civilization. And who shall begin to conjecture the thoughts that now and again pass through the brains of these old Apache relics, living now so quietly on the bounty of a none-too-generous government? What dreams of settlement massacres, of stage robberies, of desperate fights, they may conjure up until the wheezy arrival of the Arizona Eastern locomotive disperses their visions with the blast of sordid actuality!

For the Arizona that I knew back in the Frontier days was the embodiment of the Old West—the West of sudden fortune and still more sudden death; the West of romance and of gold; of bad whiskey and doubtful women; of the hardy prospector and the old cattleman, who must gaze a little sadly back along the trail as they near the end of it, at thought of the days that may never come again.

And now I myself am reaching the end of my long and eventful journey, and I can say, bringing to mind my youth and all that followed it, that I havelived, reallylived, and I am content.

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