Capital made me much money, and I invested what I did not spend in
"having a good time," in various other enterprises. I went into the
butcher business with Steel & Coplin. I built the first bakery in
Phoenix. I staked two men to a ranch north of the city, from which I
later on proceeded to flood the Territory with sweet potatoes. I was the
first man, by the way, to grow sweet potatoes in Arizona. I built a
saloon and dance hall, and in this, naturally, was my quickest turnover.
I am not an apologist, least of all for myself, and as this is the true
story of a life I believe to have been exceptionally varied I think that
in it should be related the things I did which might be considered "bad"
nowadays, as well as the things I did which, by the same token,
present-day civilization may consider "good."
I may relate, therefore, that for some years I was known as the largest
liquor dealer in the Territory, as well as one of the shrewdest hands at
cards. Although I employed men to do the work, often players would
insist on my dealing the monte deck or laying down the faro lay-out for
them. I played for big stakes, too--bigger stakes than people play for
nowadays in the West. Many times I have sat down with the equivalent of
thousands of dollars in chips and played them all away, only to regain
them again without thinking it anything particularly unusual. As games
go, I was considered "lucky" for a gambler. Though not superstitious, I
believed in this luck of mine, and this is probably the reason that it
held good for so long. If of late various things, chiefly the mining
depression, have made my fortunes all to the bad, I am no man to whine
at the inevitable. I can take my ipecac along with the next man!
There were few men in the old days in Phoenix, or, indeed, the entire
Territory, who did not drink liquor, and lots of it. In fact, it may be
said that the entire fabric of the Territory was constructed on liquor.
The pioneers were most of them whiskey fiends, as were the gamblers.
By this I am not defending the liquor traffic. I have sold more liquor
than any man in Arizona over the bar in my life-time, but I voted dry at
the last election and I adhere to the belief that a whiskey-less Arizona
will be the best for our children and our children's children.
[Illustration: THE OLD WARD HOMESTEAD, WHERE CADY KEPT STORE DURING THE
BUILDING OF THE SANTA FE RAILROAD]
During my residence in Phoenix Darrel Dupper, the man who had christened
the town, became one of my best friends. He kept the post and trading
store at Desert Station, at which place was the only water to be found
between Phoenix and Wickenburg, if I remember correctly. The station
made him wealthy. Dupper was originally Count Du Perre, and came of a
noted aristocratic French family. His forefathers were, I believe,
prominent in the court of Louis XIV. When a young man he committed some
foolhardy act in France and was banished by his people, who sent him a
monthly remittance on condition that he get as far away from his home as
he could, and stay there. To fulfill the terms of this agreement Du
Perre came to Arizona among the early pioneers and soon proved that he
had the stuff of a real man in him. He learned English and Americanized
his name to Dupper. He engaged in various enterprises and finally
started Desert Station, where he made his fortune.
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.
[Illustration: CADY'S SHEEP CAMP ON THE SONOITA, DECEMBER 8, 1914. BUILT
IN 1884]
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.