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.
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 on my 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 were cheaper 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, the Santa 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 have _lived_, really _lived_, and I am content.
THE END.
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