XX
Patchy
Dawn in the Sierra Madres. Purple darkness in the glens and twisting canyons. Ripples of faint daylight breaking in rose against the tallest peaks. Over the shadowy chaos of mountains, unutterable silence. Above the undulant flow of coldly gray summits, a formless, incandescent splash that was the morning star.
For ten years there had been peace between the white men and the Apaches. Geronimo and his warriors who had of old terrorized and laid waste the frontier had been deported to Florida. A handful of braves grown weary of inglorious peace had broken from San Carlos reservation in May, 1896, and left a black trail of burned homes and death along the upper waters of the Gila River and through the San Simon Valley. They had crossed into Mexico at San Bernardino ranch and found refuge in the fastnesses of the Sierra Madres, fifty miles below the international line.
For three weeks a troop of the Seventh Cavalry had been in pursuit. At San Bernardino, the command had picked up John Slaughter to act as scout and guide. At fifty-five, the eyes of the frontier man-hunter were as keen as ever and his knack at following a trail as uncanny as in old days. Working like a hound on the scent, he located the encampment of the Apaches perched on a bench high on a mountain. Day was breaking as the troopers stole through the pine forest. The Indian camp was asleep. The cracking of army carbines was reveille for the renegades. Bucks and squaws came tumbling from the little group of wickiups in the clearing. Into the woods they plunged in mad flight and scattered over the mountain like quail. The pursuit of the soldiers was useless. The Indians had vanished as by magic. The chase abandoned, the troopers returned to burn the village.
John Slaughter stepped inside a wickiup. Something that, in the shadowy light, looked a little like a sack of flour caught his eye. Curious, he reached out the muzzle of his rifle to give the thing a poke. The sack of flour gave a sudden little tossing movement. It was a baby—a tiny Apache girl perhaps a year old, fast asleep on a deerskin. Black hair was tousled on the little head; long black eyelashes lay against the cheeks of dusky rose; the breath came and went as peacefully as if the child were sheltered in its mother’s arms. All the noise of the attack and flight had left the baby’s slumbers undisturbed.
“I say, I say,” crooned Slaughter, bending over, “wake up, little fellow.”
The baby girl opened her black eyes drowsily. A shadow of a smile flickered for an instant about her mouth. She probably expected to see her mother’s face hovering above her. When she saw the black-bearded white stranger, her eyes filled with sudden terror. But no cry or whimper escaped her. She rolled off her deerskin and, like a baby wild animal taken by surprise, went scurrying off on all fours across the earth floor in a blind effort to escape.
“Well, baby,” soothed Slaughter, “you needn’t be so scared. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
He caught up the little thing in his arms, wrapped her in an old shawl lying on the ground, and took her outside.
“Hey, fellows. What do you think of this?”
Soldiers gathered round, laughing. They peered into the frightened little face, patted the bronze cheeks, shook the chubby hands, tugged playfully at the tiny bare feet.
“Well, I’ll be good gosh-darned.”
“Hello, baby.”
“Has your muvver gone and left you? Poor little baby.”
A rifle crackled behind a rock high on the mountainside. A bullet whizzed past the heads of the group and knocked up earth and stones near by. An Indian, eh? Come prowling back. Several carbines made reply. No more shots came from the lone rifle on the mountain. A stalking party discovered an Apache buck lying dead behind the rock.
“The baby’s daddy, I reckon.”
“Come back to see what he could do for his kid.”
“You’ve got to give it to that Indian. He loved his baby.”
Was ever a tiny daughter of Apaches in such tragic misadventure as this mite of a baby cuddling in Slaughter’s arms? Abandoned by her people. Captured as prize of war by the enemies of her race. Her father—probably—killed before her eyes. Her mother far off in the mountains, doubtless weeping out her heart. Now the soldiers were applying the torch. The infant’s home was going up in flames. Still not a whimper from her lips. This baby was an Apache.
“What you goin’ to do with the kid, Slaughter?”
“Take her home.”
On the home trail, the baby slept beside Slaughter in his blankets. He woke one night and found her gone. He heard a rustle off in the darkness. The little Apache girl was crawling away silently through the grass. The starlit mountains had whispered, “Come back.” She was going home. Her wild little heart had heard the call of the wild.
So the Apache baby took her place as one of the family at the San Bernardino ranch. Mrs. Slaughter, having regard to the month, named her Apache May. But this was too big a name for such a mite. It was changed to Patchy. Civilization’s first gift to Patchy was a bath. Then some pretty new dresses. But Patchy’s original clothes were preserved as curiosities. And very curious they were. Her entire wardrobe was on her back and consisted of only two pieces—an under waist and a frock. But these had a history. The baby was clothed in the vestments of murder.
Riding forth on their wild foray from San Carlos, the Indians of the band to which Patchy had belonged had attacked a ranch on the Gila River and massacred a Mormon family named Merrill, consisting of father, mother, and daughter. Farther south, in the San Simon Valley, they had murdered a lone ranchman named Hand. Friends of the Merrills identified Patchy’s under waist as a part of the dart-fitted, many-buttoned, embroidered basque of the Mormon girl, and the shawl in which Slaughter had wrapped the baby, as having belonged to the Mormon mother.
Patchy’s tight-fitting outer waist was made of a flour sack, and the little skirt attached to it was of white cloth of equally coarse weave. Patchy’s frock was very dirty but on the skirt, beneath the grime, Mrs. Slaughter noticed dark figures which she believed were elaborately wrought aboriginal ornamentation.
“These quaint markings, so dim with dirt, intrigue me,” said Mrs. Slaughter. “They are probably a swastika pattern. Or some sort of intricate scroll work. Or picture writings. I imagine they must have some mysterious significance. I wish some Apache would ride this way who could interpret their meaning for me. Very probably, Patchy’s mother was, in her way, an artist.”
Profoundly interested in these cryptic designs, Mrs. Slaughter had Patchy’s frock washed. After it had been soaked in a tub of suds, scrubbed on the washboard, and dried in the sun on the clothesline, the figures that adorned it stood out with startling distinctness. They read as follows:
Delegate to Congress
Thomas F. Wilson
For Joint Councilman
J. W. Calkins
For Representatives
… Hicks
J. O. Stanford
J. S. Robbins
A. Wight
E. G. Norton
County Surveyor
H. G. Howe
Supervisors
J. Montgomery
B. S. Coffman
Sheriff
S. H. Bryant
District Attorney
W. H. Stilwell
Treasurer
James P. McAllister
County Recorder
W. F. Bradley
It was laughable, of course, to think of little Patchy romping about the parental wickiup in the Sierra Madres clad in an old Cochise County election poster, identified by Arizona antiquarians as of 1888. But it was also tragic. The old poster had hung for years on the walls of Hand’s cabin and had been carried off by the Apaches after the lonely rancher had been butchered.
From the wickiup in which he found Patchy, Slaughter had also brought away a war bag and two papoose-carriers. The war bag had been made from a pair of buckskin pantaloons, stitched with bright thread on a sewing machine and probably once belonging to some Mexican dandy whom the Apaches had murdered. The papoose-carriers consisted of a jacket attached to a head band. With the band across their foreheads, Apache mothers carried their babies in these jackets on their backs. Mrs. Slaughter tried carrying Patchy in one. She placed Patchy in the jacket so the child faced backward, and walked out into the sunshine. Patchy, she thought, would be delighted to be carried in the way her Indian mother used to carry her. But Patchy yelled and waved her chubby fists indignantly.
“You’ve got her on wrong,” said Slaughter. “The child must face the same way as you. That’s Apache fashion.”
Mrs. Slaughter readjusted Patchy. Facing forward and steadying herself with arms and legs, the baby was as contented as a mouse in its nest.
“Patchy was just a little wild animal when she came to San Bernardino ranch,” said Mrs. W. E. Hankin of Bisbee, who has preserved in manuscript much interesting history of the Slaughter family. “She ate anything, picking up scraps of food from the ground. When thirsty, she would run to a ditch and, lying face downward, drink from the stream. When drowsy, she curled up anywhere and went to sleep.
“When she became accustomed to her new home, she proved an unusually bright child. She understood much that was said to her. Sign language was natural to her; if she wanted bread and sugar, her signs were quite eloquent. She was soon lisping English. She forgot her Indian habits and in a little while was eating from a plate, drinking from a cup, and sleeping in her own little bed.
“She was a vain little creature. She used to strut like a robin in the pretty clothes Mrs. Slaughter had made for her, and she was particularly proud of her long, thick black hair. Once, when her hair was cut off, she cried as if her heart would break. ‘All my pretty hair is gone,’ she wailed. But when her hair grew back more luxuriantly than before, she was vainer than ever. When she was four years old, an amateur photographer took her picture. The look of pride on her flat little face was comical as she sat before the camera after having carefully spread her hair out over her shoulders.
“There were other waifs who had found a home at San Bernardino—a little Mexican girl, a pickaninny as black as tar, and a freckled-faced American youngster. With these playmates, Patchy romped all day. She had nothing to do but play, and the years for the little wild girl passed like a happy dream.
“Above everything else in the world, Patchy loved Mr. Slaughter. She would toddle about the place, holding to the strap of one of his boots to steady her wavering feet. If he took her in his lap, she would sit serenely happy for any length of time. If he rode away, she would wait at the front gate for hours, watching patiently for his return. When she saw him far off riding back, she would dance for joy. She called him Don Juan and when Don Juan took her for a little ride over the ranch, as he often did, holding her on his saddle in front of him, Patchy revelled in the greatest happiness the world had to give. Caresses were not in Patchy’s line. All the affection she had was expressed by her eyes, and she used to sit on the floor at the feet of her Don Juan as he smoked his pipe or read his paper and gaze at him by the hour with the rapt expression of a pagan worshipper before an idol.”
But the daughter of the wilderness in the white man’s home remained an Apache. She had an instinct for ambush. She took delight in frightening feminine visitors at the ranch by slipping noiselessly through the house and suddenly appearing as if from nowhere. If, at her games, she hid from her playmates, her lithe body became as motionless as a rock on a hillside. Sometimes she had spells of silent anger when her baby face froze in hard, savage lines and her black eyes snapped impishly. Though usually obedient, she could be sullen and obstinate. Once, when Mrs. Slaughter reprimanded her, the child’s face twisted with rage.
“I’ll kill you when I grow up,” she flared.
Pessimists shook their heads over Patchy. They warned Mrs. Slaughter. They feared that the Indian in the child some day might flame into quick and possibly tragic savagery. A leopard, they sermonized, could not change its spots, and an Apache would never be anything but an Apache—and a devil.
Four years after Patchy had come to the ranch, she was standing one February morning in 1900 beside a fire that she and her playmates had kindled in front of the house. A gust of wind whipped her skirt into the blaze. Flames shot up and enveloped her. In panic, she ran down the road. Will Slaughter, John Slaughter’s son, caught her, after a chase, smothered the flames, and bore her in his arms into the house. She was put to bed and soothing embrocations were applied. A telephone message was sent to Bisbee for a doctor. Bisbee, the nearest town, was fifty-five miles distant—modern Douglas was not yet in existence—and it was eight hours before the physician arrived. He found the case hopeless.
Patchy suffered exquisite agony. But she did not writhe or scream or moan. She lay on her pillow silent and motionless, the courage and stolid fortitude of her race in her grim little face, only the look in her black eyes giving evidence of the torture she endured. The little Apache was approaching the end like an Apache.
“Don Juan,” she said to John Slaughter with womanly calmness, “I am going to die. You have been good to me. Goodbye, Don Juan.”
So Patchy went to join the ghosts of her fathers, leaving unsolved the riddle over which the learned of the world have pondered and argued for years. What effect would civilization have had in moulding the character of this little savage of the Stone Age nurtured among the refinements of a modern home? Would she have grown into the gentle womanhood of the white race or into the hard, bitter maturity of her own wild people? Would she have been a lady or a squaw? Which would have won in her case, heredity or environment?
San Bernardino ranch was purchased by John Slaughter in 1884 and became his home in 1890. It was originally a land grant awarded in 1822 to Ignacio Perez by the government of Mexico and comprised 29,644 hectares or 73,240 acres. It lay entirely in Mexico, until the Gadsden Purchase of 1853, which added an extensive border strip to the vast territory that had fallen to the dominion of the United States as a result of the Mexican War. Then the line as established between the two countries divided it into two unequal parts, the larger in Mexico, the remainder in Arizona. Slaughter bought the property from the descendants of Perez.
In the days of Spanish dominion, a presidio garrisoned by Spanish soldiers stood at San Bernardino guarding the northern frontiers of Mexico against savage Indian tribes. The mesa near the ranch house is still called the Mesa de la Avansada or the Mesa of the Advance Guard. Near the presidio, the pioneer Spanish padres established a mission. Crumbling adobe walls of a once extensive building in Mexico a mile south of the ranch house are believed to mark the site of this ancient religious house.
Twenty years ago, two Mexicans with pack burros camped for the night at these ruined walls. No one at the ranch paid any attention to them. Next morning they were gone. But they had left exposed to view in the earth within the old cloister enclosure a deep boxlike receptacle lined with cement from which had been removed a cement slab that had served as lid. The cavity was empty. What it had contained remained an enigma. The two strangers had plied pick and shovel only in this one spot, and it was evident they had worked with a chart or secret directions to guide them. The cement-lined receptacle, it was suspected, had been the treasure vault of the old padres.
The old emigrant trail to California crossed the ranch land, and in the gold-rush days of ’Forty-nine was crowded with ox teams and prairie schooners. The ruts of the heavy wagons are still deep in the earth, and at a distance, the old road shows as a distinct yellow line running for miles across the mesa east of the ranch house. Opening upon this mesa is Guadalupe Canyon leading through the Guadalupe Mountains to the Animas Valley in New Mexico. It was in Guadalupe Canyon that Old Man Clanton and his five companions were ambushed and murdered by Mexicans. Twenty miles northeast is Skeleton Canyon, scene of the massacres of Mexican smuggler trains by Curly Bill outlaws.
San Bernardino ranch, intact today, is a domain of baronial extent. Its boundary fences are mountain ranges, its corner posts sun-kissed peaks. Watered by Guadalupe Creek and the Rio San Bernardino, it occupies the width of San Bernardino Valley and extends from the Guadalupe Mountains on the east to the Silver Creek range on the west and from the San Simon Valley watershed on the north to six miles south of the Mexican border. The international line is within a stone’s throw of the front porch. Back of the barn lies Mexico. You may see a mule cropping grass in the United States while its tail is busy switching flies in a foreign land.
John Slaughter built a home here at San Bernardino worthy of a cattle king. About his long, one-story adobe house with its deep, cool verandas, giant cottonwoods formed an oasis in the treeless valley. Like a little village were the great stables, granaries, work shops, and outhouses, with a commissary store for employees. Orchards and vineyards arose. Five hundred acres, irrigated by seven artesian wells, yielded crops of corn, wheat, oats, barley, and vegetables. Thirty thousand cattle under Slaughter’s brand pastured on the San Bernardino ranges.
The hospitality of San Bernardino ranch grew into a tradition. John Slaughter kept open house. Everybody was welcome. The family hardly knew what it was to sit down at a table without guests. Soldiers, statesmen, diplomats, frontiersmen, American cowboys, Mexican vaqueros, distinguished men and men undistinguished came and went in endless procession. When Douglas had boomed into a city eighteen miles west, with Agua Prieta adjoining it across the border, house parties filled the ranch with gaiety almost every weekend.
Men who were making history in Mexico rode over the line and sat at ease on the piazza while they discussed international adventures and problems with John Slaughter in Spanish, which he spoke as fluently as his native language. Among them were such notable persons as Madero of tragic memory; Huerta who rose on the ruins of Madero’s fortunes; Pancho Villa, romantic bandit of the hills, who fought his way to the capital at the head of a victorious army and, from the ancient palace which had been the home of viceroys and emperors, ruled supreme in Mexico; and Alvaro Obregon who broke Villa’s power at Celaya and Leon and sent him reeling back into the deserts from crushing and final defeat at Agua Prieta.
Days of peace at San Bernardino brought out the kindly human side of John Slaughter’s character. He loved children and children loved him. The old frontier fighter was never happier than when sitting on the porch watching a troop of boys and girls at play. His grandchildren were constantly visiting at the ranch and brought their little friends. Slaughter made the little ones his companions, took them on horseback rides, bought them candy, harmonicas, and trinkets at the store, told them stories, fished with them in the creek, heaped their plates with good things at the table, and always sent them home with a silver dollar in their pockets.
“Willie Greene, four years old, Mr. Slaughter’s grandchild, came to the ranch with a pocketful of marbles,” said Mrs. Hankin. “But it happened that just then no little boys were there with whom to play marbles. So Master Willie, being a shrewd merchant, offered his marbles to Mr. Slaughter for five cents.
“ ‘That strikes me as a good bargain,’ said Mr. Slaughter, and he bought the entire stock.
“Then some boys arrived and Willie needed his marbles.
“ ‘I want my marbles back,’ he said to his grandfather, rather expecting to get them back for nothing.
“ ‘All right,’ said Mr. Slaughter. ‘I’m always ready to trade. I’ll sell them back to you for ten cents.’
“ ‘But,’ argued Willie, ‘you got ’em for five.’
“ ‘That’s so,’ replied Mr. Slaughter. ‘But you must never go into a business deal unless you see that you can turn your money over at a profit.’
“So Willie had to pay ten cents to get his marbles back, but, with the lesson that went with them, they were doubtless cheap at the price.”
Old Bat, who had come out from Texas with Slaughter, lived at San Bernardino until his death in 1921. A brave old Negro of lordly airs was Old Bat, and he looked upon himself as a member of the family. Of the ranch, cattle, and all Slaughter possessions, he used to say, “They belongs to us.” In the old days, when Old Bat guarded the large sums of money carried on cattle-buying expeditions, Slaughter knew no robber would ever get the treasure without killing the Negro first. Old Bat was faithful to the last drop of his blood. Bat’s courage shone out notably in an incident during one of Geronimo’s raids in the San Bernardino country. Gus Hickey, Bunk Robinson, and George Bridges of Tombstone, prospecting in Guadalupe Canyon, were surprised by the Apaches. Robinson and Bridges were killed. Hickey entrenched himself behind a rock and fought for several hours. Deciding his only chance for life lay in flight, he left his hiding place and ran down the canyon in the open under the fire of the Indian guns. As by a miracle, he escaped without a scratch and reached San Bernardino ranch eighteen miles away. The ranch hands talked of organizing a party to bring in the two dead bodies.
“Pshaw, what you-all talkin’ ’bout?” said Old Bat. “Ain’t no need o’ no party. I’ll go fetch ’em in.”
He hooked up a team of mules and drove alone to the scene of the fight and brought in the bodies. As it chanced, Geronimo and his band had gone.
Old Bat’s last years were passed in important and busy idleness. Loyal to those who were loyal to him, Slaughter surrounded the old Negro with every comfort. Old Bat died at the ranch at the age of ninety. He had been in Slaughter’s service forty-three years.
Nigger John, who with Old Bat had come from Texas on the honeymoon cattle drive, had been a slave in the Slaughter family. As a pickaninny he had been given by his mother on her deathbed to John Slaughter, and remained in his master’s service for twenty-five years after slavery days had ended. He married in Tombstone and settled down in a home of his own. He still lives there, very old and in comfortable circumstances.
Old age robbed John Slaughter of some of his restless energy, slowed his brisk step, caused him to stoop a little, and turned his hair and beard white, but it did not change his eyes.
Some novelists have it [wrote Michael J. Phillips in 1921] that the man with the bright blue eye is the real article when it comes to brawls, battles, and ruckuses. Maybe so. But John Slaughter’s eyes proclaimed to me without a word on his part and without an effort on his part to impress me, that he is clear-strain. They are black eyes, cold and unyielding as frosted granite. They are sharp. They probe you. His low voice and rather deprecatory manner are set at naught by one glance of those fearless eyes. So long as he lives, John Slaughter will never be merely one of the crowd in an assemblage. And it is because of his eyes. I would not care to be called on even today to shoot it out with John Slaughter, though he is a very old man.
I asked him how much land he had here at San Bernardino.
“About one hundred thousand acres, leased and owned,” he replied in his drawly voice.
He pointed to a mountain peak six miles below the international border which passed at our feet. “That’s one boundary,” he said. He pointed to another peak perhaps ten miles from us and six miles from the first. “That’s another. The American boundaries are over yonder.” He flirted his thumb over his shoulder toward an empire’s expanse of plains, hills, and mountains behind us.
San Bernardino ranch was steeped in peace on the night of May 4, 1921. There was no moon, but the bonfire stars that blaze in Arizona skies gave a crystal clearness to the darkness. Mrs. Slaughter, Miss Edith Stowe, a guest, and Jess Fisher, foreman of the ranch and Mrs. Slaughter’s cousin, were talking in desultory wise in the living room. John Slaughter sat in the dining room absorbed in a newspaper. The window beside him looked out upon the commissary store thirty feet distant across the back yard. The window shade was raised. A kerosene lamp of great brilliancy lighted the room.
Suddenly, one of Slaughter’s old-time, unaccountable, mystic warnings of unseen danger flashed upon him. He flung aside his newspaper and hurried from the room. His bedroom across the hall was dark. He stepped into it. He had no reason for doing this. He had neither heard nor seen anything out of the common. He did it—that was all. As his fingers closed on the handle of his six-shooter lying in its place on the chimney piece, two shots sounded loudly at the rear of the house. He rushed for the door. Feeble with age, he was the fighter still. But Mrs. Slaughter and Miss Stowe threw their arms around him and bore him into a chair.
“You must not go outside,” screamed Mrs. Slaughter. “You will be killed.”
Jess Fisher had heard a noise at the store. He had stepped out to investigate. Immediately had come the crash of two guns. Whatever was taking place, it was quickly over. Running footsteps faded into the distance. Then silence.
Slaughter and the two women found Fisher lying dead on the little platform in front of the door of the store. His pockets were turned inside out and his watch was gone. Eighty dollars was missing from the cash drawer of the commissary. From the bunkhouse, Manuel Garcia and José Perez, employed on the ranch, had disappeared.
Four Mexicans, it developed, had been concerned in the robbery. Garcia and Perez were caught next day at a neighbouring ranch. Garcia, nineteen years old, had lived on the Slaughter ranch since boyhood. Perez, who had been in Slaughter’s employ only a few days, was said to have served with Pancho Villa’s guerrillas. Arcadio Chavez, taken in Agua Prieta with Fisher’s watch in his possession, made a clean breast and implicated Manuel Rubio as the fourth man. The robbers, Chavez said, had planned to murder the entire family at the ranch and loot the place. He and Rubio had shot Fisher. If Slaughter had come running out, as they expected, they would have killed him. But as the old fighter had been saved from the trap, the fear of his six-shooter, Chavez declared, prevented the carrying out of the plan for wholesale murder.
Garcia and Perez were sent to the penitentiary for life. Rubio was never apprehended. Chavez, it was reported, went through a form of trial at Hermosilla in Mexico and was acquitted. Manuel Garcia, according to Chavez, had planned the robbery. His murderous treachery was a shock to Mrs. Slaughter. He had been her personal chore boy, and she had taken a mother’s interest in his bringing up.
Slaughter’s life was saved that night by his mysterious warning. His murder was to have been the crux of the plot. If he had continued a minute longer to read his newspaper by the window in the brilliantly lighted dining room, he unquestionably would have been killed. His lifelong confident assertion that he could not be killed seemed to have been verified again. Now, near the close of his career, his Guardian Angel was still on watch.
Slaughter’s last years were as serene as the sunlight that bathes the San Bernardino Valley. He lived in peace and contentment. He rode occasionally; he pottered in his kitchen garden; he walked among his flower beds, bringing a fresh rose every morning to lay beside his wife’s plate on the breakfast table. He sat on the pleasant veranda in the long, languorous afternoons and watched the cloud shadows drift across the vegas or let his eyes rest on the shadowy beauty of the blue mountains of Mexico. His eighty years of life, that from first to last had been one long romance of the frontier, ended from apoplexy February 15, 1922. He had done his work well and had earned his rest. No more forceful or picturesque character ever made history in pioneer Arizona than this John Slaughter who, carrying law in one hand and a six-shooter in the other, established peace and prosperity in his corner of the wilderness of the Southwest.