XIX
The Round Table’s Last Knight
Deep in the shaft of the Sulphuret mine a miner swung his pick. A loosened fragment of rock rolled against his boots. From the cavity oozed a few drops of water. They trickled down a stone slab in little dashes and zigzags and curlicues that were in very truth hieroglyphics of disaster. The cryptic message written by the water on the mine’s dark wall spelled the doom of Tombstone.
The mines were at the high tide of prosperity. Immense quantities of silver were being taken out. The rich lodes seemed inexhaustible. Then, without warning, water was struck at a depth of five hundred feet. An initial trickle became a flood. A subterranean lake or river apparently had been tapped. It seemed to underlie the entire range of hills. All the mines were affected. Bailing was impossible. The water boiled into the shafts in geyser spouts as thick as a man’s body.
The Grand Central and Contention mines, at an expense of $300,000, installed steam pumps. But the pumps drew water from all the mines. Their task, it was apparent from the beginning, was almost hopeless. When the surface pumping works were destroyed by fire in 1886, the water rose in the shafts all over the hill to a great depth within an hour, and all the Tombstone mines closed down. The water was like an impenetrable armour plate guarding vast silver treasure still unmined. Wealth with an estimated value of hundreds of millions of dollars remains in the Tombstone hills today. Probably it will remain untouched forever.
With the silver foundations on which it had been built suddenly washed away, Tombstone suffered a disaster comparable to that from an earthquake or a volcano in overwhelming eruption. Its boom collapsed. An army of miners departed. The exodus of citizens was like a flight. All the trails were crowded with wagons piled high with household goods rolling off over the horizon. From fifteen thousand to three thousand, the number of inhabitants dwindled so quickly the change seemed like black magic. Stores, saloons, and gambling places closed their doors. Allen Street, once noisy with traffic, showed only a dull spark of animation. Plate-glass windows of vacant business establishments stared blankly, like the eyeless sockets of death’s heads, out into the empty thoroughfare. Grass grew in outlying streets lined, block on block, with tenantless dwellings. Spiders spun their webs in the cribs and dens and haunts of revelry of the old red-light district. All the old picturesque life vanished; yesterday it was here, today it was gone. With the coming of night, the silence of the mesquite mesa leaped upon the town, as if from ambush, and clutched it in deathly stillness. The shell of a metropolis housed the population of a village. The busiest, gayest, wildest, toughest little city in the Southwest faded into a ghost town. Tombstone, dying in the desert, was left to its tragedy.
This decadent period was notable for a lax administration of law and the absence of strong men at the helm of public affairs. Crime flourished as never before. Though the heroic era of Curly Bill was gone, and cattle raids across the border were out of style, and outlawry had lost its romance, the criminals were pestiferously active. It was an age of thieves rather than bandits. The country was overrun with a vermin of horse thieves and cattle thieves. Though they operated on a small scale, they kept eternally at it. No horse was safe in its stall, no milk cow in a stable lot or pasture. Burglars, practically unknown on the old frontier, made their appearance. Men were held up on dark streets. It became dangerous for a citizen to venture out of town, because of lurking highwaymen. Criminals were showing a disposition to organize. Their depredations became bolder and more extensive. Tombstone was their headquarters, and the town was gradually passing under their secret domination. Casting about for a man with the force and courage to handle a serious situation that every day was growing more sinister and menacing, Tombstone turned its eyes upon John Slaughter. He had no ambition for office. His cattle business kept him fully occupied. But his election as sheriff was a public call to the man for the hour and the job. Like a modern Cincinnatus, he turned his back upon his ranch and his personal interests to perform a public duty. For the next four years, the history of Sheriff Slaughter was virtually the history of Tombstone.
A memorable, wholly unique character was this John Slaughter. Of iron will, iron courage, iron determination—a man of iron. A remarkable combination of thinker and fighter, intellect and trigger finger. A grim, impressively silent man, isolated, wrapped about with loneliness, keeping his own counsels and his own secrets, taking advice from no one. No genius for words, almost inarticulate, but a man of quick judgments and decisive action. A cold exterior belied a fiery, restless, relentless personality. His spirit was like a flame burning in a casing of ice. An upright, honourable man, direct, businesslike. To his friends, friendly. To his enemies and the enemies of law embodied in himself, coldly, tragically, remorselessly merciless.
He was a small, powerful man; broad shoulders, thick neck, only five feet six inches in height, black hair, black moustache, black beard, coal-black eyes. A naturally fair skin had been burned by years of wind and sun to the tinge of tanned leather. He radiated alertness and energy. The snap and vim of him suggested an electric aura.
“No one on whom Slaughter bestowed the most casual glance ever forgot his eyes,” said A. H. Gardner of Tombstone. “They were the blackest, brightest, most penetrating eyes I ever saw. I should think it would, have been difficult to lie to Slaughter. When he looked at me, his eyes seemed to be burning a hole into my brain. I used to fancy he was taking an inventory of all my secrets. If someone had held a newspaper at the back of my head, it wouldn’t have surprised me if Slaughter, looking straight through my skull, had read the want ads.”
Slaughter not only saw everything in front of him with marvellously keen vision, but everything at both sides as well. He rarely turned his head. He turned his eyes instead, taking in all about him with constant sidelong glances. He talked with lips that hardly moved. His voice was low and of throaty quality, but he spoke distinctly. He rarely raised his voice, but everyone within sound of it listened. Those to whom he gave an order jumped to obey it. He did not stammer, but he had a way of beginning a remark with “I say, I say.” One of his quaint maxims was: “I say, I say, always shoot first and holler ‘Throw up your hands’ afterwards.”
Though not a dandy, he was fussy about his clothes, which were always of expensive material, tailored, and immaculate. His broad-brimmed white hat was creased along the centre in his sheriff’s days, but in later years was tucked in around the top to give the appearance of a low crown. He took a Western man’s pride in his boots—he never wore shoes—and had them made to measure by a special boot-maker. They were half-boots, after the cowboy fashion, high-heeled, with a touch of colour and fancy stitching at the tops, and of the finest, softest leather. His trousers were always tucked in them, and his heavy-rowelled spurs were never removed. Anyone who failed to see Slaughter’s face could identify him by his feet.
A black Mexican cigar clenched between his even white teeth seemed a part of him, and associated with him as indelibly in Tombstone’s memory as his gray horse were a diamond ring on the little finger of his left hand and a pearl-handled six-shooter worn at his belt where his right hand could drop on it instantly.
Slaughter was rather free and easy with his intimates, but maintained an aloof dignity among strangers and resented familiarity. A man who had met him in Texas greeted him boisterously in a Kansas hotel with “Hello, Tex.” “Good morning, sir,” responded Slaughter with cold courtesy. Next day, the irrepressible person again shouted “Hello, Tex.” Slaughter fixed his glittering black eyes on the man. “My name is Slaughter,” he said. “If you ever think it necessary to speak to me again, just remember my name is Slaughter.”
With those sharp black eyes of his, Slaughter was able to see distant objects sometimes invisible to those of ordinary vision. Riding one day with his niece and another young woman, he pointed to a crack on a mountain wall.
“Do either of you girls see anything up there?” he asked.
Both scrutinized the cliff long and carefully. No, they saw nothing.
“But wait a moment, Uncle John,” cried his niece. “Don’t show us. We’ll find it yet.”
Again they scanned the bluff with meticulous glances.
“There’s absolutely nothing there,” they declared.
“Let’s see,” answered Slaughter.
He drew his six-shooter and, apparently without taking aim, fired. Something fell from the crack in the mountain wall. The astonished young ladies hurried to see what it might be. It was a buff-coloured owl of the exact shade of the rock against which it had been perched.
No one ever saw Slaughter that his pearl-handled six-shooter was not hanging at his side. He wore it in his home. It used to be suspected that he slept with it on. He doubtless would have felt undressed without it. Moreover, he could do some remarkably fine shooting with it. He was rated, in unprecise phrase, as a dead shot. Certainly he was a crack shot. Whenever he shot, something usually dropped. His gleaming gun handle might have borne a number of notches if he had cared to file them there. How many is still a matter of conjecture. Modern Tombstone’s answer to inquiries on this subject is vague. “Slaughter killed plenty,” is the usual reply. Estimates run from six to eight or twenty. And all estimates are guesses. Slaughter never told how many men he had killed, and he alone knew. He cared nothing for fame as a man with a gun-handle record. The record itself was enough. He remained silent on his record to the end of his life. But hidden in his silence were many tragedies.
For his job as sheriff, all the experience of Slaughter’s life had equipped him, all his past had been preparation. He was not an office sheriff. He did not sit at a mahogany desk and give orders to deputies. He was a hard-riding sheriff, forever in the saddle. Whatever hard or dangerous work there was to do, he did it himself or took an active part in it. Nor was it his wont to ride with a posse at his back. In pursuit of a criminal, he usually rode alone. He was a frontiersman who knew his frontier. He could follow a trail invisible to eyes less keen with the uncanny ability of an Apache. Deserts and mountains were like a printed page to him. A broken stalk of grass, a bent weed, an upturned pebble, guided him. He did not dash off at random to some town to which it might be logical to assume a fugitive would flee. It was his custom to track a man step by step, and sign by sign. And usually, at the end of the trails he followed, a man threw up his hands or died.
Slaughter was not troubled with hairline distinctions, and in dealing with criminals he sometimes lost sight of the fact that he was only an officer of the law and became the law itself. He had little confidence in courts and juries but implicit faith in the justice of John Slaughter. Instead of arresting a man, he sometimes ordered him out of the country. There was, of course, no law in the statute books to sanction such a czarlike ukase. But, for the nonce, these orders became the law, and very effective law at that. Invariably, the man upon whom fell the edict of banishment folded his tents and disappeared. What is more, he never came back. He knew Slaughter would kill him if he did not go, and would kill him if he ventured to return. To him, the fierce little tiger man guarding the peace of Tombstone loomed like a heroic statue of certain death.
Horse stealing was not punishable by death under Arizona law, but under Slaughter’s personal code it was a capital offense. If a horse were stolen from a Tombstone stable, as not infrequently was the case, the citizens could always count upon seeing shortly Slaughter’s strapping gray standing saddled at the hitching rack in front of the courthouse. Then down the steps the sheriff would come marching, mount, and ride out of town. He would say goodbye to no one. No one, not even his chief deputy, would know where he was going. For a week, perhaps, nothing would be heard of him. Then, some fine day, he would come riding back, the stolen horse jogging behind on a lead rope. No questions would be asked. Slaughter would vouchsafe no information. What had become of the horse thief remained Slaughter’s secret.
“I was inspector of customs located at Tombstone for two years while Slaughter was sheriff,” said Jeff Milton of Fairbank, a fighter himself. “He and I were good friends. He rode by my house one day going out after a horse thief.
“ ‘I’ll saddle up and go along and help you, John,’ I said.
“ ‘Never mind,’ Slaughter answered. ‘It’s only one Mexican. I’ll get him.’
“I guess he got him. Slaughter rode back with the stolen horse. Every time he went out after a stolen horse, he always brought it back. But I don’t remember ever seeing him bring back the horse thief.
“Slaughter would never allow any man to get behind him—not even a friend. I used to try it, just for fun. While I talked with him, I’d edge around a little to one side. Slaughter would turn and keep his face to me. I’d edge a little farther. Slaughter would turn again. If I kept up the joke, Slaughter would turn completely round before our conversation ended.
“When I was in Benson one day, I stepped up to a lunch wagon to buy a sandwich. Four nigger soldiers were standing at the counter, and one of them shoved me aside. I stuck a six-shooter in his belly and made him and his three buddies line up and keep their hands in the air until I’d finished my sandwich. As I walked off, I met Slaughter.
“ ‘I say, I say,’ said John, ‘I don’t know why those niggers didn’t shoot you. I’ve been standing here with a cocked six-shooter trained on ’em all the time you were eating.’
“And,” added Milton, “if those niggers had made a move, Slaughter would have turned that six-shooter loose. I don’t believe Slaughter thought any more of killing a man, if it seemed to him the man deserved death, than he did of putting a bullet through a tin can.”
Full of stories of the early days is Jim Wolf, past seventy now, who for more than thirty years has been living absolutely alone on a little cattle ranch in the San Pedro Valley a few miles south of Charleston.
“Many a time,” said Jim Wolf, “when John Slaughter wuz out alone trailin’ a criminal, he’d stop at my ranch house. Sometimes I’d hear a halloo at my door at night after I’d gone to bed, and it’d be old John after a cup of coffee. ‘I’ll make it for you, John,’ I’d say. But he’d never let me. ‘Go on back to bed,’ he’d tell me. ‘I’ll make it.’ And he’d rustle up a fire, and soon he’d have a pot of coffee boiling. When he had turned off a good, hot cup, he’d walk out and git on his pony and ride away. He never talked none. I had hard work gittin’ more’n ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ out o’ him. And I never had the least idee where he wuz bound on these trips. Nobody else, I reckon, until he rides back to Tombstone.
“I remember I wuz workin’ down by my corral one day when a Mexican comes ridin’ by on the purtiest black pony I ever seen. He wuz goin’ along at a right smart gait, but I stops him.
“ ‘Say, partner,’ sez I, ‘that’s a right nice little hoss you’re straddlin’. I kinder think I’d like to trade you out o’ him.’
“ ‘Esta bueno, señor,’ sez the greaser. ‘What have you to trade?’
“I offered to trade him an old spavined mule I owns, but he laughs at me and I sees that Mex knows somethin’ ’bout hossflesh. Well, we dickers quite a time.
“ ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ sez I at last. ‘I’ll give you them two hosses o’ mine you see right over yonder in that thar corral and,’ sez I, ‘twenty dollars to boot.’
“That sets this greaser thinkin’, and he looks like he’s gittin’ ready to trade when he seems to hear something back down the trail and he turns around in his saddle and takes a long look. I don’t see nothin’, but whatever it is, it seems to make him kinder nervous and he sez he’s in a sorter hurry jest then and has got to be ridin’, but he’ll see me some other time. So he gallops on off.
“But as I wuz tellin’ you that wuz jest about the purtiest black pony I ever seen, and as he was ridin’ away I kept lookin’ at that pony, and the more I looks at it the prettier it seems to git.
“ ‘Now,’ sez I to myself, drawin’ my own conclusions about the greaser, ‘that Mexican’s done stole that animule and he ain’t got no business with it nohow, and I’m jest goin’ to have that black pony for myself, and that’s all thar is to that.’
“So I steps in the house and gits my rifle. Ef I takes a shortcut across my alfalfa pasture, I kin ketch that Mexican by a clump of alamosas along the road. I wuz just startin’ when along comes John Slaughter.
“ ‘Seen a Mexican ridin’ a black pony passin’ along here recent?’ sez John.
“ ‘Jest left here ’bout five minutes ago,’ sez I.
“ ‘Which-a-way did he go?’ sez John.
“ ‘That-a-way,’ sez I, and I p’ints up the valley toward the Mule Mountains. ‘I ain’t busy, John,’ sez I. ‘Can I help you any?’
“ ‘No,’ sez old John, and he rides off.
“The next time I’m in Tombstone, they tells me Slaughter come ridin’ back to town leading that black pony. Seems like the Mexican had stole it from Mrs. Amazon Howell, Slaughter’s mother-in-law. I asked ef Slaughter had brung in the Mexican. No, he hadn’t. ‘Then how’d he git the pony back?’ I asks. Well, nobody knowed. He’d brung the pony back, but he hadn’t brung back no Mexican, and that’s all they knowed about it. That struck me as kinder funny. I wondered whatever had become o’ that Mexican hoss thief. Of course, I didn’t ask John. That’d been a mistake. Nobody never asked Slaughter no questions. It never did no good to ask him none, and sometimes it wuz sorter dangerous.
“ ’Bout a week later, I reckon it wuz, I wuz ridin’ over round the mouth of Bisbee Canyon lookin’ for some cows when I notices a passel o’ buzzards sailin’ round over the mesquite, and I rides over to the spot. There lays this here Mexican that’d come ridin’ past my ranch on the black pony. I knowed him as soon as I seen him. So I goes on lookin’ fer my cows, which finally I rounds up and drives back home. And I never says nothin’ to nobody about what I sees in the mouth of Bisbee Canyon.
“I reckon it wuz two or maybe three months later I wuz in Bisbee. They wuz big excitement in town. Some cow punchers had jest found the skeleton of a human bein’ lyin’ out in the mesquite in the mouth of Bisbee Canyon. They’d brung in the bones and a few pieces o’ clothes they’d found at the spot, and the coroner wuz fixin’ to hold an inquest. I wuz kind o’ smilin’ to myself when I runs into old John Slaughter.
“ ‘They tells me,’ sez old John, ‘some punchers has found a human skeleton over in the mouth o’ Bisbee Canyon,’ sez he.
“ ‘Yes,’ sez I, slappin’ him on the back and laughin’, ‘and,’ sez I, ‘I knows what greaser used to own that skeleton.’
“ ‘Is that so?’ sez old John. ‘Well,’ sez he, ‘that Mexican won’t never steal no more hosses.’ ”
Juan Soto’s case illustrates Slaughter’s methods as neatly as anything that happened during his two terms in office. Juan Soto was a Spaniard who had come originally from California and was prosperously settled in Contention. He handled his affairs so adroitly as the leader of a band of robbers that operated up and down the San Pedro, running off cattle, holding up travellers on the highway, and committing an occasional murder, that the citizens of Contention had no suspicions that he was a criminal but held him in great respect. Slaughter himself was in the dark for a long time as to Soto’s connection with the thieves, though he often wondered where all the money came from that the Spaniard spent in lordly wise across Tombstone bars.
Sheriff Slaughter had a deputy working for him named Burt Alvord, in whom he had great confidence and who rewarded that confidence by shrewd, faithful service, though in after years he himself turned outlaw and engineered a number of daring train robberies. Alvord was a roistering good fellow who drank and gambled and made many friends in the shady walks of life. These friendships he cultivated assiduously for business reasons, being a good detective and having a good detective’s faith in the value of stool pigeons. It was one of these secret informers who first directed Alvord’s suspicions toward Juan Soto.
But suspicion was one thing and evidence another, and Slaughter found it extremely difficult to fasten guilt definitely upon the crafty Spaniard. The sheriff learned that Soto was frequently away from his home in Contention all night on mysterious missions and returned at dawn. He learned also that, before coming to Arizona, Soto had been a member of a desperate band of criminals in California. While Slaughter was busy with his investigations, two cattle buyers were robbed and murdered near the Mexican line. Information he received left no doubt in the sheriff’s mind that this atrocity was the work of Soto’s band and that Soto himself had taken a personal part in it. Slaughter rode over to Contention and brought Soto back a prisoner.
Soto was acquitted at his trial in Tombstone. As he left the courtroom a free man, he smiled a sly smile of triumph in Slaughter’s face. Which, it may be remarked, was a tactical error. It was whispered that the jury had been bribed. That may or may not have been true. The evidence was strong, but there were certain missing links, and the jury had given Soto the benefit of what it deemed a reasonable doubt. But, knowing what he did about Soto’s clandestine affairs, Slaughter looked upon the verdict as an outrageous miscarriage of justice. Soto’s guilt had not been proved to the satisfaction of the jury. Slaughter knew he was guilty. The jury of twelve men had brought in a verdict of innocence; the jury of one man returned a verdict of guilt. When, a few days later, Soto rode to his home in Contention at dawn after one of his nocturnal adventures, Slaughter stepped from a doorway with his pearl-handled six-shooter at a level.
“Soto,” said the sheriff, “I’ll give you ten days to get out of the country.”
But the amazed Spaniard had other plans. He argued the matter.
“The jury acquitted me,” he objected. “My business is here in Contention. You’ve no right to order me out of the country.”
“The jury failed to put you in the penitentiary where you belong,” replied Slaughter. “But I’ll kill you if I catch you in this country after ten days. That’s your time limit. Remember—ten days.”
Slaughter’s peremptory order struck Soto as pretty high-handed. Unjust, also, in view of his acquittal, and, moreover, unlawful. The sheriff had no right to order him out of the country. Absolutely no right of any kind. Soto voiced his indignant resentment in Contention saloons.
“I am Juan Soto,” he said to his Mexican admirers, tapping himself upon the breast. “That fellow Slaughter thinks he is dealing with a baby. But I will show him.”
The ninth day arrived. Soto was tippling among sympathetic comrades.
“Well, Juan,” said one of his friends, “what are you going to do about it?”
“Do?” flared Soto with a defiant laugh. “I am going to stay right here in Contention. I’ve just as good a right to stay in this country as Slaughter himself. He can’t run me out.”
The sun of the tenth day shone brightly over Contention. Soto’s Mexican comrades gathered in a saloon. They would have a social glass with Juan. He was in trouble. A drink or two would cheer him up. But Soto did not appear. His friends looked at one another with faint, dubious smiles. Juan had talked so big and brave the night before. It was unbelievable that, after all, he had obeyed the order of this fellow, Slaughter. Ah, there down the street, Señora Juan Soto was sweeping off her front steps. The Mexicans would inquire.
“Buenas dias, señora. Adonde esta Juan?”
The woman, leaning on her broom handle, gave a shrug.
“Se fue,” she replied. “Este es todo. Yo no se por adonde.”
That was all. Juan Soto had vanished.
It was a year later that a number of robberies were committed in Sulphur Springs Valley around Pierce. Juan Soto recently had settled in the valley. As that was not the San Pedro, he thought perhaps Slaughter would leave him alone. Then, doubtless, Slaughter had forgotten all about him. Twelve months is a long time.
Slaughter rode out of Tombstone alone one day, bound east. A few days later, he rode back. He had been over in Sulphur Springs Valley on a little business. That was all anyone ever learned from Slaughter. But Juan Soto suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. He never was heard of again in Sulphur Springs Valley nor in Arizona, nor, as far as anyone knows, anywhere else. A rumour of unidentified origin spread abroad that Juan Soto was dead.
Then there was Van Wyck Coster at Willcox. Slaughter gathered much evidence against Coster, who was a business man of comfortable means and good reputation among unsuspecting citizens. Slaughter’s evidence was enough, it was said, to send any ordinary person to the penitentiary. But Slaughter had had enough of courts and juries. His experience in the Soto case had taught him a lesson. He would take no more chances on a corrupt or misguided verdict. Then, why put the country to the unnecessary expense of a trial? Having tried and convicted Van Wyck Coster in his own mind, Slaughter rode over to Willcox to pass sentence.
“But, what the hell?” said Coster. “You can’t run me out of this country. I’ve done nothing.”
“I’ll run you out or kill you,” replied Slaughter. “I’ve got the goods on you and have had ’em for a long time.”
Coster wriggled and squirmed. When Slaughter went into precise details concerning a number of crimes, Coster ceased to argue. It was exile or death—he had his choice. He wound up his business and departed.
If an ordinary sheriff had tried to enforce such summary measures, the criminal probably would have laughed at him. But nobody laughed at Slaughter. The man he sentenced to exile or death knew Slaughter meant exactly what he said. The beauty of Slaughter’s one-man-jury verdicts was that they were always carried out one way or the other. Which way, didn’t make much difference to Slaughter. If the criminal preferred exile, all right. If he preferred to die, that was his business.
Agua Zarca was a huddle of mud huts on the Northern Mexico & Arizona Railroad. Dark and silent on the night of May 11, 1888, lay the tiny village twelve miles south of Nogales on the border. Far off across the Sonoran plains appeared a point of light. That was the express. A long-drawn, eerie, dreary whistle, that seemed the voice of the desert’s loneliness, came faintly out of the distance. As the train roared to a stop at the Agua Zarca station, two highwaymen with drawn six-shooters climbed into the locomotive cab. The engineer kept to his seat at the throttle. The fireman seized the gun of the robber leader. This was a brave fireman. So a second bandit shot him dead. Four other robbers on the ground were firing guns. The conductor came running from a rear coach with a lantern in his hand. What was the matter? A bullet cut through his heart. He lay there in the dark for an hour or more, his lantern on the ground beside him shining on his dead face. The express messenger was closing the sliding side door of his car when he was killed. Every phase of heroism received the accolade of a bullet this wild night. Now at their leisure, the bandits rifled safe and mail sacks. Then they rode off. The hoofs of their horses in the darkness made fine, dashing music to which fifteen thousand dollars marched away.
But Jack Taylor, leader of the band, had lost his hat during the excitement. This bold fellow must have a hat. He stepped into a store in Nogales. He clapped a new hat on his head. Price? The clerk said only three dollars, and Mexican money at that. The Court fixed the cost at the rest of his life in the penitentiary. Another robber, a German, was arrested with him. His imprisonment for life also sent the price of that hat a little higher.
The other four robbers were Geronimo Miranda, Manuel Robles, Neives Deron, and one Federico, all Mexicans. They fled across the border to Tombstone. This was a dangerous refuge just then. The town’s name had taken on a sinister significance for robbers under Sheriff Slaughter’s regime. For three nights the sheriff and his men watched a Mexican woman’s house. But the bandits got wind of the trap. They were next heard of at Willcox and Clifton. Then their trail was lost.
Guadalupe Robles, a brother of Manuel Robles, lived in Contention and was a dealer in firewood. He had a wood ranch in Frenchy’s Canyon near Mescal Springs in the Whetstone Mountains. He would drive from Contention to the Whetstones one day, sleep at his camp that night, and return to town with a load of wood next day. Being a good, loyal brother, Guadalupe was kept under a surveillance which he did not suspect. One morning, when he drove off for his camp, he had a gunny sack filled with food in his wagon. Of course, Guadalupe must eat on his trips. He must have dinner, supper, and breakfast before he got back. But it struck the spies who were watching poor Guadalupe that a whole gunny sackful of food was a little too much even for the appetite of a healthy wood-hauler. So Sheriff Slaughter was informed at once of the bountiful supply of refreshments Guadalupe was taking to Frenchy’s Canyon. Whereupon Sheriff Slaughter and Deputy Sheriffs Burt Alvord and Cesario Lucero mounted in hot haste and rode for the Whetstones.
Night fell moonless and dark. The Whetstones went up blackly into dim obscurity. Slaughter knew the location of Guadalupe’s wood camp, but he and his men did not ride up Frenchy’s Canyon. They hid their horses in thick brush, and, on foot, struck along the top of a heavily timbered ridge that parallels the canyon. They blundered through thickets, stumbled over rocks, bumped blindly into trees. Far back in the mountains, they waited for the peep of day.
Far across the San Pedro Valley, the first faint suspicion of blue dawn appeared over the Dragoons. The three men took off their boots, tied them over their shoulders with pieces of twine, and in their socks, set off on the hunt. They slipped through the dark woods as warily and silently as Indians, guarding their steps lest the upsetting of a stone or the snapping of a twig give warning of their approach. Their quarry was not far away. They examined their guns, adjusted their cartridge belts. They were beginning to close in when Alvord showed sign of hanging back. Just a little. This was the young deputy’s first big adventure. Slaughter caught him by the sleeve and swung him forward.
“Stay there in front of me,” whispered the sheriff. “If you run, I’ll kill you.”
Before them on the slope of a hill, they saw through the dim, misty light three forms rolled in blankets and stretched on the ground. Only three. They had expected five. The three sleeping men were Manuel Robles and Neives Deron, robbers, and Guadalupe Robles, wood-hauler guilty of nothing except loyalty to his scapegrace brother. Federico and Geronimo Miranda, the other two uncaptured bandits, had gone elsewhither.
“Hey! Roll out of those blankets and throw up your hands.”
Slaughter’s voice cut through the dewy stillness. Called back, perhaps, from pleasant dreams, the three Mexicans flung aside their blankets, seized their six-shooters which had been lying beside them, and leaped to their feet. Surely a wild awakening. No time to rub the sleep from their eyes. No time for anything but fighting. Unless it was dying. There almost upon them were three grim spectre figures with levelled guns ready to send them to blazing death. Manuel Robles and Neives Deron rose shooting. Guadalupe Robles with his cocked six-shooter in his hand straightened to his full height. Slaughter’s first shot killed him, and the Mexican crumpled down on his blankets and seemed to have gone back to his pleasant dreams. Deron fled up the hill at a stumbling run and dodged behind an outcropping rock. There he turned at bay, only head and shoulders showing. Three times his revolver flamed. A neat, rounded notch in Slaughter’s ear dripped blood. One of Slaughter’s bullets dropped Deron, mortally wounded, behind the boulder. Manuel Robles went bounding down into the canyon. Alvord fired several shots at him, the balls knocking up spouts of dirt beyond him.
“Pull down, Burt,” shouted Slaughter. “You’re overshooting.”
Which might have seemed to indicate remarkably cool and keen observation on the part of the sheriff during the furious flurry of a battle. But Slaughter did not wait for his deputy to obey instructions. He gave a practical demonstration of how the shooting should be done. Turning his six-shooter on Manuel, he sent the Mexican sprawling with the first shot. But Manuel was up in an instant. He ran a short distance when Slaughter’s second bullet knocked him over once more. Again the Mexican scrambled to his feet and went scurrying away. This time he plunged into a thicket and Slaughter’s third bullet missed him just as he passed out of view.
After the battle was over, Slaughter and his men trailed Manuel Robles two miles by his blood. Then his trail suddenly ended and it was believed some Mexican had helped him to escape on horseback. Deron was still alive. The wounded man and the dead man were carried back to Contention in Guadalupe’s wood wagon. While being taken to Nogales to be turned over to the Mexican authorities, Deron died on the train after confessing that he was the robber who had killed the locomotive engineer.
Slaughter’s ruthlessness in dealing with the train robbers who had wandered into his corner of the country caused the survivors of the band to plot vengeance. Learning that Slaughter was to visit San Bernardino ranch, which he now owned but which had not yet become his place of residence, Federico and an accomplice lay in ambush. Possibly Slaughter’s Guardian Angel was on watch. At any rate, the sheriff did not make the trip he had planned. Deputy Sheriff Cesario Lucero went in his stead and rode into the trap that had been laid for Slaughter. The ambushed Mexicans fired upon Lucero who, without a chance to fight for his life, was instantly killed. Federico and his companion escaped into Mexico, where they were captured several months afterward. Manuel Robles, wounded in the fight in the Whetstones, fled to Sonora, where he rejoined Geronimo Miranda, and word came back to Tombstone that the two outlaws finally met death in a battle with rurales somewhere in the Sierra Madre Mountains.
Chacon, a Mexican bandit, had filled all the border country with the fame of his bold exploits. Sallying from his strongholds in the Sierra Madres with a troop of desperadoes at his back, this Fra Diavolo of Sonora sacked towns and haciendas, pillaged the stores of merchants, tortured citizens to make them divulge the places in which their wealth was hidden. He had killed many men and his merciless ferocity had made him the terror of northern Mexico. Against Slaughter, this murderous robber had conceived a violent hatred. Up and down the frontier line he flung his boasts that, if he ever met the sheriff, he would shoot him down like a dog. At these threats, Slaughter smiled grimly. But behind the smile was a purpose as deadly as Chacon’s own. Slaughter, too, bided his time. For a year or more the long-distance feud smouldered, but the trails of the two men did not cross. Then Slaughter received a warning direct from Chacon himself.
“I am coming to Tombstone to kill you,” the message said.
The story of Chacon’s visit to Tombstone was one of Burt Alvord’s reminiscences of the sheriff.
“I was sitting in my office in the courthouse one night,” said Alvord, “when Slaughter came in with two double-barrelled shotguns in his hands. His teeth were clenched and his black eyes burned like points of fire.
“ ‘Take this gun and come with me,’ he said, shoving one of the weapons in my hands.
“That was all until we reached the street. Then he stopped for a moment.
“ ‘Chacon is in town,’ he snapped savagely. ‘I’m going to get him.’
“I knew of the hatred between the two men, and I knew there was no man on earth Slaughter would rather kill than this Mexican bandit who so often had threatened to murder him. Slaughter led the way down into the deep gulch that runs back of the courthouse along the western edge of town. On a bluff at the side of this ravine stood a long house made of canvas stretched over a wooden frame. No light showed in the house, but we could see the white canvas dimly in the darkness.
“ ‘Chacon is in there,’ said Slaughter. ‘You knock at the front door. Chacon will run out the back door.’
“I waited until Slaughter had gone to the rear of the house. Then I stepped to the front door and thumped on it with the butt of my gun. I heard no movement inside. But while I was still knocking, the roar of Slaughter’s shotgun shook the hills. I ran round to the rear.
“ ‘I say, I say, I gave him both barrels,’ said Slaughter. ‘He pitched off into the gulch. He must be lying down there dead.’
“We went back to the courthouse and got lanterns. Up and down the ravine we searched, as carefully as prospectors looking for ore. But no Chacon could we find, dead or alive. Near the back door we found a taut wire that was one of the supports of the tent house. It was clear that, just as Slaughter fired, Chacon had tripped over this guy and plunged headlong down the embankment. The accident had saved his life. The double charge of buckshot had gone over his head. The Mexican had mounted his pony hidden in the gulch and escaped.
“The situation struck me as funny. But I looked as solemn as an owl. A sly chuckle just then would have been dangerous. Slaughter had been waiting for a year to kill Chacon, and he was wild with anger at his failure. This was the last chance he ever had. The Mexican had had enough of Tombstone and never came back. After it was all over, I went off where no one could see me and had a big laugh all by myself.”
Burt Alvord long afterward took part in the capture of this murderous Mexican outlaw. Chacon’s career ended on the gallows at Solomonville.
John Slaughter was the last knight of Tombstone’s Round Table. The succession of heroic men ended with him. His name is burned into the town’s history as with a branding iron. He shines out as a type of competent, splendidly equipped frontiersman. Daniel Boone was not better fitted for pioneer Kentucky than he for pioneer Arizona. His mission was to clean up Tombstone, and he did a thorough job. He brought peace at the blazing end of a gun. He shot the town full of law and order. He is not classed as a bad man in the traditions of the Southwest, but no desperado was ever more feared than this inscrutable man who stood uncompromisingly for law and shot from the hip with amazing dexterity. He was a constructive force—building with a six-shooter, but building. While he was sheriff, there was law in Tombstone even if the law, in large measure, was John Slaughter himself. When after four years of hard service he retired to his San Bernardino ranch to pass the remainder of his life, he left Tombstone as quiet as it is today. That is pretty quiet.