On The Border With Crook. John Gregory Bourke
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from the back of his neck, and there they all were—eleven lethal weapons, mostly small Derringers, with one knife. Comment was useless; for my own part, I did not feel called upon to criticise my friend’s eccentricities or amiable weaknesses, whatever they might be, so I kept my mouth shut, and the others followed my example. I suppose that on a war-footing nothing less than a couple of Gatling guns would have served to round out the armament to be brought into play.
Whether it was a true alarm or a false one I couldn’t tell, but the next day Judge Titus imagined that a movement of Duffield’s hand was intended to bring to bear upon himself a portion of the Duffield ordnance, and he had the old man arrested and brought before him on the charge of carrying concealed deadly weapons.
The court-room was packed with a very orderly crowd, listening attentively to a long exordium from the lips of the judge upon the enormity and the uselessness of carrying concealed deadly weapons. The judge forgot that men would carry arms so long as danger real or imaginary encompassed them, and that the opinions prevailing upon that subject in older communities could not be expected to obtain in the wilder regions.
In Arizona, the reader should know, all the officers of the law were Americans. In New Mexico, on the contrary, they were almost without exception Mexicans, and the legal practice was entirely different from our own, as were the usages and customs of various kinds. For example, one could go before one of those Rio Grande alcaldes in Socorro, San Antonio, or Sabinal, and wear just what clothes he pleased, or not wear any if he didn’t please; it would be all right. He might wear a hat, or go in his shirt sleeves, or go barefoot, or roll himself a cigarrito, and it would be all right. But let him dare enter with spurs, and the ushers would throw him out, and it was a matter of great good luck if he did not find himself in the calaboose to boot, for contempt of court.
“Call the first witness; call Charles O. Brown.”
Mr. Charles O. Brown, under oath, stated his name, residence, and occupation, and was then directed to show to the judge and jury how the prisoner—Duffield—had drawn his revolver the day previous.
“Well, jedge, the way he drawed her was jest this.” And suiting the action to the word, Mr. Charles O. Brown, the main witness for the prosecution, drew a six-shooter, fully cocked, from the holster on his hip. There was a ripple of laughter in the courtroom, as every one saw at once the absurdity of trying to hold one man responsible for the misdemeanor of which a whole community was guilty, and in a few minutes the matter was nolle prossed.
I will end up the career of the marshal in this chapter, as we shall have no further cause to introduce him in these pages. His courage was soon put to the severest sort of a test when a party of desperadoes from Sonora, who had been plundering in their own country until driven across the line, began their operations in Arizona. At the dead of night they entered Duffield’s house, and made a most desperate assault upon him while asleep in his bed. By some sort of luck the blow aimed with a hatchet failed to hit him on head or neck—probably his assailants were too drunk to see what they were, doing—and chopped out a frightful gash in the shoulder, which would have killed the general run of men. Duffield, as has been shown, was a giant in strength, and awakened by the pain, and at once realizing what had happened, he sprang from his couch and grappled with the nearest of the gang of burglars, choked him, and proceeded to use him as a weapon with which to sweep out of the premises the rest of the party, who, seeing that the household had been alarmed, made good their escape.
Duffield was too much exhausted from loss of blood to retain his hold upon the rascal whom he had first seized, so that Justice did not succeed in laying her hands upon any of the band. When Duffield recovered sufficiently to be able to reappear on the streets, he did not seem to be the same man. He no longer took pleasure in rows, but acted like one who had had enough of battles, and was willing to live at peace with his fellow-men. Unfortunately, if one acquire the reputation of being “a bad man” on the frontier, it will stick to him for a generation after he has sown his wild oats, and is trying to bring about a rotation of crops.
Duffield was killed at Tombstone ten years since, not far from the Contention Mine, by a young man named Holmes, who had taken up a claim in which Duffield asserted an interest. The moment he saw Duffield approaching he levelled a shot-gun upon him, and warned him not to move a foot, and upon Duffield’s still advancing a few paces he filled him full of buckshot, and the coroner’s jury, without leaving their seats, returned a verdict of justifiable homicide, because the old, old Duffield, who was “on the shoot,” was still remembered, and the new man, who had turned over a new leaf and was trying to lead a new life, was still a stranger in the land.
Peace to his ashes!
There were military as well as non-military men in Tucson, and although the following incident did not occur under my personal observation, and was one of those stories that “leak out,” I tell it as filling in a gap in the description of life as it was in Arizona twenty and twenty-five years ago. All the persons concerned were boarders at the “Shoo Fly,” and all are now dead, or out of service years and years ago.
The first was the old field officer whom, for want of a better name, every one called “Old Uncle Billy N——.” He had met with a grievous misfortune, and lost one of his eyes, but bore his trouble with stoicism and without complaint. During a brief visit to Boston, he had arranged with an oculist and optician to have made for him three glass eyes. “But I don’t clearly understand what you want with so many,” said the Boston man.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” replied the son of Mars. “You see, I want one for use when I’m sober, one when I’m drunk, and one when I’m p—— d—— drunk.”
The glass eyes were soon ready to meet the varying conditions of the colonel’s life, and gave the old man the liveliest satisfaction. Not long after his return to the bracing climate of Tucson he made the round of the gaming-tables at the Feast of Saint Augustine, which was then in full blast, and happened to “copper” the ace, when he should have bet “straight,” and bet on the queen when that fickle lady was refusing the smile of her countenance to all her admirers. It was a gloomy day for the colonel when he awaked to find himself almost without a dollar, and no paymaster to be expected from San Francisco for a couple of months. A brilliant thought struck him; he would economize by sending back to Boston two of his stock of glass eyes, which he did not really need, as the “sober” and “tolerably drunk” ones had never been used, and ought to fetch something of a price at second-hand.
The Boston dealer, however, curtly refused to negotiate a sale, saying that he did not do business in that way, and, as if to add insult to injury, enclosed the two eyes in a loose sheet of paper, which was inscribed with a pathetic story about “The Drunkard Saved.” It took at least a dozen rounds of drinks before the colonel could drown, his wrath, and satisfy the inquiries of condoling friends who had learned of the brutal treatment to which he had been subjected.
A great friend of the colonel’s was Al. Garrett, who in stature was his elder’s antithesis, being as short and wiry as the colonel was large and heavy. Garrett was an extremely good-hearted youngster, and one of the best horsemen in the whole army. His admirers used to claim that he could ride anything with four legs to it, from a tarantula to a megatherium. Semig, the third of the trio, was a Viennese, a very cultivated man, a graduate in medicine, an excellent musician, a graceful dancer, well versed in modern languages, and well educated in every respect. He was the post surgeon at Camp Crittenden, sixty miles to the south of Tucson, but was temporarily at the latter place.
He and Garrett and Uncle Billy were making the best of their way home from supper at the “Shoo Fly” late one evening, and had started to cut across lots after passing the “Plaza.”
There were no fences, no covers—nothing at all to prevent pedestrians from falling into some one of the innumerable abandoned wells which were to be met with in every block, and it need surprise no one to be told that in the heat of argument about some trivial matter the worthy medical officer, who was walking in the middle, fell down plump some fifteen or twenty feet, landing in a more or less bruised condition upon a pile of adobes and pieces of rock at the bottom.
Garrett and his elderly companion lurched against each other and continued