On The Border With Crook. John Gregory Bourke
Читать онлайн книгу.
from his station at the bottom of the pit, like another Joseph, was bawling for his heartless brothers to return and take him out. After his voice failed he bethought him of his revolver, which he drew from hip, and with which he blazed away, attracting the attention of a party of Mexicans returning from a dance, who too hastily concluded that Semig was a “Gringo” spoiling for a fight, whereupon they gave him their best services in rolling down upon him great pieces of adobe, which imparted renewed vigor to Semig’s vocalization and finally awakened the Mexicans to a suspicion of the true state of the case.
The poor doctor never heard the last of his mishap, and very likely was glad to receive the order which transferred him to the Modoc War, wherein he received the wounds of which he afterward died. He showed wonderful coolness in the Lava Beds, and even after the Indians had wounded him in the shoulder and he had been ordered off the field, he refused to leave the wounded under fire until a second shot broke his leg and knocked him senseless.
Associated with Semig in my recollection is the name of young Sherwood, a First Lieutenant in the Twenty-first Infantry, who met his death in the same campaign. He was a man of the best impulses, bright, brave, and generous, and a general favorite.
This rather undersized gentleman coming down the street is a man with a history—perhaps it might be perfectly correct to say with two or three histories. He is Don Estevan Ochoa, one of the most enterprising merchants, as he is admitted to be one of the coolest and bravest men, in all the southwestern country. He has a handsome face, a keen black eye, a quick, business-like air, with very polished and courteous manners.
During the war the Southern leaders thought they would establish a chain of posts across the continent from Texas to California, and one of their first movements was to send a brigade of Texans to occupy Tucson. The commanding general—Turner by name—sent for Don Estevan and told him that he had been informed that he was an outspoken sympathizer with the cause of the Union, but he hoped that Ochoa would see that the Union was a thing of the past, and reconcile himself to the new state of affairs, and take the oath to the Confederacy, and thus relieve the new commander from the disagreeable responsibility of confiscating his property and setting him adrift outside his lines.
Don Estevan never hesitated a moment. He was not that kind of a man. His reply was perfectly courteous, as I am told all the talk on the part of the Confederate officer had been. Ochoa owed all he had in the world to the Government of the United States, and it would be impossible for him to take an oath of fidelity to any hostile power or party. When would General Turner wish him to leave?
He was allowed to select one of his many horses, and to take a pair of saddle-bags filled with such clothing and food as he could get together on short notice, and then, with a rifle and twenty rounds of ammunition, was led outside the lines and started for the Rio Grande. How he ever made his way across those two hundred and fifty miles of desert and mountains which intervened between the town of Tucson and the Union outposts nearer to the Rio Grande, I do not know—nobody knows. The country was infested by the Apaches, and no one of those upon whom he turned his back expected to hear of his getting through alive. But he did succeed, and here he is, a proof of devotion to the cause of the nation for which it would be hard to find a parallel. When the Union troops reoccupied Tucson Don Estevan resumed business and was soon wealthy again, in spite of the tribute levied by the raiding Apaches, who once ran off every head of draught oxen the firm of Tully, Ochoa & De Long possessed, and never stopped until they had crossed the Rio Salado, or Salt River, where they killed and “jerked” the meat on the slope of that high mesa which to this day bears the name of “Jerked Beef Butte.”
Another important factor in the formative period of Arizona’s growth is this figure walking briskly by, clad in the cassock of an ecclesiastic. It is Bishop Salpointe, a man of learning, great administrative capacity, and devoted to the interests of his people. He preaches little, but practises much. In many ways unknown to his flock he is busy with plans for their spiritual and worldly advancement, and the work he accomplishes in establishing schools, both in Tucson and in the Papago village of San Xavier, is something which should not soon be forgotten by the people benefited. He is very poor. All that one can see in his house is a crucifix and a volume of precious manuscript notes upon the Apaches and Papagoes. He seems to be always cheerful. His poverty he freely shares with his flock, and I have often thought that if he ever had any wealth he would share that too.
This one whom we meet upon the street as we leave to visit one of the gambling saloons is Pete Kitchen. We shall be in luck if he invite us to visit him at his “ranch,” which has all the airs of a feudal castle in the days of chivalry. Peter Kitchen has probably had more contests with Indians than any other settler in America. He comes from the same stock which sent out from the lovely vales and swales in the Tennessee Mountains the contingent of riflemen who were to cut such a conspicuous figure at the battle of New Orleans, and Peter finds just as steady employment for his trusty rifle as ever was essential in the Delta.
Approaching Pete Kitchen’s ranch, one finds himself in a fertile valley, with a small hillock near one extremity. Upon the summit of this has been built the house from which no effort of the Apaches has ever succeeded in driving our friend. There is a sentinel posted on the roof, there is another out in the “cienaga” with the stock, and the men ploughing in the bottom are obliged to carry rifles, cocked and loaded, swung to the plough handle. Every man and boy is armed with one or two revolvers on hip. There are revolvers and rifles and shotguns along the walls and in every corner. Everything speaks of a land of warfare and bloodshed. The title of “Dark and Bloody Ground” never fairly belonged to Kentucky. Kentucky never was anything except a Sunday-school convention in comparison with Arizona, every mile of whose surface could tell its tale of horror were the stones and gravel, the sage-brush and mescal, the mesquite and the yucca, only endowed with speech for one brief hour.
Within the hospitable walls of the Kitchen home the traveller was made to feel perfectly at ease. If food were not already on the fire, some of the women set about the preparation of the savory and spicy stews for which the Mexicans are deservedly famous, and others kneaded the dough and patted into shape the paper-like tortillas with which to eat the juicy frijoles or dip up the tempting chile colorado. There were women carding, spinning, sewing—doing the thousand and one duties of domestic life in a great ranch, which had its own blacksmith, saddler, and wagonmaker, and all other officials needed to keep the machinery running smoothly.
Between Pete Kitchen and the Apaches a ceaseless war was waged, with the advantages not all on the side of Kitchen. His employees were killed and wounded, his stock driven away, his pigs filled with arrows, making the suffering quadrupeds look like perambulating pin-cushions—everything that could be thought of to drive him away; but there he stayed, unconquered and unconquerable.
Men like Estevan Ochoa and Pete Kitchen merit a volume by themselves. Arizona and New Mexico were full of such people, not all as determined and resolute as Pete; not all, nor nearly all, so patriotic and self-denying as Don Estevan, but all with histories full of romance and excitement. Few of them yet remain, and their deeds of heroism will soon be forgotten, or, worse luck yet, some of the people who never dreamed of going down there until they could do so in a Pullman car will be setting themselves up as heroes, and having their puny biographies written for the benefit of the coming generations.
Strangest recollection of all that I have of those persons is the quietness of their manner and the low tone in which they usually spoke to their neighbors. They were quiet in dress, in speech, and in conduct—a marked difference from the more thoroughly dramatized border characters of later days.
CHAPTER V.
THE DIVERSIONS OF TUCSON—THE GAMBLING SALOONS—BOB CRANDALL AND HIS DIAMOND—“SLAP-JACK BILLY”—TIGHT-ROPE WALKERS—THE THEATRE—THE DUEÑAS—BAILES—THE NEWSPAPERS—STAGE-DRIVERS.
IT has been shown that Tucson had no hotels. She did not need any at the time of which I am writing, as her floating population found all the ease and comfort it desired in the flare and glare of the gambling hells, which