On The Border With Crook. John Gregory Bourke
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met with charming courtesy from old and young. “Ah! happy the eyes that gaze upon thee,” was the form of salutation to friends who had been absent for a space—“Dichosos los ojos que ven a V.” “Go thou with God,” was the gentle mode of saying farewell, to which the American guest would respond, as he shifted the revolvers on his hip and adjusted the quid of tobacco in his mouth: “Wa-al, I reckon I’ll git.” But the Mexican would arrange the folds of his serape, bow most politely, and say: “Ladies, I throw myself at your feet”—“A los pies de VV., señoritas.”
Thus far there has been no mention of that great lever of public opinion—the newspaper. There was one of which I will now say a word, and a few months later, in the spring of 1870, the town saw a second established, of which a word shall be said in its turn. The Weekly Arizonian was a great public journal, an organ of public opinion, managed by Mr. P. W. Dooner, a very able editor.
It was the custom in those days to order the acts and resolutions of Congress to be published in the press of the remoter Territories, thus enabling the settlers on the frontier to keep abreast of legislation, especially such as more immediately affected their interests. Ordinarily the management of the paper went no farther than the supervision of the publication of such acts, bills, etc.; and the amount of outside information finding an outlet in the scattered settlements of Arizona and New Mexico was extremely small, and by no means recent. With a few exceptions, all the journals of those days were printed either in Spanish alone, or half in Spanish and half in English, the exceptions being sheets like the Miner, of Prescott, Arizona, which from the outset maintained the principle that our southwestern territories should be thoroughly Americanized, and that by no surer method could this be effected than by a thoroughly American press. Mr. John H. Marion was the enunciator of this seemingly simple and common-sense proposition, and although the Miner has long since passed into other hands, he has, in the columns of the Courier, owned and edited by him, advocated and championed it to the present day.
There may have been other matter in the Weekly Arizonian besides the copies of legislative and executive documents referred to, but if so I never was fortunate enough to see it, excepting possibly once, on the occasion of my first visit to the town, when I saw announced in bold black and white that “Colonel” Bourke was paying a brief visit to his friend, Señor So-and-so. If there is one weak spot in the armor of a recently-graduated lieutenant, it is the desire to be called colonel before he dies, and here was the ambition of my youth gratified almost before the first lustre had faded from my shoulder-straps. It would serve no good purpose to tell how many hundred copies of that week’s issue found their way into the earliest outgoing mail, addressed to friends back in the States. I may be pardoned for alluding to the reckless profanity of the stage-driver upon observing the great bulk of the load his poor horses were to carry. The stage-drivers were an exceptionally profane set, and this one, Frank Francis, was an adept in the business. He has long since gone to his reward in the skies, killed, if I have not made a great mistake, by the Apaches in Sonora, in 1881. He was a good, “square” man, as I can aver from an acquaintance and friendship cemented in later days, when I had to take many and many a lonesome and dangerous ride with him in various sections and on various routes in that then savage-infested region. It was Frank’s boast that no “Injuns” should ever get either him or the mail under his care. “All you’ve got to do with ’n Injun’s to be smarter nor he is. Now, f’r instance, ’n Injun’ll allers lie in wait ’longside the road, tryin’ to ketch th’ mail. Wa’al, I never don’ go ’long no derned road, savey? I jest cut right ’cross lots, ’n’ dern my skin ef all th’ Injuns this side o’ Bitter Creek kin tell whar to lay fur me.” This and similar bits of wisdom often served to soothe the frightened fancy of the weary “tenderfoot” making his first trip into that wild region, especially if the trip was to be by night, as it generally was.
Whipping up his team, Frank would take a shoot off to one side or the other of the road, and never return to it until the faint tinge of light in the east, or the gladsome crow of chanticleer announced that the dawn was at hand and Tucson in sight. How long they had both been in coming! How the chilling air of night had depressed the spirits and lengthened the hours into eternities! How grand the sky was with its masses of worlds peeping out from depths of blue, unsounded by the telescopes of less favored climes! How often, as the stars rose behind some distant hill-top, did they appear to the fancy as the signal lights of distant Apache raiding parties, and freeze the blood, already coagulated, by suddenly coming upon the gaunt, blackened frame of some dead giant cactus stretching out its warning arms behind a sharp turn in the line of travel!
To this feeling of disquietude the yelping of the coyote added no new horrors; the nervous system was already strained to its utmost tension, and any and all sounds not immediately along the trail were a pleasant relief. They gave something of which to think and a little of which to talk besides the ever-present topic of “Injuns, Injuns.” But far different was the sensation as the morning drew near, and fluttering coveys of quail rose with a whirr from their concealment under the mesquite, or pink-eared jack-rabbits scurried from under the horses’ feet. Then it was that driver and passenger alike, scared from a fretful doze, would nervously grasp the ever-ready rifle or revolver, and look in vain for the flight of arrows or await the lance-thrust of skulking foes.
Through it all, however, Frank remained the same kind, entertaining host; he always seemed to consider it part of his duties to entertain each one who travelled with him, and there was no lack of conversation, such as it was. “Never knowed Six-toed Petey Donaldson? Wa’al, I sw’ar! Look like enough to be Petey’s own brother. Thought mebbe you mout ’a’ bin comin’ out ter administer on th’ estate. Not thet Petey hed enny t’ leave, but then it’s kind o’ consolin’ t’ a feller to know thet his relatives hev come out ter see about him. How did Petey die? Injuns. Th’ Apaches got him jest this side o’ the Senneky (Cienaga); we’ll see it jest’s soon ’s we rise th’ hill yander.” By the time that the buckboard drew up in front of the post-office, what with cold and hunger and thirst and terror, and bumping over rocks and against giant cactus, and every other kind of cactus, and having had one or two runaways when the animals had struck against the adhering thorns of the pestiferous “cholla,” the traveller was always in a suitable frame of mind to invite Frank to “take su thin’,” and Frank was too much of a gentleman to think of refusing.
“Now, lemme give yer good advice, podner,” Frank would say in his most gracious way, “ ’n’ doan’t drink none o’ this yere ‘Merican whiskey; it’s no good. Jes’ stick to mescal; that ’s the stuff. Yer see, the alkali water ’n’ sand hereabouts’ll combine with mescal, but they p’isens a man when he tries to mix ’em with whiskey, ’specially this yere Kansas whiskey” (the “tenderfoot” had most likely just come over from Kansas); “’’n’ ef he doan’ get killed deader nor a door-nail, why, his system’s all chock full o’ p’isen, ’n’ there you are.”
The establishment of the rival paper, the Citizen, was the signal for a war of words, waxing in bitterness from week to week, and ceasing only with the death of the Arizonian, which took place not long after. One of the editors of the Citizen was Joe Wasson, a very capable journalist, with whom I was afterward associated intimately in the Black Hills and Yellowstone country during the troubles with the Sioux and Cheyennes. He was a well-informed man, who had travelled much and seen life in many phases. He was conscientious in his ideas of duty, and full of the energy and “snap” supposed to be typically American. He approached every duty with the alertness and earnestness of a Scotch terrier. The telegraph was still unknown to Arizona, and for that reason the Citizen contained an unusually large amount of editorial matter upon affairs purely local. Almost the very first columns of the paper demanded the sweeping away of garbage-piles, the lighting of the streets by night, the establishment of schools, and the imposition of a tax upon the gin-mills and gambling-saloons.
Devout Mexicans crossed themselves as they passed this fanatic, whom nothing would seem to satisfy but the subversion of every ancient institution. Even the more progressive among the Americans realized that Joe was going a trifle too far, and felt that it was time to put the brakes upon a visionary theorist whose war-cry was “Reform!” But no remonstrance availed, and editorial succeeded editorial, each more pungent and aggressive than its predecessors. What was that dead burro doing on the