“ ‘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 . 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 ] 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 . 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
