“Don’t mess up the place, Pat,” said Shotwell. “Take him outside and kill him.”
So Pat dragged the unconscious Cherokee out into the street. A crowd of citizens assembled. Milt Hicks, one of Curly Bill’s men, spoke feelingly.
“The reputation of our town for law and order,” said Milt, “has suffered from the depredations of this here Cherokee Jack, and it’s time he was learned a lesson.”
These sentiments seemed to be unanimous and old Jim Hughes, who was also a member of Curly Bill’s gang, made a suggestion to Pat O’Day.
“Thar ain’t no use in us citizens gittin’ mixed up in this here affair,” said Jim Hughes. “We’ll withdraw down to the smelter and inspect the machinery. You’ve done started the job, Pat, and you might as well finish it. You’ll find my old long-tom rifle leaning behind the bar in Jack McConaghey’s saloon.”
So the citizens retired to the smelter, which was just off the mesa down by Turkey Creek, and devoted themselves to a careful inspection of the machinery until they heard a shot. Then they went back up town and, inviting Pat O’Day to join them, refreshed themselves with much liquor at Nick Babcock’s bar.
It was a little after this incident that Curly Bill took charge of the election in San Simon. San Simon was a railroad station twenty miles from Galeyville consisting of two or three dwellings, a saloon and general store, some stock pens, a water tank, and a section house. There weren’t more than thirty people living there, including the women and children and ten or twelve Chinese section hands. Charles Shibbell was running against Bob Paul for sheriff of Pima County, Cochise County not yet having been organized. As Paul had been a stagecoach shotgun messenger, Curly Bill and his men, who sometimes dabbled in stage robbery, were strong for Shibbell.
San Simon’s legitimate voting strength, of course, wasn’t a drop in the bucket in the returns of any general election, but as the political boss of the San Simon Valley, Curly Bill wanted to make a big showing for Shibbell and demonstrate to Paul the contemptuous estimate the San Simon placed on all shotgun messengers.
Curly brought the Chinese section hands in from their labour on the railroad and voted them. He voted the women and children. Still the ballot box looked pretty empty. Then he dropped in ballots for all the livestock, giving names to all the horses, mules, burros, goats, dogs, and poultry. The saloon-keeper’s dog became Shepherd W. Towser; Hiram J. Gander was the lordly bird belonging to the mistress of the boarding shack; and Dominick R. Crow was the section boss’s speckled rooster. San Simon piled up a rousing majority for Shibbell. The election commissioners in Tucson were startled when they counted the great number of ballots from this insignificant way station in the desert. An investigation followed, and the San Simon precinct was thrown out.
Galeyville never had more than three or four hundred people. When the mine closed down and the smelter was moved to Benson, the town emptied like a circus tent after a ring show. In two weeks the only persons left were Rube Hadden and Seward Smith, who had been a justice of the peace. For twenty years these two lived in the empty town alone, and then Smith moved away. But for five or six years longer, Rube Hadden remained as Galeyville’s last and only inhabitant. He did a little mining and assessment work in the hills, and when he sat in the evening by his front door, he could see from one end of the main street to the other. The old saloons where Curly Bill and his outlaws had once caroused were falling into decay, the bars still standing and the mirrors behind the bars reflecting only cobwebs and empty darkness. The dance hall where the rustlers used to shoot the French heels off the slippers of the girls whirling in a waltz or a quadrille was tumbling down. The store windows were black with rain-spotted dust, the rotting wooden sidewalks were caving in, and grass and weeds were growing in the street. But Rube Hadden didn’t seem to mind the silence and loneliness. He grew old and gray as Galeyville’s entire population, and he might be there yet if it hadn’t been for the new silver strike in Silver Creek Canyon. Then he moved a little closer to Paradise, and you’ll find him there today living alone in a log cabin under the pines and edging along toward ninety. What was left of Galeyville was finally torn down, and the lumber used for buildings in Paradise.
Charleston, like Galeyville, passed into oblivion in the full tide of its iniquities. When the stamp mill was closed, the town was abandoned. The place that knew Charleston in its glory is now a haunted desolation. The tall cottonwoods that shaded the village still stand by the San Pedro, but buried in thick underbrush beneath them are only a few crumbling adobe walls. Stark and ghostly in the mesquite tangles, the old ruins stand like grim skeletons in lonely vigil above a scene of crime.
VI
The Affair of Skeleton Canyon
Ghosts? Well, why not? But you don’t believe in them? Then you are unfortunate and may miss some delicious thrills. If you believe in ghosts, Skeleton Canyon is haunted; if you don’t, it’s not. That’s the way Ross Sloan seems to look at it. But, after all, that may be the wrong point of view, and Skeleton Canyon may have its ghosts, faith or no faith. Who knows?
Skeleton Canyon winds through the wildest part of the Peloncillo Mountains from the Animas Valley in New Mexico to the San Simon Valley in Arizona. The Animas Valley in the old days used to be a main place for outlaws. Curly Bill had a ranch there, and Old Man Clanton and Dick Gray and
