As Schieffelin leaned on his pick and in a brief moment of reverie gazed over the San Pedro Valley shimmering under a blazing sun, Al Sieber’s warning at the old Brunckow house came back to him: “All you’ll ever find in them hills’ll be your tombstone.” It flashed upon him now that, as a prophet, old Sieber was a great Indian fighter. Schieffelin grinned at the merry conceit. Instead of a tombstone, he had discovered a silver mine—a million-dollar silver mine, perhaps. But if those Indians had caught him last night … After all, he had missed a tombstone—or death, at least—only by an inch or two. Tombstone. Not such a bad name for his mine considering his close squeak and Sieber’s fool prediction. Well, what was the matter with that name, anyway? Why not? The mine might be his tombstone some day—or his monument. So he made his decision. His mine was the Tombstone … now … for all time. That was settled on the spot. The name was coloured with a little irony, a little cynicism, a little drama, a little romance, a little fun, a little seriousness. Unconsciously, with an unuttered word, Schieffelin had christened not only the mine but the hills, a whole silver field, and an unborn town whose story was to develop into one of the most picturesque and dramatic chronicles of the Southwest.
Schieffelin filled a bag with specimens from the ledge for assay, built a small monument of stones to mark his claim, and trudging down the hill, mounted his mule. Settling into the saddle, he gave the beast a kick in the ribs with his boot heel. “Giddap,” he said.
A stranger had ridden out of the desert into Signal and startled the raw mining town up in the Bill Williams River country of northwestern Arizona with his ineffable sartorial chaos. As the tall, lean, broad-shouldered newcomer stalked past the unpainted shanty saloons and gambling places of the main street, the citizens loitering on the plank sidewalks, themselves roughly clad and familiar with the uncouth dress of frontier riffraff, turned to stare in amazement at the ruinous figure. His corduroy clothes, shiny and threadbare, a thorn-torn hole showing here and there, were patched like a crazy-quilt with deerskin, flour sacking, and rags of saddle blanket. His ancient slouch hat was so thickly pieced with rabbit skin that little of the original felt remained visible. His pants were stuffed into rusty boots run down at heel and his coat flapped open to reveal a flaming expanse of red flannel shirt. His face was half-hidden by a heavy curly brown beard and a mass of dark, tangled, unkempt hair fell upon his shoulders.
But, oddly enough, no one laughed at this weird figure that would have frightened crows from a cornfield; no sly, snickering comment accompanied the sidelong glances. There was something in the bearing of the stranger that touched his rags with a certain nobility; the unmistakable quality of spiritual vision lighted his serious deep gray eyes, and through the bronze of his weather-beaten face shone the purpose and fine courage of a vivid personality. The face of this rugged man was that of a poet who dreamed splendid dreams but had never learned to sing. This was Ed Schieffelin, if you please, discoverer of the Tombstone mines and potential millionaire, “thirty years old, looking forty.”
The late afternoon whistle blew at the McCracken mine. The miners coming off shift swarmed into town. To one striding along with swinging dinner pail, Schieffelin stuck out a grimy paw.
“Hello, Al. Haven’t seen you for four years.”
“Don’t believe I know you.”
“Hardly blame you. I look like the devil, but I happen to be your brother.”
Beside a stove fire in Al Schieffelin’s cabin that night, Ed Schieffelin poured out the tale of his wanderings. From the Tombstone hills he had ridden to Tucson, living on game he shot on the way, and on , while the Mexicans of the little adobe town were celebrating the fiesta of San Juan’s Day, he had filed upon his claim and inscribed its name as the Tombstone in the official records. Thence to Globe in search of Brother Al to help him work or finance his new mine, only to learn that Brother Al long ago had gone to Signal. His last twenty-five cents spent for tobacco, Schieffelin had worked for fourteen days on the windlass at the Champion mine and, having purchased provisions with his earnings and got his mule newly shod, had struck out for Signal, three hundred miles westward across deserts and mountains. At the end of his journey, he found Brother Al’s interest in the fancied bonanza only lukewarm. Brother Al’s long experience as a miner was littered with collapsed bonanzas. But Ed Schieffelin had brought along his ore specimens. He spread them on the table in the shine of the tallow dip. Here was his proof. Practical Brother Al examined them calmly and shook his head.
“Poor,” he said. “Nothing to get excited about.”
But Schieffelin’s enthusiasm was not to be easily squelched. He wanted a more authoritative opinion. Next day Brother Al brought in the foreman of the McCracken plant.
“Mostly lead,” the foreman declared.
Still unconvinced, Schieffelin showed his specimens to twenty or thirty other mining men who might reasonably be assumed to have expert knowledge. All pronounced the ore of little value. The verdict seemed unanimous.
“Better forget your bonanza and go to work,” suggested Brother Al.
Schieffelin, in a fit of disillusion, stepped to the cabin door and hurled his specimens one by one as far as he could throw them out on the hill. He was
