Mrs. Slaughter, in her cabin on the San Pedro, heard a pounding of horse’s hoofs. A courier brought news that Slaughter had been murdered. The message she had so long dreaded had come at last. She hitched up her buckboard and set off alone for the Mexican line, her horses at a run. At the Elias ranch, where the customs officials made their headquarters, no one had any information. Slaughter and his men had crossed the border a week before and nothing more had been heard of them. Mrs. Slaughter drove hard for Magdalena. Far ahead, she saw a filmy speck on the horizon. It grew into what seemed smoke. It took on the appearance of a cloud. Then unmistakably it changed into a curtain of dust shaking against the sky. She whipped up her horses. The sun began to flash on the horns of cattle. She made out the herd winding toward her. A little later, she threw herself into her husband’s arms. Roberts and Old Bat drew round her laughing.
When the Mexican bandits had drunk their fill of mescal, they mounted their horses and rode out of Magdalena to Slaughter’s camp. It seemed a simple matter to massacre these three gringos and steal their money. But the camp was deserted. Off to the mountains the bandits galloped on the trail. They dashed into the canyon. As they rode at dusk through a narrow passage where the precipitous cliffs almost came together three rifles blazed from the shadows darkening the gorge. As the bullets whizzed among them, the Mexicans halted for one amazed moment and then fled for their lives.
“And that,” Slaughter used to say, “is the only time I remember ever having been murdered.”
All this while, Slaughter was achieving a reputation as an Indian fighter. Adept in all the wiles and stratagems of the cunning war craft of the Apaches, he outfought them on their own ground and in their own way. The lore of the war trails he had learned from the savages themselves enabled him to avoid their hidden snares and ambuscades and surprise the trappers in the traps they had set for him. No band of Apaches invaded the San Pedro that Slaughter did not take its trail. He fought to protect his own, and in time he made the land safe wherever his cattle grazed. The Apaches came to fear this sleepless man who fought so desperately, and at last old Geronimo himself gave his warriors orders to leave Slaughter and his herds alone. His success as an Indian fighter made Slaughter in demand as a scout with the army, and he saw service under Generals Crook and Miles against Geronimo, Nana, Natchez, Juh, Chatto, Bonito, and Chihuahua. He took part in the last campaign against Geronimo, and was with General Miles when in the famous old chief surrendered at Skeleton Canyon.
John Slaughter had two singular but firmly rooted convictions. One was that he could not be killed. The other was that he lived under the care of a Guardian Angel that warned him against invisible and unsuspected danger and protected him in every desperate emergency.
When Mr. and Mrs. Slaughter left Charleston one day to drive to Santa Cruz, Ed Lyle, Cap Stilwell, and four other men, all outlaws and Slaughter’s enemies, cut across country to intercept them. Passing through a wild region, Slaughter saw the six men spurring hard for a clump of willows far ahead beside the trail. He believed the outlaws meant to assassinate him from ambush. He gave the reins to his wife and sat with a shotgun across his lap.
“We’ll both be killed at those willows,” cried Mrs. Slaughter in a panic.
“Don’t be afraid,” returned Slaughter. “Neither of us will be killed. Those outlaws won’t kill a woman and they can’t kill me. If they fire on us, I’ll jump out and do my fighting on foot. You wait for me out of range. I’ll rejoin you.”
Mrs. Slaughter lashed her horses. It was a race between her and the outlaws. She won. The six horsemen were still several hundred yards distant when her buggy swept past the clump of trees. The outlaws did not attempt pursuit.
“What did you mean by saying they couldn’t kill you?” asked Mrs. Slaughter.
“Just that,” answered her husband. “No man can kill me. I wasn’t born to be killed. How I know that, I cannot explain. But I know it. When my time comes, I’ll die in bed.”
Slaughter met Lyle a few days later in Herrera’s store in Charleston and drew his six-shooter.
“Lyle,” he said, “that little affair the other day is the last trick you’ll ever play on me.”
“I’m unarmed, Slaughter,” pleaded Lyle. “Don’t kill me.”
“I ought to kill you, but I’ll give you your life,” replied Slaughter. “But you get out of the country. I’ll give you twenty-four hours. If I ever see you around here again, I’ll kill you.”
A horseman galloped out of Charleston on the Benson road early next morning. At Benson he kept on going. This was the well-known desperado, Ed Lyle, obeying orders. And the San Pedro country knew him no more.
Slaughter met Cap Stilwell in a week or so in a Charleston saloon. Both went for their guns and Slaughter got the drop. As he looked into the muzzle of Slaughter’s six-shooter, Stilwell got his twenty-four-hour orders. Next day he followed Lyle.
Mounted on his gray horse that for several years was as familiar to Tombstone as Slaughter himself, Slaughter was riding toward Tubac, the ancient pueblo founded by the pioneer Spaniards south of Tucson. He was bound for Marsh & Driscoll’s ranch to buy a bunch of cattle and had the money to pay for them in his pockets. He was in no hurry; he jogged along at a leisurely gait. The peaceful landscape was bathed in sunshine; no one was in sight in all the
