“When I was in Benson one day, I stepped up to a lunch wagon to buy a sandwich. Four nigger soldiers were standing at the counter, and one of them shoved me aside. I stuck a six-shooter in his belly and made him and his three buddies line up and keep their hands in the air until I’d finished my sandwich. As I walked off, I met Slaughter.
“ ‘I say, I say,’ said John, ‘I don’t know why those niggers didn’t shoot you. I’ve been standing here with a cocked six-shooter trained on ’em all the time you were eating.’
“And,” added Milton, “if those niggers had made a move, Slaughter would have turned that six-shooter loose. I don’t believe Slaughter thought any more of killing a man, if it seemed to him the man deserved death, than he did of putting a bullet through a tin can.”
Full of stories of the early days is Jim Wolf, past seventy now, who for more than thirty years has been living absolutely alone on a little cattle ranch in the San Pedro Valley a few miles south of Charleston.
“Many a time,” said Jim Wolf, “when John Slaughter wuz out alone trailin’ a criminal, he’d stop at my ranch house. Sometimes I’d hear a halloo at my door at night after I’d gone to bed, and it’d be old John after a cup of coffee. ‘I’ll make it for you, John,’ I’d say. But he’d never let me. ‘Go on back to bed,’ he’d tell me. ‘I’ll make it.’ And he’d rustle up a fire, and soon he’d have a pot of coffee boiling. When he had turned off a good, hot cup, he’d walk out and git on his pony and ride away. He never talked none. I had hard work gittin’ more’n ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ out o’ him. And I never had the least idee where he wuz bound on these trips. Nobody else, I reckon, until he rides back to Tombstone.
“I remember I wuz workin’ down by my corral one day when a Mexican comes ridin’ by on the purtiest black pony I ever seen. He wuz goin’ along at a right smart gait, but I stops him.
“ ‘Say, partner,’ sez I, ‘that’s a right nice little hoss you’re straddlin’. I kinder think I’d like to trade you out o’ him.’
“ ‘Esta bueno, señor,’ sez the greaser. ‘What have you to trade?’
“I offered to trade him an old spavined mule I owns, but he laughs at me and I sees that Mex knows somethin’ ’bout hossflesh. Well, we dickers quite a time.
“ ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ sez I at last. ‘I’ll give you them two hosses o’ mine you see right over yonder in that thar corral and,’ sez I, ‘twenty dollars to boot.’
“That sets this greaser thinkin’, and he looks like he’s gittin’ ready to trade when he seems to hear something back down the trail and he turns around in his saddle and takes a long look. I don’t see nothin’, but whatever it is, it seems to make him kinder nervous and he sez he’s in a sorter hurry jest then and has got to be ridin’, but he’ll see me some other time. So he gallops on off.
“But as I wuz tellin’ you that wuz jest about the purtiest black pony I ever seen, and as he was ridin’ away I kept lookin’ at that pony, and the more I looks at it the prettier it seems to git.
“ ‘Now,’ sez I to myself, drawin’ my own conclusions about the greaser, ‘that Mexican’s done stole that animule and he ain’t got no business with it nohow, and I’m jest goin’ to have that black pony for myself, and that’s all thar is to that.’
“So I steps in the house and gits my rifle. Ef I takes a shortcut across my alfalfa pasture, I kin ketch that Mexican by a clump of alamosas along the road. I wuz just startin’ when along comes John Slaughter.
“ ‘Seen a Mexican ridin’ a black pony passin’ along here recent?’ sez John.
“ ‘Jest left here ’bout five minutes ago,’ sez I.
“ ‘Which-a-way did he go?’ sez John.
“ ‘That-a-way,’ sez I, and I p’ints up the valley toward the Mule Mountains. ‘I ain’t busy, John,’ sez I. ‘Can I help you any?’
“ ‘No,’ sez old John, and he rides off.
“The next time I’m in Tombstone, they tells me Slaughter come ridin’ back to town leading that black pony. Seems like the Mexican had stole it from Mrs. Amazon Howell, Slaughter’s mother-in-law. I asked ef Slaughter had brung in the Mexican. No, he hadn’t. ‘Then how’d he git the pony back?’ I asks. Well, nobody knowed. He’d brung the pony back, but he hadn’t brung back no Mexican, and that’s all they knowed about it. That struck me as kinder funny. I wondered whatever had become o’ that Mexican hoss thief. Of course, I didn’t ask John. That’d been a mistake. Nobody never asked Slaughter no questions. It never did no good to ask him none, and sometimes it wuz sorter dangerous.
“ ’Bout a week later, I reckon it wuz, I wuz ridin’ over round the mouth of Bisbee Canyon lookin’ for some cows when I notices a passel o’ buzzards sailin’ round over the mesquite, and I rides over to the spot. There lays this here Mexican that’d come ridin’ past my ranch on the black pony. I knowed him as soon as I seen him. So I goes on lookin’ fer my cows, which finally I rounds up and drives back home. And I never says nothin’ to nobody about what I sees in the mouth of Bisbee Canyon.
“I reckon it wuz two or maybe three months later I wuz in Bisbee. They wuz big excitement in town. Some cow punchers had jest
