“ ‘Take this gun and come with me,’ he said, shoving one of the weapons in my hands.
“That was all until we reached the street. Then he stopped for a moment.
“ ‘Chacon is in town,’ he snapped savagely. ‘I’m going to get him.’
“I knew of the hatred between the two men, and I knew there was no man on earth Slaughter would rather kill than this Mexican bandit who so often had threatened to murder him. Slaughter led the way down into the deep gulch that runs back of the courthouse along the western edge of town. On a bluff at the side of this ravine stood a long house made of canvas stretched over a wooden frame. No light showed in the house, but we could see the white canvas dimly in the darkness.
“ ‘Chacon is in there,’ said Slaughter. ‘You knock at the front door. Chacon will run out the back door.’
“I waited until Slaughter had gone to the rear of the house. Then I stepped to the front door and thumped on it with the butt of my gun. I heard no movement inside. But while I was still knocking, the roar of Slaughter’s shotgun shook the hills. I ran round to the rear.
“ ‘I say, I say, I gave him both barrels,’ said Slaughter. ‘He pitched off into the gulch. He must be lying down there dead.’
“We went back to the courthouse and got lanterns. Up and down the ravine we searched, as carefully as prospectors looking for ore. But no Chacon could we find, dead or alive. Near the back door we found a taut wire that was one of the supports of the tent house. It was clear that, just as Slaughter fired, Chacon had tripped over this guy and plunged headlong down the embankment. The accident had saved his life. The double charge of buckshot had gone over his head. The Mexican had mounted his pony hidden in the gulch and escaped.
“The situation struck me as funny. But I looked as solemn as an owl. A sly chuckle just then would have been dangerous. Slaughter had been waiting for a year to kill Chacon, and he was wild with anger at his failure. This was the last chance he ever had. The Mexican had had enough of Tombstone and never came back. After it was all over, I went off where no one could see me and had a big laugh all by myself.”
Burt Alvord long afterward took part in the capture of this murderous Mexican outlaw. Chacon’s career ended on the gallows at Solomonville.
John Slaughter was the last knight of Tombstone’s Round Table. The succession of heroic men ended with him. His name is burned into the town’s history as with a branding iron. He shines out as a type of competent, splendidly equipped frontiersman. Daniel Boone was not better fitted for pioneer Kentucky than he for pioneer Arizona. His mission was to clean up Tombstone, and he did a thorough job. He brought peace at the blazing end of a gun. He shot the town full of law and order. He is not classed as a bad man in the traditions of the Southwest, but no desperado was ever more feared than this inscrutable man who stood uncompromisingly for law and shot from the hip with amazing dexterity. He was a constructive force—building with a six-shooter, but building. While he was sheriff, there was law in Tombstone even if the law, in large measure, was John Slaughter himself. When after four years of hard service he retired to his San Bernardino ranch to pass the remainder of his life, he left Tombstone as quiet as it is today. That is pretty quiet.
XX
Patchy
Dawn in the Sierra Madres. Purple darkness in the glens and twisting canyons. Ripples of faint daylight breaking in rose against the tallest peaks. Over the shadowy chaos of mountains, unutterable silence. Above the undulant flow of coldly gray summits, a formless, incandescent splash that was the morning star.
For ten years there had been peace between the white men and the Apaches. Geronimo and his warriors who had of old terrorized and laid waste the frontier had been deported to Florida. A handful of braves grown weary of inglorious peace had broken from San Carlos reservation in , and left a black trail of burned homes and death along the upper waters of the Gila River and through the San Simon Valley. They had crossed into Mexico at San Bernardino ranch and found refuge in the fastnesses of the Sierra Madres, fifty miles below the international line.
For three weeks a troop of the Seventh Cavalry had been in pursuit. At San Bernardino, the command had picked up John Slaughter to act as scout and guide. At fifty-five, the eyes of the frontier man-hunter were as keen as ever and his knack at following a trail as uncanny as in old days. Working like a hound on the scent, he located the encampment of the Apaches perched on a bench high on a mountain. Day was breaking as the troopers stole through the pine forest. The Indian camp was asleep. The cracking of army carbines was reveille for the renegades. Bucks and squaws came tumbling from the little group of wickiups in the clearing. Into the woods they plunged in mad flight and scattered over the mountain like quail. The pursuit of the soldiers was useless. The Indians had vanished as by magic. The chase abandoned, the troopers returned to burn the village.
John Slaughter stepped inside a wickiup. Something that, in the shadowy light, looked a little like a sack of flour caught his eye. Curious, he reached out the muzzle of his rifle to give the thing a poke. The sack of flour gave a sudden little tossing movement. It was a baby—a tiny Apache girl perhaps a year old, fast asleep on
