When the West Was Young

by Frederick R. Bechdolt

With nine seasoned fighters at his heels he attacked a war-party in the heights of the range on the dawn of a summer morning; and when the Indians fled before the rifle-fire of the attackers––scurrying up into the naked granite pinnacles like frightened quail––they left a baby behind them. The mother had dropped it or missed it in her panic, and the little thing lay whimpering in the bear-grass.

John Slaughter heard it and stopped shooting long enough to pick it up. With the bullets of her people buzzing around his ears he carried the brown atom down the mountain-side and took her home on his saddle to his wife.

That was one of his last expeditions, for his name had become a byword among the tribes, and Geronimo himself gave instructions to his people to leave John Slaughter’s herds inviolate, to avoid his range in traveling. With this degree of peace ensured, the cow-man had bought an old Spanish grant not far from where 178 the town of Douglas stands to-day and was settling down in the security for which he had been fighting, when the Tombstone rush brought the bad men from all over the West into the San Pedro and Sulphur Springs valleys; and with them came the outlaws of the Pecos who had been waiting to kill him during these three years.

In the wild cow-town of Charleston where the lights turned pale under the hot flush of every dawn the desperadoes from the Pecos learned how John Slaughter had established himself before them in this new land; how his cow-boys patrolled the range which he still held on the San Pedro and the new range farther to the east, guarding his herds by force of arms; and how the silent Texan had already declared war on the whole incoming tribe of cattle-thieves by driving Ike and Billy Clanton from his old ranch at revolver’s point, bidding them never to show their faces there again.

They heard these things in the long adobe dance-halls while rouge-bedizened women went whirling by in the arms of bold-eyed partners wearing revolvers on their hips. From stage-robber, stock-rustler, horse-thief, and the cold-faced two-gun man who sold his deadly talents to the highest bidder, the stories came to them. And then, to the beat of the piano and the cornet’s throbbing blare, the bad men of the Pecos told of the passing of the Man from Bitter Creek, and how his slayer came back down the river recovering his stolen cattle in the autumn.

Now another champion had risen among the bad men of the Pecos since the day of Gallagher, a burly, headstrong expert with the forty-five, known by the 179 name of “Curly Bill.” Already he had shot his way to supremacy over the other “He Wolves” who had flocked into the new country; he had slain Tombstone’s city marshal and defied the Earps when they came into power in the booming mining camp.

When it came to a question of single combat he was acknowledged champion among those who lived by what toll they could exact at the muzzles of their deadly weapons; when it came to warfare he was the logical leader. And so, when John Slaughter’s name was spoken in Charleston’s dance-halls, the eyes of his followers were turned on him. He saw those glances and he read the unspoken question which they conveyed; he met it with a laugh.

“I’ll go and get that fellow,” he proclaimed. “I’ll kill him and I’ll fetch his herd in to Charleston myself.”

He started forth to make good his boast, and twenty-five hard-eyed followers went riding at his heels. It was a wild project even in that wild era and Curly Bill deemed it wise to do his massacring down in Mexico, where it was every man for himself and coroner’s juries were not known. He took his company across the boundary and lay in wait for John Slaughter on a mesa overlooking a little valley, down which the herd must pass.

Mesquite-thickets gave the outlaws good cover; the slopes below them were bare brush; the valley’s floor was open ground. They bided here and watched the country to the south. The dust column showed one cloudless morning and they saw the undulating line of cattle reveal itself beneath the gray-brown haze. The 180 herd came on down the valley, with dust-stained riders speeding back and forth along its flanks, turning back rebellious cows, urging the main body forward. Curly Bill spoke the word of command and the twenty-five bad men rode forth from their hiding-place.