I was now out of the dance-hall business for good, and I looked about for some other and more prosaic occupation to indulge in. Thanks to the deal I had put through with the confiding stranger with the ready cash, I was pretty well "heeled" so far as money went, and all my debts were paid. Finally I decided that I would go into business again and bought a grocery store on Mesilla street.
The handing out of canned tomatoes and salt soda crackers, however, speedily got on my nerves. I was still a comparatively young man and my restless spirit longed for expression in some new environment. About this time Paola, my contract-wife, who was everything that a wife should be in my opinion, became a little homesick and spoke often of the home she had left at Sauxal, a small gulf-coast port in Lower California. Accordingly, one morning, I took it into my head to take her home on a visit to see her people, and, the thought being always father to the action with me, I traded my grocery store for a buckboard and team and some money, and set forth in this conveyance for Yuma. This was a trip not considered so very dangerous, except for the lack of water, for the Indians along the route were mostly peaceable and partly civilized. Only for a short distance out of Tucson did the Apache hold suzerainty, and this only when sufficient Papagos, whose territory it really was, could not be mustered together in force to drive them off. The Papago Indians hated the Apaches quite as much as the white man did, for the Papago lacked the stamina and fighting qualities of the Apache and in other characteristics was an entirely different type of Indian. I have reason to believe that the Apaches were not originally natives of Arizona, but were an offshoot of one of the more ferocious tribes further north. This I think because, for one thing, the facial characteristics of the other Arizona Indians—the Pimas, Papagos, Yumas, Maricopas, and others—are very similar to each other but totally different from those of the various Apache tribes, as was the language they spoke. The Papagos, Pimas, Yumas, Maricopas and other peaceable Indian peoples were of a settled nature and had lived in their respective territories for ages before the white man came to the West. The Apache, on the other hand, was a nomad, with no definite country to call his own and recognizing no boundary lines of other tribes. It was owing to Apache depredations on the Papagos and Pimas that the latter were so willingly enlisted on the side of the White man in the latter's fight for civilization.
Reaching Yuma without any event to record that I remember, we took one of the Colorado River boats to the mouth of the Colorado, where transfers were made to the deep-sea ships plying between the Colorado Gulf and San Francisco. One of these steamers, which were creditable to the times, we took to La Paz. At La Paz Paola was fortunate enough to meet her padrina, or godfather, who furnished us with mules and horses with which we reached Sauxal, Paola's home. There we stayed with her family for some time.
While staying at Sauxal I went to a fiesta in the Arroyo San Luis and there began playing cooncan with an old rancher who was accounted one of the most wealthy inhabitants of the country. I won from him two thousand oranges, five gallons of wine, seventeen buckskins and two hundred heifers. The heifers I presented to Paola and the buckskins I gave to her brothers to make leggings out of. The wine and oranges I took to La Paz and sold, netting a neat little sum thereby.
Sixty miles from La Paz was El Triunfo, one of the best producing silver mines in Lower California, managed by a man named Blake. Obeying an impulse I one day went out to the mine and secured a job, working at it for some time, and among other things starting a small store which was patronized by the company's workmen. Growing tired of this occupation, I returned to Sauxal, fetched Paola and with her returned to Yuma, or Arizona City, where I started a small chicken ranch a few miles up the river. Coyotes and wolves killed my poultry, however, and sores occasioned by ranch work broke out on my hands, so I sold the chicken ranch and moved to Arizona City, opening a restaurant on the main street. In this cafe I made a specialty of pickled feet—not pig's feet, but bull's feet, for which delicacy I claim the original creation. It was some dish, too! They sold like hot-cakes.
While I was in Lower California I witnessed a sight that is well worth speaking of. It was a Mexican funeral, and the queerest one I ever saw or expect to see, though I have read of Chinese funerals that perhaps approach it in peculiarity. It was while on my way back to Sauxal from La Paz that I met the cortege. The corpse was that of a wealthy rancher's wife, and the coffin was strung on two long poles borne by four men. Accompanying the coffin alongside of those carrying it were about two hundred horsemen. The bearers kept up a jog-trot, never once faltering on the way, each horseman taking his turn on the poles. When it became a man's turn to act as bearer nobody told him, but he slipped off his horse, letting it run wherever it pleased, ran to the coffin, ducked under the pole and started with the others on the jog-trot, while the man whose place he had taken caught his horse. Never once in a carry of 150 miles did that coffin stop, and never once did that jog-trot falter. The cortege followers ate at the various ranches they passed, nobody thinking of refusing them food. The 150 mile journey to San Luis was necessary in order to reach a priest who would bury the dead woman. All the dead were treated in the same manner.
While I was in Yuma the railroad reached Dos Palmas, Southern California, and one day I went there with a wagon and bought a load of apples, which, with one man to accompany me, I hauled all the way to Tucson. That wagon-load of apples was the first fruit to arrive in the Territory and it was hailed with acclaim. I sold the lot for one thousand dollars, making a profit well over fifty per cent. Then with the wagon I returned to Yuma.
On the way, as I was nearing Yuma, I stopped at Canyon Station, which a man named Ed. Lumley kept. Just as we drove up an old priest came out of Lumley's house crying something aloud. We hastened up and he motioned inside. Within we saw poor Lumley dead, with both his hands slashed off and his body bearing other marks of mutilation. It turned out that two Mexicans to whom Lumley had given shelter had killed him because he refused to tell them where he kept his money. The Mexicans were afterwards caught in California, taken to Maricopa county and there, after trial by the usual method, received the just penalty for their crime.
From Yuma I moved to Florence, Arizona, where I built a dance-hall and saloon, which I sold almost immediately to an Italian named Gendani. Then I moved back to Tucson, my old stamping-ground.