It was to a rodeo similar to the one which I have attempted to describe that Jesus Mabot and I departed following the incident of the selling of the sheep. We were gone a week. When we returned I put up my horse and was seeing that he had some feed when a shout from Jesus, whom I had sent to find the Chinese gardener to tell him we needed something to eat, came to my ears.
"Oyez, Senor Cady!" Jesus was crying, "El Chino muerte."
I hurried down to the field where Mabot stood and found him gazing at the Chinaman, who was lying face downward near the fence, quite dead. By the smell and the general lay-out, I reckoned he had been dead some three days.
I told Mabot to stay with him and, jumping on my horse, rode to Crittenden, where I obtained a coroner and a jury that would sit on the Chinaman's death. The next morning the jury found that he had been killed by some person or persons unknown, and let it go at that.
Two weeks later I had occasion to go to Tucson, and on tying my horse outside the Italian Brothers' saloon, noticed a man I thought looked familiar sitting on the bench outside. As I came up he pulled his hat over his face so that I could not see it. I went inside, ordered a drink, and looked in the mirror. It gave a perfect reflection of the man outside, and I saw that he was the Mexican Fernando, whom the Chinese gardener had hired when I had engaged Mabot. I had my suspicions right then as to who had killed the Chinaman, but, having nothing by which to prove them, I was forced to let the matter drop.
Two or three years after this I hired as vaquero a Mexican named Neclecto, who after a year quit work and went for a visit to Nogales. Neclecto bought his provisions from the Chinaman who kept the store I had built on the ranch, and so, as we were responsible for the debt, when Bob Bloxton, son-in-law of Sanford, came to pay the Mexican off, he did so in the Chinaman's store.
The next morning Neclecto accompanied Bloxton to the train, and, looking back, Bob saw, the Mexican and another man ride off in the direction of the ranch. After it happened Neclecto owned up that he had been in the Chinaman's that night drinking, but insisted that he had left without any trouble with the yellow-skinned storekeeper. But from that day onward the Chinaman was never seen again.
Bloxton persuaded me to return to the ranch from Nogales and we visited the Chinaman's house, where we found the floor dug up as though somebody had been hunting treasure. My wife found a $10 gold piece hidden in a crack between the 'dobe bricks and later my son, John, unearthed twelve Mexican dollars beneath some manure in the hen-coop. Whether this had belonged to the Chinaman, Louey, who had disappeared, or to another Chinaman who had been staying with him, we could not determine. At any rate, we found no trace of Louey or his body.
Even this was not to be the end of the strange series of fatalities to Chinamen on the Sanford ranch. In 1897 I quit the Sanford foremanship after working for my employer seventeen years, and turned the ranch over to Amos Bloxton, another son-in-law of Sanford. I rented agricultural land from Sanford and fell to farming. Near my place Crazy John, a Chinaman, had his gardens, where he made 'dobe bricks besides growing produce.
We were living then in the old store building and the Chinaman was making bricks about a quarter of a mile away with a Mexican whom he employed. One day we found him dead and the Mexican gone. After that, as was natural, we could never persuade a Chinaman to live anywhere near the place. I later built a house of the bricks the Chinaman was making when he met his death. The Mexican escaped to Sonora, came back when he thought the affair had blown over and went to work for the railroad at Sonoita. There he had a fracas with the section foreman, stabbed him and made off into the hills. Sheriff Wakefield from Tucson came down to get the man and shot him dead near Greaterville, which ended the incident.