Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/506

 486 "Go To Bangley and Schlagenstein's At Tombstone. They Are The Bosses, You Bet."

Then over the edge of bare hills appeared Tombstone itself, a large, circular water-tank, big enough for a fort, painted with advertisements, the most conspicuous object in the foreground.

At the beginning of the year 1878 there was not so much as a tent at Tombstone. One "Ed" Schieffelin and his brother started thither prospecting. It was supposed to be an adventure full of dangers. At the Santa Rita silver mines, in the Santa Cruz Valley, for instance, nothing like so far away, three superintendents had been murdered by Indians in rapid succession.

His friends therefore said to Ed, "Better take your coffin with you; you will find your tombstone there, and nothing else."

But Ed Schieffelin—a young man yet, who has not discarded a picturesque way of dressing of which he was fond, nor greatly altered his habits otherwise—found instead the Tough Nut and Contention Mines. He made a great fortune out of them, and was so pleased at the difference between the prediction and the result that he gave the name of Tombstone to the town itself.

One of two well-printed daily papers has assumed the corresponding title of the Epitaph. The unreliability of epitaphs if the remark may be safely ventured even at this distance—is proverbial. Nevertheless, they may occasionally tell the truth. From appearances it would seem that this was one of the occasions. Almost any eulogy of its subject by the Epitaph would seem justified. The city, but two years old at this date, had attained to a population of 2000, and a property valuation,