Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/105

 of confiscating his property and setting him adrift outside his lines.

Don Estevan never hesitated a moment. He was not that kind of a man. His reply was perfectly courteous, as I am told all the talk on the part of the Confederate officer had been. Ochoa owed all he had in the world to the Government of the United States, and it would be impossible for him to take an oath of fidelity to any hostile power or party. When would General Turner wish him to leave?

He was allowed to select one of his many horses, and to take a pair of saddle-bags filled with such clothing and food as he could get together on short notice, and then, with a rifle and twenty rounds of ammunition, was led outside the lines and started for the Rio Grande. How he ever made his way across those two hundred and fifty miles of desert and mountains which intervened between the town of Tucson and the Union outposts nearer to the Rio Grande, I do not know—nobody knows. The country was infested by the Apaches, and no one of those upon whom he turned his back expected to hear of his getting through alive. But he did succeed, and here he is, a proof of devotion to the cause of the nation for which it would be hard to find a parallel. When the Union troops reoccupied Tucson Don Estevan resumed business and was soon wealthy again, in spite of the tribute levied by the raiding Apaches, who once ran off every head of draught oxen the firm of Tully, Ochoa & De Long possessed, and never stopped until they had crossed the Rio Salado, or Salt River, where they killed and "jerked" the meat on the slope of that high mesa which to this day bears the name of "Jerked Beef Butte."

Another important factor in the formative period of Arizona's growth is this figure walking briskly by, clad in the cassock of an ecclesiastic. It is Bishop Salpointe, a man of learning, great administrative capacity, and devoted to the interests of his people. He preaches little, but practises much. In many ways unknown to his flock he is busy with plans for their spiritual and worldly advancement, and the work he accomplishes in establishing schools, both in Tucson and in the Papago village of San Xavier, is something which should not soon be forgotten by the people benefited. He is very poor. All that one can see in his house is a crucifix and a volume of precious manuscript notes upon the