Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/494

 competent to determine the validity of claims and make the most sensible distribution.

There were other parties in Arizona who disgraced the Territory by proposing to murder the Apaches on the San Carlos, who had sent their sons to the front to aid the whites in the search for the hostiles and their capture or destruction. These men organized themselves into a company of military, remembered in the Territory as the "Tombstone Toughs," and marched upon the San Carlos with the loudly-heralded determination to "clean out" all in sight. They represented all the rum-poisoned bummers of the San Pedro Valley, and no community was more earnest in its appeals to them to stay in the field until the last armed foe expired than was Tombstone, the town from which they had started; never before had Tombstone enjoyed such an era of peace and quiet, and her citizens appreciated the importance of keeping the "Toughs" in the field as long as possible. The commanding officer, of the "Toughs" was a much better man than the gang who staggered along on the trail behind him: he kept the best saloon in Tombstone, and was a candidate for political honors. When last I heard of him, some six years since, he was keeping a saloon in San Francisco.

All that the "Tombstone Toughs" did in the way of war was to fire upon one old Indian, a decrepit member of "Eskiminzin's" band, which had been living at peace on the lower San Pedro ever since permission had been granted them to do so by General Howard; they were supporting themselves by farming and stock-raising, and were never accused of doing harm to any one all the time they remained in that place. White settlers lived all around them with whom their relations were most friendly. The "Toughs" fired at this old man and then ran away, leaving the white women of the settlements, whose husbands were nearly all absent from home, to bear the brunt of vengeance. I have before me the extract from the Citizen of Tucson, which describes this flight of the valiant "Toughs": "leaving the settlers to fight it out with the Indians and suffer for the rash acts of these senseless cowards, who sought to kill a few peaceable Indians, and thereby gain a little cheap notoriety, which cannot result otherwise than disastrously to the settlers in that vicinity." "The attack of the Rangers was shameful, cowardly, and foolish. They should be taken care of at once, and punished