Page:The American Magazine volume LXIV.djvu/362

346 held them for street rioting, a misdemeanor!

"This triumph didn't do me any good," says Heney now. "I thought I was the greatest lawyer ever."

Having begun thus to practice, he decided to study law. He returned to San Francisco, took in two years a three years' course and passed his examination before the Supreme Court (1883). But drilling rock on a wet plank undergound in the mines of Idaho had given him sciatica. He went to Arizona, meaning to practice there, but his brother Ben, who was in business at Tucson, had heard that a man who was running a cattle ranch for him was selling beeves on his own account. He asked Frank to go out there and see. Frank went and he saw; he said what he would do about it and his brother's partner "skipped." Thus it was that Frank Heney, ex-teacher, miner and counselor-at-law, became a cowboy and a cattle-rancher.

oy, he up to  the folge. His brother Ben says that every other item on the ranch bills sent to him in those days was for either whisky or cartridges, but when he went up there to "kick," Frank had malaria to show for the liquor and, to justify the ammunition, he threw a tin can out in front of the shack, and, with a six-shooter, moved it shot by shot across the ground out of range. He was teaching himself to shoot, and the other cowboys were teaching him to ride and rope and "dance."

Geronimo had his Apaches gut on the warpath and the frequent alarms brought the cattle men frequently together. They liked Heney and his education helped while away many an hour for the idlers. But they hazed the sunny "tenderfoot." They gave him bad bronchos to ride. Again and again he was thrown, but, as with the boys "south of Market," so with these horses, he always came back; up and into the saddle, "taking his medicine" even though the blood spurted from his nose and mouth. For months he submitted with unfailing good nature to all this cowboy "fun." Then one evening at a round-up he decided that "that would do." He picked out the best man among them.

"Now, Roberson, you fellows quit. Oh, you can smile," he said. "You're a gun man all right, but you've got to use your gun, I've stood enough and if you don't quit, you and Turner and all the rest of you, why, you've got to kill me or I'll kill you."

Cowboys "don't mean nothin'," when they pester the life out of you and risk your bones. They sat silent, studying Frank while he raged, and when he rode off home, Roberson and Turner rounded up his cattle and, after the rodeo, drove them over to his ranch. There they blew him up for "gettin' mad," but from that time on they let him alone. That is to say, they ceased to "josh" him, and when there were Mexican horse thieves to go out and kill, or Indians to follow, Roberson and Turner, the leaders, each tried always to get Heney in "his bunch." "He couldn't shoot," they said, "but he had sand."

When the cattle business was in good shape Ben Heney asked Frank to go over to Fort Apache. Ben had an Indian trading store there and "Al" Bernard, who was



running it on shares, was selling goods on his own account. One Sunday morning Frank called Bernard into the store.

"Al," he said, "you are going away."

"What!"

"Yes," said Heney, cackling pleasantly, "you and your family and your wife's