Buried Twice

El Jejano Buried Twice, Infamous El Tejano Terrified Tucson, Which Plugged Him, Then Covered Him Up by Leo W. Banks

Billy Brazelton deserves every bit of his leg-end. Even if Tucson tried to eliminate the man known as El Tejano (“the Texan”) from its historical ledger, the facts would keep his story alive. In the Southwest of the late 1870s, Brazelton became infamous for robbing stagecoaches while wearing a hideous mask-until lawmen left him face down on the ground, his back perforated by buckshot fired from ambush.

Dramatic dying words? Yes, we have them, too. Brazelton, gasping, exclaimed: “I die brave! My God, I'll pray till I die!” Even that dramatic declaration can't match the words Tucson still hears Brazelton speak from the grave. They echo at night across the darkness of Cat Mountain on the city's west side, faint murmurings through the rocky redoubt that sound a chilling warning to anyone hunting the gold from Brazelton's heists.

As the legend goes, these are among the last words the searcher hears.

What are those words? Their power derives from the facts, which must come first.

William Whitney Brazelton, 26, drifted into Tucson in 1877 and first landed a job at Leatherwood corrals downtown, then at Lee's Mill, 3 miles south of town, Roy O'Dell wrote in the summer 1982 edition of Westerners Tally Sheet.

But Brazelton's outlaw career started near Wickenburg before he even reached Tucson, and the newspaper account suggests the first stirrings of legend-making.

“The coolness with which the orders were given and the jokes issued by the robber,” reported the Prescott Enterprise, “shows him to be possessed of a most enviable nerve and unprecedented quantity of unadulterated cheek.” Brazelton's profile rose dramatically in the summer of 1878, when he pulled two jobs in eight days. The passengers in the first heist, on July 31, included John Clum, editor of the Arizona Citizen, then based in Florence, who wrote of his good fortune at witnessing “the modus operandi by which these members of the shotgun gentry

STREET OF TROUBLES

It would be a year before Tucson's Congress Street (shown above in 1877) would be awash with the troubling word of El Tejano. His "all or nothing" notoriety came in 1878 with a string of back-to-back robberies, after which he was located by tracker Juan Elias (left), and killed by a group of Arizona lawmen, including Peace Officer Charles Shibell (below). ARIZONA HISTORICAL SOCIETY/TUCSON extract the valuables from the stagecoach and passengers by the simple but magical persuasive power of cold lead."

Brazelton stepped from the shadows at Point of Mountain, 18 miles northwest of Tucson, and ordered the coach to stop. "The first one that moves I'll kill deader than hell!" the bandit bellowed.

Both Clum and a co-passenger, identified only as Wheatley, carried gunsClum's kept on the coach floor, Wheatley's under a blanket on the seat.

But neither drew down on Brazelton. The attack was "so unexpected that we were wholly unprepared," Clum wrote, "and once under the cover of his arms were quite willing to obey his commands."

The bandit's work drew more notice on August 8 when he hit the same Tucson-toFlorence stage, in the same spot.

Under the headline, "Here We Are Again," Clum's newspaper described driver Arthur Hill and passenger John Miller, who sat beside Hill atop the coach, nearing Point of Mountain as Miller inquired as to the place of the earlier robbery.

"There," Hill replied, "the robber was behind that bush." Then Hill shouted, "And there he is again!"

"Yes, here I am again!" Brazelton snarled. "Throw up your hands!"

The robber's description traveled widely: 6 feet tall, broad-shouldered, and with shoulder-length wavy hair. He wore his pants tucked into his boots, equipped with brass spurs, and cartridge belts over his shoulders.

He also carried a Spencer rifle and two Colt six-shooters.

But his mask drew the most notice. The Arizona Weekly Star for August 22, 1878, described it as a white sack with holes cut in the eyes, a raise or puff in the cloth for his nose, and a piece of red flannel over the mouth.

"This mask extended down over his shoulders," the paper wrote, "a most frightening thing to look at, when placed over the head of a man."

Facts unearthed later by O'Dell indicate that despite his nickname, El Tejano likely was born in Missouri, not Texas. Brazelton also had a well-traveled past that included a stint as a strongman in a San Francisco beer garden.

So great was his physical strength that Brazelton delighted in inviting men to climb his back before throwing them collectively to the floor, O'Dell reported.

The Arizona Miner newspaper wrote that it was probably the devilish Brazelton who showed up outside the courthouse in Prescott, claiming he could swallow an entire wagon wheel, among other feats.

After taking bets, Brazelton left, saying he had to gather other members of his traveling troupe to begin the show.

"He never returned," wrote the Arizona Miner, "neither did his troupe, and now comes a dispatch to the Governor saying Wm. Brazelton is killed.... He is in all probability the same man who didn't swallow the wagon wheel."

Lawmen found Brazelton with the help of tracker Juan Elias, who followed the hoofprints of the bandit's horse to Tucson, and the home of David Nemitz, a co-worker. This young German admitted to providing supplies to the bandit, but insisted he did so out of fear. The still-terrified informant

the remains as he appeared in his dress when robbing stages... for the purpose of having his victims identify the robber, if possible."

With that odd, macabre photograph, Brazelton seemed likely to earn history's notice. But that probability became a certainty, when, four days after his death, the Star noted that his stolen loot hadn't been recovered and wondered about its hiding place.

A week later, Prescott's Enterprise noted that Brazelton had told Nemitz that he'd buried $1,300 near Camp Grant, in south-eastern Arizona. "We expect to see the whole country dug up around the post," the paper reported.

Evidence of such a frenzy exists, according to the unpublished memoirs of Thomas Cruse, a soldier during the Apache Wars. In 1927 he wrote that when he was stationed at Tucson's Fort Lowell in 1883, search parties were still hunting for Brazelton's loot.

"He evidently never traveled very far from the scene of his exploits," Cruse wrote, "and there are many people who Arizona Twilight Tales: Good Ghosts, Evil Spirits & Blue Ladies. The stories she tells include that of young Antonio, who announces to his father that he knows the location of the cave in which Brazelton hid his gold.

Weary of being poor, Antonio says, "Tonight I am going to get it," and rides off on his horse. After filling a gunnysack with nuggets, Antonio feels a strange presence and hears those three bone-rattling words, todo o nada.

Now filled with terror, he looks up and sees a masked horseman. In Eppinga's telling, the figure removes the mask, and Antonio sees that he is headless.

Sometime later, Antonio's father finds his son unconscious in the cave and brings him home. When the boy awakens, he asks, "Where is our gold?"

When the father tells him there is no gold, Antonio raves wildly, and three days later he dies.

Like most contemporary tales of Billy Brazelton, this story centers on Cat Mountain, which consists of two jagged black-rock masses separated by a pass in

The sky had returned to black by the time Brazelton uttered his unforgettable final words . . . todo o nada.

agreed to cooperate with lawmen in luring Brazelton to a meeting, as long as it resulted in the outlaw's death.

With the population in an uproar over the holdups, Sheriff Charles Shibell entered into the conspiracy to kill Brazelton after learning the bandit intended to pull one more job before returning to assassinate Shibell and Town Marshal Adolph Buttner.

On August 19, 1878, in a remote area just south of Tucson, Shibell and eight deputies hid in the brush surrounding the meeting place. When the bandit arrived, they lit up the night with muzzle flashes.

The sky had returned to black by the time Brazelton uttered his unforgettable final words. think his treasure is buried in the Santa Catalina Mountains nearby."

The coroner found 10 holes in the outlaw's body, including a charge of buckshot to the back. His report also linked the "bloody-mouth bandit" to at least nine stagecoach robberies, in New Mexico and Arizona.

In Tucson lawmen roped Brazelton's corpse to a chair and put him on display outside the jail.

There, reported the Star, "Mr. [Henry] Buehman, the artist, took a photograph of Time hasn't dimmed Brazelton's legend, but it has undergone several mutations, each a reflection of the age, and ultimately of ourselves, because legends say more about those who hold them than they do about the truth.

In his own time, Brazelton went from being a rogue of "unadulterated cheek," to a dangerous potential cop killer.

Then, in the early 1900s, authors such as Dan Rose, in Arizona Magazine, presented him as a Robin Hood, a handsome, brave and chivalrous "prince of nerve and daring" who never "took a cent from any poor devil on the road."

Bunk, of course. But readers of that age liked their prose purple and their heroes uncomplicated.

Now, Brazelton has changed faces again to become a ghost in the night who whispers three Spanish words that precede death for anyone hunting for his gold.Todo o nada in English, "all or nothing." Take all the gold or die trying. Can you feel the cold creeping along your spine?

Author Jane Eppinga captured the enduring power of El Tejano in her book, the Tucson Mountains. Locals call them Big Cat and Little Cat.

In daylight, they stand against the sky like massive ships on a desert sea, their boulder-strewn slopes studded with saguaros that appear to grow from the rocks themselves.

But as the day wanes, Big and Little Cat become a haunting mix of sun and shadows, light and menace.

Then the coyotes begin their mournful cries, the desert wind moans through splits in the rocks, and the night air fills with the sound of pounding hooves and the jingle of spurs, as the ghost of El Tejano returns.

This is where we need Billy Brazelton now, on Cat Mountain.

In late August of 1878, we needed him roped to that chair in downtown Tucson, a hulking, powerful, bearded ruffian in a slouch hat, a man the law killed and handed to us to make over as we chose.

We chose to make him a legend. Todo o nada. Al