Painters' Eden

ALMOST ANYONE CAN have fun in Arizona with a stick of charcoal and a sheet of paper; and if you can't draw very well— well it doesn't matter as much as it used to. Any highway in the state will supply the subject; old adobe, early American architecture of the "ghost" towns, or just plain landscape. Over a rather long period of time I have made a number of sketches, partly for the pleasure of doing them, partly in the expесtation that an occasional sketch might become the motive for something more ambitious. Some of the sketches might have a slight historical interest, representing as they do buildings now in the course of disintegration, such as the once elegant headquarters of the Arizona Mining and Milling company in the ghost town of Charleston, and the sketch of the roofless adobe which was once the home of the famous Indian fighter King Woolsey. Others are just picturesque subjects like the street scene in that charming perpendicular town of Jerome. There seems to be an obstinate determination about a mining town. It is usually an unpremeditated excrescence about a hole in the ground. The town blasts its way up the side of a mountain in spite of hell and gravitation. Thus Jerome rises tier on tier of funny little houses set on spindles that carry the eye upward to the last hawk's nest. The degree of perpendicularity of the town is astonishing. Even a tarheel cow grazing on the hillside ought to have a guy rope fore and aft. A prospector's burro, so I was told, once rolled all the way down the declivity, the final plunge being somewhat eased for him by dropping through the roof of a cabin onto days. When Charleston was sharing the gilded prosperity of Tombstone the mine officials resided and conducted business in offices located on a terraced hillside overlooking the river and the village of Charleston. It was a rather imposing building surmounted by a huge ventilator through which the wind whistled a tarantella on stormy nights. Here the officers and their wives lived in luxurious style. Within the ruin the sole remaining trace of elegance was the expensive wall paper hanging in strips in the living room. In the office proper the heavy door of the safe lay detached on the floor. The inner steel walls had been battered with a sledge hammer. Having sketched the exterior I stood in front of the gaping vault endeavoring to reconstruct a tragic event that occurred on that spot March 25, 1882. A group of the company officials were lounging in this room. M. W. Peel, an engineer, son of a judge, was leaning against the counter in front of the safe. The outside door opened and two masked men entered armed with rifles. There were no preliminaries; the fools fired into the group and Peel fell with a bullet in his heart. Without even raiding the vault the murderers fled. A more senseless murder was never committed. By devious clues the men were located in an abandoned ranch house. Sheriff Billy Breckenridge, who had a preference for taking bad men single handed, was induced on this occasion to accept the assistance of three deputies. He could probably have done a much better job all alone. Breckenridge and his men reached the place just before dawn. He placed two men at the rear of the shack while he and the other the dining room table to the delighted surprise of some children who found the incident exceedingly droll. Tombstone is a fascinating town with a marvelous climate and a romantic past. A little more than a half century ago it was the metropolis of Arizona and the "helldorado" of the Southwest. Cattle rustlers and gamblers shot out their disagreements on the streets and in the bar rooms, and that sainted pair, Doc Holiday and Wyatt Earp, conspicuous figures in this gang of desperadoes, put a lot of periods to their feud with the Clantons and McLowerys. Over these ungodly scenes the first Protestant church in Arizona, St. Paul's Episcopal, shed its feeble protesting light. Across the hills and gulches from Tombstone, some seven miles to the southwest in a bend of the San Pedro river is the ghost town of Charleston, now a cluster of golden adobe walls screened in a grove of cottonwoods. To this place the ore from the rich mines of Tombstone was hauled to the stamp mill of the river bank-now in ruin with its battery of twenty stamps mute but eloquent of other

deputies

ABOUT a mile away from Agua Caliente is all that remains of the adobe house which was once the ba-ronial residence of King Woolsey, known to fame as a grand Indian fighter, a sketch of which is herewith reproduced.

The house consists of two units with a space between roofed over; thus the culinary and servants' quarters were removed from the master's living rooms. On the hottest days a gentle zephyr would float through the open space. Here he lived for many years like a medieval baron, irrigating his fields and fig trees with warm water, raising cattle, leading raids on Apaches and dispensing crude but effective justice on renegades.

Woolsey arrived in Yuma in 1860 with a rifle, six-shooter and five dollars, having ridden his pony down from San Francisco. His first employment was as a mule skinner. From this rather lowly occupation he progressed to the ownership of the ranch at hot springs.

deputy watched the front entrance. They decided to wait in silence for better visibility.

In spite of orders to the contrary one of the deputies knocked at the back door.

"Who is there?" came a voice from within.

"The sheriff."

There was a pause-whispers within-the door was flung wide open. Two shots were fired; both members of the posse fell, the one dead, the other wounded.

Then the front door swung back-two more flashes in the dark. The sheriff's companion was knocked down like a rabbit though not badly hurt. A lead missle meant for Breckenridge lodged in the tree trunk behind which he had wisely taken his position.

Billy Grounds, one of the rascals in the cabin stuck his head out of the door. It was still pretty dark and he couldn't see anything. "Maybe," said Billy hopefully to the "podner" Zwing Hunt, "mebee we got 'em all, let's go." He stepped outside.

There wasn't very much time to think about anything, but Breckenridge, when he described the adventure afterwards, said that as he raised his shotgun the admonition came to him: "aim low in the dark."

So he aimed at Billy's feet and splashed his brain on the door frame.

Hunt darted out of the cabin and scampered up the side of the hill with the sheriff in pursuit. In the half light, half darkness, his chance of escape was excellent.

At the top of the hill Hunt's bounding figure was projected against the light background of the morning sky. It was a rather long wing

NOVEMBER 1941

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