"He Stayed with 'em While He Lasted"

HE STAYED WITH EM WHILE HE LASTED THE SAGA OF BUCKEY O'NEILL

IT WAS autumn in 1888. The first tints of September color were in the oaks and cottonwoods, and local politicians began to flutter about like the trembling leaves. November elections were in the offing, and a new sheriff was to be named at the polls.

Yavapai county embraced an area that was unbelievably vast. Originally almost as large as the entire State of New York, it later yielded Maricopa, Gila, Coconino and Apache, four great counties in themselves, and still it is larger than the State of New Jersey. So the office of Sheriff, which not only embraced the duties of law enforcement, but those of county assessor as well, was far and away the most important post that the county could offer. Obviously, the job was loaded with power; the bailiwick's most coveted spot. But the Republicans seldom even came close to electing a man to the office, and for years the majority Democrats had regarded it as their very own plum. Rightly so, too, for Republican sheriffs in Yavapai county had long been scarcer than cowboys in Congress.

September ninth rolled around, and the Republican caucus met in Prescott to determine candidates for the coming election. Heretofore, old-line party names had been rewarded with the nomination, more as an honor than anything else, for election itself was tacitly conceded to the Democratic nominee.

But with the advent of Buckey O'Neill, things had begun to appear in a far different light to the G. O. P., and the light was disinctly rosy in hue. Buckey's tenure as Probate Judge

Part Two

was about to expire. Re-election to that office was a lead-pipe cinch, and no less, but it is doubtful that he ever gave it more than a passing thought. He was on his way up. Why gun for a rabbit when you're staring a bear in the face?

The caucus settled down to business in informal fashion, discussing possibilities for various posts. Several good, reliable party names were extolled, each as the man to run for Sheriff. Callen-Reagan Reese all received a polite smattering of support from the delegates. Finally, George H. Tirker was recognized and took the floor. He warmed up the convention with a eulogistic testimonial to Buckey, and brought the gathering to the boiling point with an eloquent nomination of Buckey for Sheriff.

When Tirker concluded, there was an instant of silence, charged with dynamite. The delegates had applauded dutifully the party's aging old-timers, but now, for the first time in years, the scent of victory was in the air. They wanted a man who had a chance to win. Buckey was young; he was full of steam; a crowd-catching fighter. Above all, everybody in the county knew that Buckey could fill the bill.

The first sharp explosions of applause broke loose before Tirker regained his seat. They billowed into a thunderous roar. Men came to their feet, shouting, stomping the floor. "Buckey for Sheriff! We want O'Neill!"

No formal vote of the caucus was ever recorded on Buckey's nomination. He was nominated by popular acclaim.

Election, however, was something else again.

Democrats went over the Republican ticket with narrow eye. They skipped along blithely until they saw Buckey as nominee for Sheriff. That stopped them short. They ran fingers through their hair. Here, in their estimation, was a man with whom they must reckon. Popular, young and vigorous, this cocksure Republican marauder threatened to storm their very own sanctum and appropriate the throne. He had to be stopped, and that was all there was to it. It made no difference how.

The signal fires were promptly set to burning and party tom-toms thumped throughout the county. Democratic medicine men scurried around their caldrons and brought them to a boil. They brewed a mixture that oddly resembled a bucket of mud, rammed it into their heavy artillery, and on the theory that the best defense is a splashing attack, fired the works at Buckey.

The battle was on, and from the very first splash until the last mud pie was baked, there were no political issues worth mention. Buckey himself was an issue, and nary a hold was barred. The Demos did nothing but blast at Buckey with goo from their bubbling pots. The G. O. P. did nothing but wipe his splattered brow, and dust it with whitewash as quickly as they could. Perhaps the most significant charge fired at Buckey during the entire campaign was the fact that, as the Courier stated, "a month or two ago he labored to form an independent party, professing to belong to neither of the old parties, and then went into what was left of the Republican party to take 'the Baker.' This charge, of course, was true, for Buckey was nothing if not a complete opportunist. But the Democrats missed the stagecoach entirely. They failed to capitalize this significant fact, which was later to alter the whole course of Buckey's career.

Meanwhile, Buckey continued to stump the county, corralling last minute votes. He was in Flagstaff on election day, November 7, 1888. The issue of who was to be the next Sheriff of Yavapai county was conclusively settled at the polls. All the next day the votes rolled in for Buckey in one great avalanche. Hour by hour his majority grew, until finally it was plain that he had carried the day by the most tremendous landslide the territory had ever known. He captured every precinct with but two exceptions, one of which was tied. The other was lost by only four votes.

Prescott went wild. Its favorite son had carried off "the Baker." "Buckey!" they cried: "Buckey! We want Buckey."

With showmanship little short of phenomenal, Buckey chose that particular moment to return home from Flagstaff. As he stepped from the train, the Ninth Infantry band blared forth with musical salute. Friends, supporters and erstwhile adversaries swelled the crowd that milled around the station, and as the band broke into a march, they fired up their torches. In carriages and wagons, afoot or on horseback, they fell in behind Buckey and the band for an endless parade that wound by torchlight through every street in town. It was Buckey's night to howl.

The Courier grudgingly gave some space to Buckey's smashing victory, but prefaced its docile remarks with the fact that, "Returns from the States indicate the election of Harrison and Morton."

Buckey kept more than busy in his role as the various editors of Hoof and Horn, and by the first day of January, 1889, when he was inducted into office as Sheriff, he might well have added the title of "Political Editor" to his already numerous sobriquets. He enthusiastically approved when the Fifteenth Legislature cracked down on train robbing, the currently popular diversion of Western unemployed, and made it a capital offense. But he had no difficulty at all in finding fault with the county's Democratic administration, and constantly harpooned the entire regime.

Regardless of his unbridled joy at setting the torch to political fireworks, Buckey allowed no interference with his discharge of duties as Sheriff. He meant to be the best Sheriff that Arizona ever had, and soon was well on his way toward proving it. Besides performing the detail and routine arrests inherent in the job, he demonstrated his great civic pride with worthwhile and constructive accomplishment. He was quick to put county prisoners to work at beautifying the city Plaza in Prescott, and by the third week in March, 1889, the work was nearly completed. Elm trees, box elders and birch graced the square in profusion, throwing a delightful blanket of shade over the once sun-baked ground. Many beautiful trees remain to this day as living monuments to Buckey's civic endeavor, and it must have been with pardonable satisfaction that he walked among them on his way to the office on the chilly spring morning of March 21, 1889.

Things were depressingly quiet in the bailiwick that morning, and Buckey leaned back in his chair and plunked his feet in their usual spot on top of his desk. He yawned, drew deeply on a cigarette, and gazed through the window into space. Idly, he watched the telegraph agent make his way across the plaza toward the courthouse.

It was a peaceful scene, Buckey thought; the trees, and their shade on the grass in the bright morning sun. Yet, something in the air disturbed him, and he leaned forward, trying to sense what it was.

"Oh, well," he thought. "To hell with it." Perhaps it was the telegraph agent scurrying across the plaza out there. He was moving too damn fast for so early in the morning.Buckey leaned back in comfort once more, and for a couple of minutes he sat there, idly, and puffed his cigarette. Propped back in a creaking old chair with heels hooked up on the edge of his desk, Buckey was very casually perched on the doorstep of fame.

One hundred and forty miles to the east and north sprawled the prodigious range of the Aztec Land and Cattle Company. Its home ranch lay opposite the little Mormon settlement of Saint Joseph on the banks of the Little Colorado, and on either side of the river its vast acres spread themselves like the wings of a giant eagle. Sixty thousand head of cattle ranged the land from Holbrook to the Mogollons, and the punchers who sang them lullabies were plenty seasoned and tough. Countless notches scarred their guns and they rode the range and fought their enemies with equal joy and vigor. A case-hardened, fighting outfit, they ruled their roost with a shooting-iron hand.

Make no mistake about it. This was the famous Hashknife brand.

At spring and fall roundups, Hashknife waddies were always the crew to reckon with. And likewise during the long winter months they turned into a surly, cantankerous bunch, weary with the interminable lack of violent action. The crew that ran the Hashknife brand through the winter of eighty-eight and nine was definitely no exception. The great table lands were splotched with snow, and frost tinsled the sagebrush that rolled away from the big wooden house, bleak in the rays of the cold March sun. A finger of smoke angled away from the chimney, and the men inside were saddle-weary of each other's faces.

Dan Harvick, Bill Stiren, John Halford and J. J. Smith held cards with a couple of others in the afternoon's session of poker. The game was wild and the stakes were high, but nobody cared. They all were broke, and played for nothing but beans so shriveled and dry that the cook couldn't even use them for chow. Propped up in one corner on a straightlegged chair, Jack Diamond strong-armed a tune from his screeching fiddle, and a couple of punchers stumbled around with each other in an ill-tempered effort to dance. The only female in miles around was the outfit's woman cook, and who was she to sashay around with muscle-bound veterans of the hurdy-gurdies in Tombstone, Dodge and Abilene?

Harvick's lips tightened into a sneer as he eyed the scene from behind cards in his hand. Always the same. Poker. Diamond's infernal fiddle. A couple of saddle-stiffs jarrin' hell loose a-shakin' their blasted clod-hoppers. Nothing but waiting for spring to set in! It was more than he could take. He needed action, before he went completely mad.

With a snort, he banged cards on the table (Continued on Page Thirty-one)

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FEBRUARY, 1943