Classic Photos

The Classic Photographs of Arizona Highways A Portfolio

Almost since its inception, this magazine has been respected around the world first for its black and white and then its color photography of Arizona, a state so rich in exceptional scenery. A select few of these photographs, however, have over time become "trademark" compositions of which readers never seem to tire. This issue is a celebration of the mag-azine's 70 years on the road. In addition to the classic photo portfolio and the here-tofore unpublished manuscript by histo-rian-folklorist J. Frank Dobie about the early days of one of the great Arizona ranches, we offer you several remarkable stories from the yesteryear issues of the magazine: an insightful piece on Indian culture, "The Death of a Navajo," by author, Indian trader, and onetime lawman Cecil Calvin Richardson; a humorous personality story drawn by author and newspaperman George H. Smalley on the wiliest of old-time bandits, Climax Jim; cowboy artist and book author Ross Santee's memorial to the once great herds of wild ponies which ranged this land; and composer Ferde Grofé, perhaps best known for his Grand Canyon Suite, gives us a first-person ac-count of his adventures in the Arizona of the 1920s and '30s and how his musical re-creation of the Grand Canyon came to be. And then there's the man who single-handedly molded the mag-azine into the prize-winning publication of today, Editor Raymond Carlson, from whom we have a 1947 tribute to the Grand Canyon: "Golly, What a Gully!"

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There's also a startling revelation about territorial military justice and a curious fable about an old prospector whose "tall tales" turned out to be just the opposite. Join us in this celebration of an Arizona now long past but sorely missed.

Richard G. Stahl Managing Editor

The Navajo Way

From out of the bleak night came Tommy DeJolie, Navajo, to tell me that he was going to die. The doors of the post had long been closed against the storm and the night, and he did not knock in the white man's way. Silently he crept to my lighted window, placed his face against the pane so that I could see him plainly, and then called softly, "My friend!" When I opened the door, he was standing there beside it, tall and slender, and apparently in the prime of life. But I knew that he had been living on borrowed time for a long time. He extended his hand, and I accepted it in my own. Navajo custom decrees that you do not "shake hands," you hold anoth-er's hand in your own. If you shake hands, you are boasting of your physical prowess and belittling his.

"If you are alone," he said in soft-voiced Navajo, "I would like to come in and talk to you. I will not come to see you anymore as I am going to die, and I would like to have one last talk with you." He came in then and took the chair that I offered him, seated himself and smiled at me. My yellow light from the lamp made little shadows on his darkbronze face and outlined his long black hair in its two wrapped coils at the back of his neck.

'They will then "kill" my saddle and my best horse so that I may have them to use where I am going.' "You must not feel sorry for me," he went on, "for I am not afraid to die. I have come to talk to you in the way that I have talked to you before. I do not like white men very well, but I like you better than I have the others that I have known, and that is why I like to come here and talk to you. For 13 years I have done little work; for the most part, I have done nothing but lie around my hogan and think mostly about the Navajos and the white people.

"I went to the white man's school and tried to learn the white man's ways. I learned to read and to talk your language very well, but I never learned very much about white people. And now after all this time, I have come to the conclusion that I do not know my own people very well, either! My friend, I am feeling very badly tonight. I thought it was only the white man who did not understand the Navajo, and now I, too, am confused. You must help me. You write about people and you draw pictures. Other white men do this, too, but they just come and stare at us, then go away and write what was in their heads all the time. Why do they come to see us if they are going to do this?

"Why do they say that we are all fine people, that we do not laugh? Do they tell lies of one just to believe them when these things are printed? Only last week, the missionary who comes out here about every four months gave me two books about the Navajos. So many lies! Is that good? These lies make fun of us! They are not the truth!

"We are not Indians; we are not Navajos. Those are white peoples' names. We are Dinéh, the People. We are just like all people in so many ways; we laugh, tell jokes, lie, steal, kill, get angry, cry and weep, smile, and are happy. Some of us are good; some of us are bad. I don't understand why it should be otherwise, do you?"

I had to confess that I did not, and I raised guilty eyes to the shelf of books above my desk, for many of them were "romantic" books about the Navajos which some of my Eastern correspondents had sent me. His eyes followed mine, and he smiled.

"Why don't you write a book about the Navajos? Your people were the first to come into this faraway land of the Navajos and live among us. You do not have to tell lies because you do not know what else to write. Is it because you only like to draw the pretty pictures of the canyons and the colored sand, you do not wish to write of the living things that walk above that painted sand, or crawl in the darkness beneath it?"

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I could not evade his searching dark eyes. I said, "I could write a book about the People if you were here to help me. If you will live long enough to help me write it until it is done - then I will do it!"

For a long moment his eyes bored into mine, and then he smiled. "I am sorry," he said, "that I cannot be here to help you. It is now too late, and I would have liked that very much, but tonight we do not think of that. I will tell you about what I have been thinking the past few days.

"We believe in what you call our 'super stitions,' and you believe in what we call your 'superstitions,' so this has been my problem. It is so confusing to me that I cannot talk about it to my Navajo friends, only to you, a white man.

"When I die they will bury me beneath the sand with my new robe about me and my silver belt, bracelets, and turquoise beads on me. They will then 'kill' my sad dle and my best horse so that I may have them to use where I am going.

And in a few days, the wind will wipe out all traces of my grave; I will be as nothing in the sand, but no Navajo will go near my resting place. I will be as the Little Men Who Are Dead that once lived in the cliff houses. For five days those who have buried me will hide out in some lonely place and wash and purify their bodies.

"These things are as they should be for there are reasons for them. It is like the moth ers-in-law who do not see their sons-in-law, for if they look upon each other's face they will go blind. If this is not so in fact, it is logical to as sume that the daughter is of the body of the mother from whence all men come. Only the marriage of a son-in-law tothe widow can obviate the necessity for such restraint.

"We too have a hell and a heaven, al though we do not call them by such ob vious names. These are closer to us on Earth than they are to your people. They are manifested to us in various ways and forms.

"I do not rush up to you and shout at you in greeting, nor say a loud goodbye in leaving you. No, I respect your presence by silent contemplation on meeting you, which is a mark of respect, and then I offer you my hand. In leaving you, I do not say goodbye to you and your world, for if I amyour friend, I am of your world and do not wish to take leave of it.

"And if my heaven and hell are closer to me, then I see signs and manifestations of them in my daily life. The bear, the big coyote, and other creatures may be bearers of tidings of things to come for me. If the medicine man is singing for me he is thinking of my good, and if I too think of things that are good, then why am I not better in spirit and body as well?

"The wind may be the wings of the night, and it may whisper to me of that other world and the people who dwell there. If I am a twin and my other twin-half has died, it may tell me if he is lonesome and wishes me to join him there, so that I may go. For he knows that it is possible for me to do this.

"You and I, we do not laugh at Hosteen Clitso-Yazzie who has moved five times in the past week because the White Coyote came to his hogan in the still of the night.

We do not know of what misfortune he predicted for Hosteen Clitso-Yazzie if he did not move. Death, disease, disaster are things of the mind only before and after they have happened. That is why we have 'sings' in which we have sand-paintings.

"For the happy and the grave we have the Yeibichai Squaw Dance, Fire Dance, and such things. Happiness is a state of the mind which should be encouraged to continue its course.

"We have names for things and people. But you must remember that our names have meaning at all times. Our names de scribe, and this is so with our names for people. And that is why we do not say a person's name when he is present. We do not wish to hurt his feelings by publicly calling to attention his most prominent characteristic. Is it not better to call him my 'friend' or my 'close relative'?

'Even to point at a material object with the finger is to assume a posture of violence.' "I do not understand why there are some things which white men can discuss or talk about only with other white men. If these things are honest, why are they discussed in the same manner in which terrible secrets and lies are told in small groups? If these If things are false, is it not better that they should remain unsaid? If these things are true, why are they not discussed openly and in public? The facts of sex are not se cret, nor is the act of sex such a secret or a shame. The wrong is only for the person who does that which should not be done; therefore we discuss it openly men and women - together. He who commits adultery steals from the family of the girl or woman that which he cannot give back, or pay for except in a token way. So the shame is also that of the family of the girl.

"Lying and stealing are white man's words. We know now the meaning which the white men attach to these words, but it is hard for some of our people to remember. Our fathers took things to live when they were physically or mentally capable of doing this. It was a mark of dis tinction to outwit our enemies, and we had them on all sides. Taking things is a characteristic handed down to us, and we must learn not only the meaning of the word but why we must now adhere to its white man concept.

"You laugh loud and long at people, and tell rude jokes about them in their pres ence. That is very bad. We laugh because we are happy at what one has said or done; if we laugh otherwise then we are bad Navajos who think only of ourselves. Nor do we say good morning or good night. If things are not good while we are in the presence of another, then we either say nothing to call attention to an obvious fact, or we weep in his presence to show him that we are sorry.

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"It is easy for us to agree with one another, to say the things which the other person wants us to say to him. If we do not agree, and these things do not affect our own lives and plans, then is it not better that we do not disagree with him and make him unhappy? After all, he is in trouble, not us.

"Disease is a part of both the body and the mind, and that is why almost all of us still get our own medicine men first and then go to the white doctors for further benefit. The white doctors told me over 13 years ago that I would die of tuberculosis in a month or less. So I came home, and I have had several sings a year since then. Now I know that I am going to die, but I have been happy for these years.

"We do not fear death, only the action of death. We know that there are certain things which occur, and that if these things are taken care of then the dead will rest in the peace which he deserves, and the body is no longer of consequence. Therefore we do not molest the place of burial or go near it for that is the place from which he went. To him it is of utmost importance. We must in no way ever hinder or encroach upon his own 'ground.' "The closed circle represents the holding of all good and all bad in one receptacle, both human and material. So the small opening we leave in all circles is for the bad to escape. Only the ignorant or careless will complete a circle whether it is representative as in a design in a rug or merely of the mind. It is the same with our sand-paintings; these must represent only good or else the good result of something that was bad and was overcome.

"I do not know why white people point a finger at one another. To point thus is to deride or hold up to scorn. Even to point at a material object with the finger is to assume a posture of violence, whether intended or not. We use the face or the body or merely the lips, for the hands are deceptive things without brains and are hired things without souls.

"Perfection at anything in life is only to be desired, but never realized fully. Death is perfection, and perfection is death. That is one reason why our weavers do not make exact copies of rugs; no two should ever be exactly alike. All things are change and difference.

"There are so many of these superstitions and beliefs which are so different from those of the white people, and I go continually from the large things to the small, and yet I find no answer anywhere. It is as confusing as the thing I read today in one of the books about Navajos. They were called the last of the noble red men, and I have learned many years ago that only some of the things a person does in his lifetime may be noble. Perhaps it is a picture or a statue of which they speak like this. Here on the Painted Desert and in these faraway canyons we live and die just like other people, neither wholly good nor all bad, for are we not human beings like others?

"But I have spoken too long of these things. It is another little matter that I have come to see you about. My friend - and you are my friend because I know that you are neither all good nor all bad - I have a silver turquoise ring here which I wish to give you. It belonged to a son of mine who died about 10 years ago. I gave it to him, and just before he died he took it off his finger and gave it back to me. He told me that since he was going to die, he would like for me to take this ring and give it to the next boy who might be born. But I will not have another son now, so I would like for you to have the ring, and I shall be very happy to know that you will give it to a son of yours at some time in the future. When I go to this place where I am going in a few days, I will see this son of mine who has gone on before me, and I will explain the matter to him. I am sure that he will be pleased if you will accept it under these conditions."

"Of course I will, and if I do not have a son of my own, will it be all right if I give this ring to another man who may have a son?"

"That is my wish. If you do not have a son sometime, then give the ring to someone who was a good friend of yours as I hope I have been for this short while.

He smiled at me from the doorway, and then he slipped softly away into the outer darkness.

"And now, my friend, I bid you goodbye in the white man's way. I would like to have stayed awhile longer and helped you write a book about the Navajos, but perhaps I would have been more confused than ever, for you see I, too, am not clear as to why your people and mine are different after all."

"Nor I. Is there anything you might wish me to do for you?"

"Only one small thing. As you know, when a Navajo dies, his people say that only the dead man is responsible for his debts. I owe you for many things from your store, and when my sheep are sheared in the spring there will be plenty of money to pay my bill here. When my people come to your store in the spring, you must say to them that your friend who is now gone desired to rest on his journey and will do so only if he knows that his debt to you has been paid. I, myself, will tell them this, but it is my wish that you remind them of what I have said in the spring. For the memory of some Navajos for such things is short indeed."

"Goodbye," he called, and his voice was as soft as the slight rustling of the wind in the night. It echoed back to me like a tiny bell and found a place deep within me and would not go away. Two days later he was dead, his body resting beneath the shifting colored sand. And I did not go to see him there for I knew that he was no longer there. He was talking to his son and explaining many things to him. Often I found myself looking at the ring he had given me for my son, in the days that followed. Like so many things the Navajos make, it was a symbol of something that was fine in a way of life that was alien to mine. And yet the more I thought about it, the less I was sure, until at last my own mind, like Tommy DeJolie's, was a thing of confusion that spread and spread until there was no beginning and no end. Only life.

'Golly, What a Gully!'

History does not record the words spoken by Don Garcia Lopez de Cardenas, proud captain of Castile, that memorable day in 1540 when he and his companions looked into the Grand Canyon, the first Europeans to do so. In all probability those words were strong soldierly expletives, although a footsore scribe, of a poetical bent, recorded for posterity and prying eyes in Spain that the buttes and towers of the Canyon that "appeared from above to be the height of a man were higher than the tower of the Cathedral of Seville." An apt description, my capitan!

The gentle Father Garces came along in 1776 and was quite impressed by the Canyon, giving it the name of "Puerto de Bucareli" in honor of a great viceroy of Spain. James O. Pattie, trapper and mountain man, arrived at the Canyon in 1826, the first American tourist to visit there. Unfortunately there were no comfortable Fred Harvey accommodations awaiting, and he was pretty disgusted with the whole thing. "Horrid mountains," he wrote. Lt. Joseph Ives, an explorer, came to the "Big Canyon" in 1857 and "paused in wondering delight" but found the region "altogether valueless. Ours has been the first and will doubtless be the last party of whites to visit this profitless locality," was his studied opinion. But the lieutenant's feet were hurting him, and he should be forgiven his hasty words.

John Wesley Powell, 12 years later, arrived at the Canyon the exciting way - by boat down the Colorado. To him it was the "Grand" Canyon and so to all the world it has been ever since. It didn't take the tourists long to follow the explorers. In the early 1890s, a stagecoach was in operation from the railroad junction 60 miles to the south. "Them dudes is a'taking over the country," the old-timers said. In 1901 the Santa Fe, with an eye for business and at the request of an ever-increasing traveling public, put in the railroad to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon and went so far as to call itself the Grand Canyon Line. What the first Santa Fe locomotive said the day it chugged up to the Rim has not been recorded, but we can assume it was "toottoot" and let it go at that. Lt. Ives' "profitless locality" became a national monument in 1902, and a thousand square miles of it became a national park in 1913, the most valuable scenic treasure on Earth. Nice going, Lieutenant!

What goes for mousetraps also applies to canyons, it seems. Build a better one and the world will beat a path to your door. The visitors to the Grand Canyon since this century began have numbered so many thousands no one can say for certain. Men of all creeds and nationalities have found their way to the Rim. They have written millions of words about it, put it to music, painted it, stood mute before it. John Burroughs called it the "Divine Abyss." John C. Van Dyke found it "more mysterious in itsdepths than the Himalayas in their height." William Winter described it as "a pageant of ghastly desolation and yet of frightful vitality, such as neither Dante nor Milton in their most sublime conceptions ever even approached." Joaquin Miller, the great poet who sang of the mountains of California, could only ask of it, "Is any fifty miles of Mother Earth that I have known as fearful, or any part as fearful, as full of glory, as full of God?"

depths than the Himalayas in their height." William Winter described it as "a pageant of ghastly desolation and yet of frightful vitality, such as neither Dante nor Milton in their most sublime conceptions ever even approached." Joaquin Miller, the great poet who sang of the mountains of California, could only ask of it, "Is any fifty miles of Mother Earth that I have known as fearful, or any part as fearful, as full of glory, as full of God?"

John Muir, he of the great mind and the great heart, used strong words when he wrote of the Grand Canyon and said: "It seems a gigantic statement for even Nature to make all in one mighty stone word. Wildness so Godful, cosmic, primeval, bestows a new sense of Earth's beauty and size... But the colors the living, rejoicing colors, chanting morning and evening, in chorus to heaven! Whose brush or pencil, however lovingly inspired, can give you these? In the supreme flaming glory of sunset, the whole Canyon is transfigured, as if all the life and light of centuries of sunshine stored up in the rocks was now being poured forth as from one glorious fountain, flooding both Earth and sky." Words of an inspired man, truly inspired.

But the greatest tributes to the Grand Canyon have been paid by many whose words were never written. A sheik of Arabia, beturbaned and solemn, stood on the Rim and for several minutes murmured to himself. To his guide it sounded like a Moslem prayer. Thousands of ordinary people say nothing and their silence is tribute enough. There is more than humor in the statement of a Midwestern farmer whose only comment was: "Heck of a place to lose a cow!" And there is deep meaning, too, in the way so many people exclaim "Gosh!" the first word that comes when the Canyon appears before them. A president of the United States, William Howard Taft, a man who had seen much of the world, was more eloquent than he thought when his first exclamation, on seeing the canyon, was heard by a guide and carefully remembered. President Taft said: "Golly, what a gully!"

First published in April 1940 Text by Marjorie Ferrell Ellis Worth Lookin' Into

Old Charlie Peters was drifting in with the sunset once more. I watched him from the kitchen door as he opened the gate and led Lena, his little dust-colored donkey, into the corral. Charlie had come to our place that way so many times that I always think of him while I'm watching the sun go behind the blue Arizona hills. He is sure of his welcome at our house, but I called him and waved. "Another visit with Charlie, another story!" I thought. I hoard the rumors of hidden Spanish gold and strange tales of hidden mines anddeath and lawlessness that kept the old prospector forever roaming the desert and the hills. "Fellow from Wickenburg was tellin' me..." Charlie said to us, and as we listened to his slow words, that neat paved highway across the desert faded away, a stagecoach careened wildly across the scene, and galloping horses were brought to a desperate stop by shots from the bandits' smoking guns! "And if what old man Andrews said is true, and he was dyin' when he said it, them fellers hid that there gold at the corner of the adobe wall. Now if I could just git me a couple of real good men to dig..." he mused. "Think you know where the old wall is, Charlie?" my husband, Fred, asked. "Might," Charlie answered briefly and wisely, then puffed his pipe in a silence we had learned not to interrupt. The neat paved highway snapped back into place, and the stagecoach and its murdered driver vanished. While old Charlie unburdened Lena, and I finished cooking supper, I wondered what will-o'-the-wisp he had been following on his last trip. We would know before long.

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The spring night was warm so we sat outside. Charlie hunched over in his chair and lit his pipe. "Rain over here last week?" he asked Fred abruptly. "I'll say it did. Get any over where you were?" "Yep. I ran into somethin' funny on account of that rain." I curled up in my chair and waited. "Me and Lena was restin' under a mesquite when I noticed some footprints leadin' to an openin' in the rocks. Somebody went in there while the ground was still wet." "Someone looking for a dry spot, no doubt," Fred suggested. "That's what I figgered." He paused effectively. "But there wasn't no footprints leadin' back out, so I got curious and went in. Blamed if the hole didn't open up into a good-sized cave. I lost the footprints, of course. Even the lantern wouldn't show 'em up on a rocky floor." I knew Fred was ironically thinking, "Of course!" Charlie went on mildly, "The cave narrowed at the back, and I didn't have a rope with me, so I started back out, circlin' round as I went, to see what I could see. Well sir, I stumbled over something, and durned if my lantern didn't show up a stack of bones! Yes sir! There's at least one human skeleton in that cave." "But it couldn't have been the man who went in just last week!" I babbled. Charlie was never impolite. "No ma'am, it couldn't have been him, though I couldn't find nothin' else in there but an old water canteen over by the bones." I shivered as he went on. "Well, I was crawlin' out the mouth of the cave when a sizable piece of iron pipe clattered down from the rocks above, and I heard a scufflin' noise up on top." Charlie's voice became emphatic, "There's somethin' goin' on in that cave, and I come so near findin' out what it was that someone tried to finish me, but he got in a hurry and dropped his weapon!" "That iron pipe might have been sticking up somewhere, and you dislodged it walking around." Charlie disregarded Fred's remark, as I did. "Why, that's terrible, Charlie! You might have been killed. That place ought to be investigated. Could you find it again?" He ignored my question. "Goin' back there one of these days and find out what's goin' on. Somethin'worth lookin' into in there," he muttered, and we got nothing more from him on the subject. "Fred, do you suppose ." I began, when he and I were alone. But he interrupted. "No, I don't suppose anything. The old fellow found a cave, and some bones maybe." He smiled at me tolerantly. "You really let yourself go when Charlie starts his yarns, don't you? What was it the last time he was here?" "Well," I spoke defensively, "he had found a sort of a map in an old pistol, and..." "If he can just 'figger' it out, it will lead him straight to the Lost Dutchman!" Fred laughed. "Did you see the old map, Honey, or the gun, or any of those other things he tells us about?" "All right, scoffer! You laugh. Charlie and I will be rich one day." Fred and I laughed together at that. Charlie left early the next morning, though I begged him to stay awhile. I remember thinking that he and Lena looked pathetic and lonely as they went out of the corral that morning, and that Charlie was getting too old for such long jaunts across the desert. We never heard Charlie tell another of his stories. The next time we saw him he was dying. "Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun," I chanted glibly as I closed the door. The desert lay in a haze of heat and brilliant sunlight, but we had to get to town for our groceries before the stores closed. We were rattling along in the pickup when I saw a donkey with the pack still on it, standing beside the road just ahead of us. It was Lena, and the blistered, heat-tortured figure lying in the brush beside the road was Charlie. Frantically we tried to revive him, but his only response to the water we put to his worth lookin' into in there," he muttered, and we got nothing more from him on the subject. "Fred, do you suppose ." I began, when he and I were alone. But he interrupted. "No, I don't suppose anything. The old fellow found a cave, and some bones maybe." He smiled at me tolerantly. "You really let yourself go when Charlie starts his yarns, don't you? What was it the last time he was here?" "Well," I spoke defensively, "he had found a sort of a map in an old pistol, and..." "If he can just 'figger' it out, it will lead him straight to the Lost Dutchman!" Fred laughed. "Did you see the old map, Honey, or the gun, or any of those other things he tells us about?" "All right, scoffer! You laugh. Charlie and I will be rich one day." Fred and I laughed together at that. Charlie left early the next morning, though I begged him to stay awhile. I remember thinking that he and Lena looked pathetic and lonely as they went out of the corral that morning, and that Charlie was getting too old for such long jaunts across the desert. We never heard Charlie tell another of his stories. The next time we saw him he was dying. "Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun," I chanted glibly as I closed the door. The desert lay in a haze of heat and brilliant sunlight, but we had to get to town for our groceries before the stores closed. We were rattling along in the pickup when I saw a donkey with the pack still on it, standing beside the road just ahead of us. It was Lena, and the blistered, heat-tortured figure lying in the brush beside the road was Charlie. Frantically we tried to revive him, but his only response to the water we put to his parched, swollen lips was a faint moaning. "He didn't usually go out when it's hot like this, did he?" I cried over him. "I don't know; I don't know." We took him to the hospital. His only words were a painful request for water, and though we stayed with him all the time, he never recognized us. He died that night. The sheriff was unable to find anything in his shack to indicate he had family or friends. Everyone knew him, and no one knew anyknew him better than anyone else did," he told us rather awkwardly. "I wish you'd pick up the packs he had on the donkey, on your way back, and see if there's anything of importance in them." One sack held his clothes, his few pans, and his supplies. Instantly we recognized some of the objects that clattered to the table from the other sack. There was an old water canteen and a piece of rusty pipe. Fred picked up an antiquated pistol and examined it curiously. "Looking for the old map?" I asked softly, through sudden tears. Then he untied a dirty, loosely-knotted He whistled in amazement as he inspected the gold nugget which lay revealed.

rag, and whistled in amazement as he inspected the gold nugget which lay revealed. "Look at this! Say, do you suppose... I'll bet he was hurrying in with it when he ran out of water!" he speculated. "It looks like the rag hasn't been tied like that very long," I said. Fred looked at the odd assortment on the table and tossed the gold nugget up and down in the palm of his hand. "This stuff is worth lookin' into," he said to himself, thoughtfully.

Climax Jim, My Favorite Outlaw

Rufus Nephew was his real name. The cowboys of the Hashknife outfit in northern Arizona gave him the name of Climax Jim. He always carried a plug of chewing tobacco beneath his shirt to keep it moist when he rode with them to look over the possibility of using his running iron in his cattle rustling activities. He was captured and indicted many times in Apache County, but never under his real name. Jim Thomas was an alias he used at times, but he had many more. Witnesses friendly to Climax would fail to appear in court against him, and the big cattle outfits were never able to convict him of rustling their cattle.

Along with his art of changing brands with his running iron, Climax possessed an uncanny skill in removing handcuffs and leg-irons. They were like putty in his nimble hands, and the clumsy locks on jail doors were but temporary barriers.

Old lawmen still living in the White Mountains country of northeastern Arizona knew Climax Jim during the 1890s when he was active as a cattle rustler, and I, too, knew him and wrote about his escapades. "How many Indian ponies and herds of cattle he drove out of Arizona and sold in New Mexico will never be known," Joe Pearce, now living in Wager, Apache County, recalled when I visited him recently. "He broke out of every jail in our county, and he got away from me once by a clever trick." Joe was a peace officer then.

Climax rode into Tucson in 1901 to gamble and enjoy a vacation from his arduous and hazardous vocation as a rustler.