Legends of the Lost

Former undersheriff. When the coach neared the location of the robbery, Hill pointed to a spot and said, “There, the robber was behind that bush.” Then he paused abruptly and yanked on the reins. “And there he is again!” And there he was, rifle raised, red mouth burning in the sun. This time the robber got the express box and mail sacks along with about $250 of the passengers' cash.

Pima County Sheriff Charlie Shibell went to the scene that night, accompanied by a tracker named Juan Elias. They knew the bandit's horse was black with one white sock, and they found a single set of tracks going south. Elias noticed that the horse twisted one hoof as it walked, making the tracks easy to recognize.

The tracks eventually led the lawmen to a ranch south of Tucson owned by David Nemitz, where they found the suspect horse tethered to a cottonwood tree. Nemitz denied having any knowledge of the stage holdups or the horse's owner. However, after spending a few nights in jail under a $2,500 bond, his memory improved considerably. The bloody-mouthed bandit was Bill Brazelton, and Nemitz had helped him only because he feared for his life.

The bandit's identity came as a shock to everyone. Brazelton was known as a quiet, affable type, and a hard worker. Upon arriving in Tucson the year before, he'd quickly landed a job at Leatherwood's Stables in downtown Tucson, where the county courthouse now stands. At more than six feet tall and 200 pounds, Brazelton was a striking figure; he had blue eyes, sandy brown hair, and, by all accounts, a marvelous chin.

These virtues notwithstanding, Sheriff Shibell organized a posse to hunt Brazelton. He was thought to be responsible for nine robberies and was considered ruthless. Later accounts, probably embellished, claim that a few of his hauls amounted to tens of thousands of dollars. It was also said that he could shoot a silver dollar 50 paces away while coming out of a somersault.

Moreover, after being released, Nemitz spoke with Brazelton and reported back to the lawmen that the fugitive planned to kill Marshal Adolph Buetner and Sheriff Shibell. Nemitz, of course, didn't tell Brazelton that he was cooperating with the law in order to save his own skin and agreed to meet Brazelton at a spot near Lee's Mill a few nights later with food and supplies.

Sheriff Shibell, Ike Brokaw, Charles Etchells (the owner of the earrings in the mail bag Brazelton had stolen), and Robert Leatherwood joined Nemitz at the rendezvous and waited in the dark for Brazelton to appear. Within an hour they spotted the silhouette of a man approaching, and when they heard him cough - a prearranged signal between Nemitz and Brazelton - they shot him down without warning. This was the first and only man Shibell killed during his tenure.

The body was brought back to town and put on public display. The corpse was propped up against an old adobe wall and photographs were taken with and without the infamous mask.

If he was loathed enough in life to be shot on sight, Bill Brazelton, and his feats as an outlaw of the highest order, gained stature in the decades following his death. He was admired for working alone in broad daylight, and it was said that he would never harm an innocent passenger. One story holds that he had an uncanny ability to know when a stage would be carrying large quantities of money or gold (though his hauls at Point of Mountain speak otherwise), and the value of his Hauls seemed to increase exponentially with each retelling of his legend.

How much money he acquired in his career has never been determined, but the topic has lent itself to wide speculation. On August 31, 1878, the Prescott-based Arizona Enterprise reported, “Brazelton told Nemitz that he had buried $1,300 near Camp Grant. We expect to see the whole country dug up around the post.” The other obvious place to look was in the area between Lee's Mill and Silver Lake where Brazelton was hiding before his death. Some claimed the bandit buried $10,000 among the towering cottonwoods where the Santa Cruz River winds past Sentinel Peak. Others believe his treasure is cached somewhere in the Santa Catalina Mountains.

On a breezy spring day, I walked the banks of the Santa Cruz River, a photocopy of a hundred-year-old Tucson map in my pocket. There are no more cottonwoods along the riverbank, and the dry riverbed is lined with soil-cement. Where Lee's Mill once stood (as best I could tell) there was nothing but graded dirt, a few gnarled tamarisk trees, and a heap of decaying mattresses someone had dumped there. I stood still and listened for the hoofbeats of a horse with an irregular gait, but heard only freeway noise behind me. It hardly felt like the kind of place where the violence and allure of the Old West could have been at their prime, the kind of place where a person might stumble upon a sack of gold.

Then I remembered a newspaper description of Brazelton at the time of his death: a tattered shirt that didn't cover his entire torso; soiled and patched Army pants tucked into boots so old they had no color; an old sack with salt, matches, and grease for his black-powder guns. Being a dead outlaw may have been romantic indeed, but for Bill Brazelton it didn't seem like much of a life.

Then I remembered a newspaper description of Brazelton at the time of his death: a tattered shirt that didn't cover his entire torso; soiled and patched Army pants tucked into boots so old they had no color; an old sack with salt, matches, and grease for his black-powder guns. Being a dead outlaw may have been romantic indeed, but for Bill Brazelton it didn't seem like much of a life.

ARIZONA HUMOR Leap of Faith

Towns are few and far between in northwestern Arizona, so when two nuns ran out of gas, they hiked to a remote ranch for help.

The rancher gave them gasoline and drove them back to their car, but the only thing he could find in which to transport the gas was a discarded bedpan.

As one nun stood pouring the gas into the car, a passing Baptist minister nudged his wife and said, "Now, that's faith!"

Food for Thought

My oldest daughter, Sandy, and her husband, Mike, work for the National Park Service and live at the Grand Canyon. One day on a Rim trail, Sandy came across a woman gathering small objects from the ground and placing them in a large plastic pail.

"Excuse me," Sandy asked, "what are you collecting?"

With a boy-are-you-dumb look on her face, the woman replied that she was collecting piñon nuts to roast and salt for campfire snacks.

"I really hate to spoil your fun," Sandy told her, "but those are deer droppings you're picking up."

Fabled Florence

Florence, Arizona, has several historic buildings, but it is best known as the site of the state prison where I am an inmate.

A guard, handing out mail, studied a picture postcard that traveling friends had sent me from Italy. As he peered intently at the picture of an ornate cathedral, I asked if something was wrong.

"Nope," the guard said around his chewing tobacco. "Nothing's wrong, except I've been living in Florence all my life, and I've never seen this particular building before."

Shopping Surprise

It was shopping in the small ap-pliance section of a large store in Prescott when I overheard two elderly women who were trying to buy a gift for a friend.

"Let's get her a salad shooter," suggested one lady.

"Oh, no," replied the other. "There's already too many guns in town."

Hanging Tough

They tell about the Tomb-stone miner brought to trial for killing a man in a barroom fight.

He saw a cowboy he knew sitting on the jury and pleaded, "Hold out for manslaughter. If you do me this one favor, I promise I'll never get into a fight again."

Sure enough, the verdict was guilty of manslaughter.

The defendant ran over to the cowboy and cried, "Thank you! You must have had a heck of a time convincing them."

"I shore did," the cowboy said. "They all wanted to acquit you."

Stick-to-it-ivity

At a shopping mall in Scottsdale, I noticed a young boy standing at the foot of an escalator, his eyes fixed on the moving handrail.

He apparently had been staring for some time because he also had attracted the attention of a saleswoman.

She asked, "Are you lost?"

"No," said the boy.

"Well, can I help you?"

"No."

His eyes hadn't left the handrail. The saleswoman asked again, "Well, what are you doing?"

"Waiting for my gum to come by again."

Musical Menu

I had just come to Tucson from England, and my fiancée's parents suggested we all go to brunch at a favorite Mexican restaurant. They said the mariachis there were very good.

You can imagine the embarrassed silence as I waved away the menu and told the maitre d', "I'll just have the mariachis."

Sunburn Scratch

As I left a Kingman market, I scratched my Arizona sunburn and said idly to the bag boy, "Itchy bod."

"Sorry, I can't tell one Japanese car from another," he replied.

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