VIOLA SLAUGHTER, ARIZONA PIONEER

Was a small mirror tucked away in the chuck wagon, and now and then she looked into it. No doubt but she was a mighty pretty girl.

After a day or so, everyone in the combined Howell and Slaughter outfits knew that a courtship was in progress. They could not help guessing when even the horses were aware that John and Viola rode side by side whenever the trail was wide enough for two abreast. With the two outfits thrown together, there were more than enough men to handle the herd and they made short drives, allowing the cattle to graze and grow fat on green grass and weeds.

No one rode near enough to hear what the pair were talking about, but Slaughter must have had plenty to say. Already, at forty, he had been a soldier in the Civil War, an Indian fighter, and a trail boss who had taken many herds through country thick with both Indians and outlaws. Cattle had made him rich. Even though he was never a braggart, he must have been human enough to tell Viola about his exploits for the sheer pleasure of hearing her exclaim, "I think you're wonderful!"

Judging by what came later, Slaughter's proposal followed these traditional lines: "Ladylove, Ladylove, wilt thou be mine?

Thou shalt not wash dishes, nor yet feed the swine,

But sit upon a cushion and sew a fine seam

And dine upon strawberries, sugar and cream.

Viola's soft answer pleased him mightily. Later on he learned that his Ladylove preferred a hard saddle to the softest cushion. As to a fine seam - she intended never to sew one if she could possibly get out of it.

The herd was within a day's ride of Tularosa, New Mexico, when Slaughter told Viola's parents that there was a church and preacher in that little cow town, and he wanted to marry Their daughter there. Amazon had difficulty in concealing how overjoyed he was by the match. With such a famous man for a son-in-law, life should be smooth-sailing in Arizona, and he might even decide to stay there.

"He's a fine man," Mother Howell told her daughter, "but you mustn't forget that he's forty years old more than twice your own age."

"What of that?" asked Viola. "You know I never did care a bit for boys."

"Besides that," the mother continued, "he's a widower and has two children, a boy and a girl, back in Texas. It isn't easy to bring up stepchildren."

"John doesn't want me to bring them up," said Viola. "He has them in a good home where they're happy."

Mother Howell said no more for if her daughter settled down in Arizona perhaps the whole family would stay there, too. Two years earlier, in 1877, Slaughter had been in Arizona when Ed Schieffelin followed a cottontail rabbit to a ledge of silver ore and named the place Tombstone. A rush of prospectors, miners, and camp followers quickly started a boom town, and the Texas cattleman had foreseen a great demand for meat.

He and the Howells arrived in Arizona in late spring and camped where there was good feed, frequently driving small bunches of fat cattle to Tombstone where they brought a high price. Slaughter sent back to Texas for a second herd which was trailed west during the summer. Before winter the Howells and Slaughters settled in the San Pedro Valley, south of Tombstone, where they were neighbors in the Western sense not more than twenty miles apart.

Slaughter built for Viola a house which was - for its time and place the equivalent of a mansion. It had two rooms, which made it twice as large as the home of many other pioneers. The outer walls were made of juniper pickets, set into the ground and well chinked with mud. The floor was adobe, smoothly patted down, and the roof was made of juniper poles, covered with earth.

As a touch of luxury, a stove was shipped to Yuma from San Francisco by boat and was freighted from Yuma by wagon. The bride had no need to bend over a fireplace to tend her pots, kettles, and Dutch ovens not that she intended doing so. Following John Slaughter everywhere was his servant, a former slave known as "Old Bat." To him fell the job of cooking, and a Mexican woman did everything else. The Slaughters' first home

was luxurious when compared with the temporary shelters occupied by the Howells in the past, yet the young wife declined to settle down in it. Her husband's growing interest kept him on the go, buying and selling cattle, and unless she went along she would see him but rarely.

Fortunately John felt the same way about it. He had married a healthy, tireless young girl who had been raised in the saddle. Why shouldn't she continue to sit in it if she chose? Old Bat should come with them and make travel and camp life easy for Viola. And whose business was it if they lived in an unusual manner? Not that anyone commented where John Slaughter could hear it. That soft-spoken gentleman was quick to resent interference.

Only Viola knew the real reason why she was allowed to ride by her husband's side or take her seat in the buckboard when he traveled on wheels. Slaughter firmly believed that a guardian angel watched over him and had already warned him more than once when he was in danger. He felt sure that he would never be killed or even wounded by Indian or outlaw, and was confident that his wife would share that protection if she were by his side.

In those troubled days, many a man returned to his home to find it a smoldering ruin and his family slain. Mexican bandits and white outlaws ranked with Apaches in making a lonely ranch a danger spot.

"A woman's place is in the home." There the other pioneer women stayed, doing more than their duty and taking things as they came. Viola left home to meet danger halfway. Not knowing her well, the other women believed that Viola's stern husband dragged her along, the poor little thing.

It did not occur to them that she would far rather risk gunfire by night than get up early in the morning and build a fire in a cookstove.

Folks thought that young

Viola Slaughter, Arizona Pioneer

Mrs. Slaughter would surely be allowed to stay at home if she had children. They changed their minds when Willie and Addie, her stepchildren, came out from Texas for a visit, and she took them right along in the buckboard. These youngsters became devoted to their lively young stepmother and she to them. To be sure she sent them off to boarding schools and had them only in summer. She cooked no meals for them, washed no clothes, and sewed on no buttons; nevertheless the Slaughter children adored her then and ever after. Tombstone kept on growing until it became the largest town in Arizona, even exceeding the Old Pueblo Tucson. Meat continued to be in great demand, and when the local supply ran low, Slaughter made frequent trips across the border into Mexico to buy cattle, and Viola went along. Up like a rocket and down like a stick. That was the fate of Tombstone. Water, first a trickle and then a flood from what must have been an underground lake, poured into the workings of Tombstone's mines, and beneath it the fabulously rich ore lies to this day. The boom town shrank in size from city to village within a few weeks, leaving stranded the off-scourings of the West, professional bad men who had been drawn there by the hope of easy pickings. Now they turned to the surrounding country, stealing horses, rustling cattle, holding up stages and trains. An outbreak of lawlessness was destroying the lives and property of peaceful settlers, who had fought the Indians in earlier years.

There was only one man who had the nerve, character, and reputation that would enable him to clean up this turbulent southeastern corner of Arizona. Reluctantly accepting the responsibility of being sheriff of Cochise County, Slaughter undertook to make it a safe place in which to live.

At the end of four hard years during which his guardian angel had never a moment's rest he could say to any outlaw, "Leave or be killed," and the outlaw would depart in haste. The sheriff never told how many times his famous pearl-handled revolver was obliged to speak before his own unsupported word was enough.

In 1891 the Slaughters carried out a cherished plan of moving to the San Bernardino Ranch, which they had owned for some time. It was a vast Mexican Grant, its land lying on both sides of the border. The sprawling adobe house they built a few hundred feet north of the International Line looked down upon an immense grassy valley that lay in Mexico.

Thousands of cattle wearing Slaughter's brand (Z on the right shoulder) grazed on an immense range. His cowboys were seasoned veterans, skilled in handling cattle and fighting off rustlers. A band of Yaqui Indians was encouraged to settle near the ranch headquarters, and their men and women afforded a supply of labor. These were known far and wide as "Don Juan's Yaquis," and so are their descendants to the present day.

Army officers, mining engineers, cattlemen, Mexican generals, American bureaucrats, a large number of men and an occasional woman were entertained at the San Bernardino Ranch. Stray cowboys were equally welcome.

Married cowmen who visited the San Bernardino Ranch found that their stay-at-home wives were keenly interested in all that went on there. Upon returning home they were expected to describe the house and its furnishings, the food, and what the women folks had on. Everyone knew that John Slaughter was a rich man and his big house and fine furniture were taken for granted.

Why shouldn't Mrs. Slaughter sit at the head of the table in a white dress covered with ruffles? She hadn't washed or ironed the dress, or cooked the big dinner over a hot stove. A Lily of the Field she was. She toiled not and neither did she spin.

Slaughter expected to find his wife looking fresh and handsome when he came home at night. This being before the day of lipstick and rouge, she needed her morning beauty sleep.

Only those who lived on the ranch knew how energetic Viola became after eating her late and leisurely breakfast. With the cattle she had nothing to do, although she had many in a separate brand of her own. All else in the large establishment was left to her management: the vegetable and flower gardens, the laundry, poultry yard, dairy. Her own table and that of the men's mess had to be supplied with food, which in earlier days was freightedby wagons from Bisbee and later on from the new town of Douglas. She was responsible for the inventory and restocking of the commissary, really a country store in which all the ranch folk and travelers bought their supplies.

Viola Slaughter, Arizona Pioneer

The buying of everything needed for so great a ranch, together with other business errands she undertook, were the cause of frequent drives of twenty miles to Douglas or forty-two to Bisbee. These trips she loved because they gave her the chance to dash over the roads behind one of the teams of fine horses she always handled herself. A state fair or horse auction was her delight, and she could never be dragged away until she had chosen and bought the best horses shown.

Viola kept an eye on the post office of which her husband was nominally master and the one-room school she established so that young Yaquis, Mexicans, and an occasional white child could learn their lessons together. A resident postmistress, Edith Stowe, and a series of schoolteachers became members of the family. When Amazon Howell died, his widow came to live with their daughter. She was a jolly soul in her old age for Arizona had treated her well. She sat on the soft cushion which had never seen use and kept all the socks darned.

Now and then Viola had the joy of going with her husband when he bought cattle, riding with him again just like old times, only now she rode astride. Sometimes she and their daughter, Addie, went off on a little jaunt of their own for a visit to some other ranch or to a dance. An old cowpuncher living in a cabin in High Lonesome Canyon had just finished eating his supper when there sounded a clap of thunder and a dash of rain on his window. Next came the clatter of hoofs, and he opened his door.

"May we spend the night here?" asked a woman's voice. "Why - sure - sure, ma'am," replied the astonished cowboy, "and I kin feed ye, but I haven't got any spare beds."

"That's all right - we have everything we need," said the voice from the darkness. "All we want is to be under a roof while it rains."

He set his lamp in the window, and by its light and an occasional flash of lightninghelped Old Bat unsaddle two pack horses and throw off the bedrolls.

"I declare if it wasn't Miz Slaughter and Miss Addie," related the lone cowboy. "In the morning they et some flapjacks and drank some coffee 1 made fer 'em - and off they went," leaving their host with a yarn which he told all the rest of his days.

It was a good life for the Slaughters, generously sharedwith friends, neighbors, and young relatives on both sides of the family. It inevitably came to an end because of that twenty years difference in their ages which had seemed such a trifing matter to John and Viola forty years before. She had the anguish of watching her sturdy, blackhaired lover slowly turn into a feeble, white-crowned old man who puttered in the flower garden while others rode his range, and played with the little Yaqui children who daily came to visit their patron, Don Juan.

With the years, many sad changes had touched the life of San Bernardino Ranch, and revolutions in Mexico threatened Slaughter's tenure in that part of the Mexican Grant that lay below the border. In troubled times there was even a possibility of raids upon the Arizona side. Will, the only son, who was to have carried on the ranch, died while still a young man. Addie had married and frequently brought her children for a visit, but her husband was a busy doctor who took no interest in cattle. The tragic death of Apache May, the tiny Indian girl who had been their pet and pleasure, left a lasting sadness.

So changed and shrunken was the life of the ranch that in 1921 there were living in the main house just four people, Don Juan and La Señora, Edith Stowe, and Jesse Fisher, a cousin who was ranch foreman and filled as far as possible the place of a son. These four were seated in the living room one warm evening in May. Several reading lamps were lighted, and the shades had not been drawn down over the open windows.

Suddenly Don Juan put down his newspaper and without a word went into the adjoining bedroom, which was dark. There was a sound and murmur as of people moving about outside, and Fisher went out to see who was there.

"Don't shoot!"

The frightened women heard Fisher's warning shout. A gun spoke in reply, and they heard him no more.

Quickly they blew out the lamps, and Slaughter came into the darkened room, going to the outer door with a doublebarreled shotgun. With great difficulty Viola persuaded him not to go outside where excited voices clamored in Spanish and a crash told that the commissary door had been broken open. After that there was complete silence, and Slaughter went out to find Jesse Fisher lying dead. For the rest of the night, the weary old man remained on guard, sitting in a rocking chair with a shotgun across his lap and a rifle leaning against the arm of the chair.

Once more the sixth sense of danger that Slaughter called his guardian angel had protected him and his wife. Obeying that

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