history

and in broken English said they no longer wanted to kill him and that he could go home. The Indian walked off over a hill. Spencer tested the warrior's word by placing his hat on the barrel of his rifle and raising it above the rocks. "In an instant, it was riddled with bullets fired by Indians. who no doubt supposed his head was in the hat," wrote Deine. About 4 o'clock that afternoon, after the Indians had gone, soldiers rode to the battlefield, but Spencer was too weak to attract their attention. The troopers saw one mutilated body and returned to Willow Grove, certain all three men had been killed. Later, when a wagon was sent to collect the bodies, a revived Spencer screamed, fired his pistol to attract their attention and was rescued. Deine estimated that the lone mail rider stood off 75 Hualapais, "more than half of whom were armed with guns." The incident was one of the most talked-about to come out of the Hualapais War, but to Spencer, it was the way life was, and certainly nothing personal. "I do not blame the Indians so much as people think I ought," he wrote in a letter penned 16 years later. "It was wartime for them, and their men, women and children had been killed by the whites, so why not retaliate? And besides, I have seen some of their children killed after having been taken captive."

The Willow Grove fight made Spencer a public man whose deeds and foibles were subject to comment in the press. And he gave the writers plenty of material. He continued hauling mail through hostile territory and helped scout and interpret for the Army in their expeditions against the Hualapais. In 1871, he became one of the first to discover ore in the Hualapais Mining District, and by 1875, the Miner was touting him as a candidate for government agent to the Indians.

Spencer worked as an interpreter between the government and the Hualapais, and in 1881, he helped organize a party of warriors to serve as Army scouts in the Apache war. When a drought left the Hualapais destitute, he interceded to get food shipped to them. In time he took a Hualapai wife, who bore him two children, Sammy and Mamie. Spencer's influence with the tribe became so great that he was considered a white chief.

But by March of 1882, his relations with the tribe had soured. About 50 Hualapais formally complained to the Army that Spencer was trying to elevate some chiefs and demote others. A second charge was that he'd tossed his Hualapai wife aside and demanded that the tribe replace her with "two or three young squaws." An Army investigation could not confirm the Indians' allegations, and Spencer explained his unpopularity by saying he was under orders to arrest drunken and turbulent Indians, and did so, causing ill will. But no one supposed Spencer was an angel. He had a penchant for turning up wherever whiskey and gunplay were the favored pastimes.

When he tried to stop a killing spree in a Hackberry saloon in 1882, he was rewarded with a bullet crease along his neck. Four years later, this time in Holbrook, he was named as a leading participant in "a carousing party" in which he "figured prominently in several gun plays."

Spencer met Charles Cohen, the man with whom he would engage in the infamous "duel," in about 1882. Cohen was a diminuitive store clerk, considered a kind and gentlemanly soul, no match for the worldly and persuasive Spencer.

Over drinks, Spencer convinced Cohen to invest in a ranch at Milkweed Spring,

The two grappled and fell to the ground,

Near Hackberry. But the operation produced less revenue than expected. Cohen suspected Spencer of theft and after many arguments, the old scout concluded that the business was more trouble than it was worth. In November of 1886, the two arranged to meet in Hackberry to sell their cattle and end the partnership.

Friends warned Cohen not to attend the meeting. Spencer had reportedly threatened his partner, saying he'd kill him and "throw his body into a canyon so deep the crows could not fly into it."

But Cohen went anyway, arriving at Hackberry in the afternoon. He and Spencer soon learned that the buyers were waiting for them at Milkweed Spring instead of in town. The delay gave Spencer time to load up on liquor at a saloon and buy a bottle to help pass the time on the 20-mile ride out to the ranch.

Riding in a two-horse wagon, Cohen, Spencer, and his son, Sammy, had traveled about half that distance when another argument erupted. Spencer accused Cohen of rifling his private papers, a charge Cohen denied. After more whiskey, Spencer exploded, calling Cohen a liar. When Spencer reached to retrieve a knife from under his coat, Cohen smashed him over the head with the whiskey bottle. The two grappled and fell to the ground, causing the frightened horses to bolt. But the team and the wagon, with Spencer's boy aboard, were stopped cold by a stand of cedar trees. Sammy jumped from the flatbed and ran back to his father and Cohen. The men savaged one another with broken off tree limbs, rocks, and bare hands for two hours, after which they both collapsed into unconsciousness. When Cohen awoke, his own body lying across Spencer's chest, he realized that he must kill or be killed. The mild-mannered clerk took up Spencer's knife and methodically severed the unconscious man's jugular vein. He then grabbed a terrified Sammy Spencer and rode back to Hackberry to notify the deputy sheriff. Spencer's body was horribly battered, a portion of his nose bitten off. Cohen had three teeth knocked out, a black eye, gashes on his face, and several fingers and a thumb partially severed by Spencer's teeth. Due mostly to his reputation, public opinion settled on Cohen's side. "His friends believe that only sheer desperation and defense of his own life could have driven him to the deed," reported the Arizona Champion of Flagstaff. Cohen was cleared by the law on grounds of self-defense. Spencer, on the other hand, was given the once-over in the same papers that had so heartily celebrated him when he was helping quell the Hualapais and ride the mails.

Only the Prescott Weekly Courier spoke on the old scout's behalf, acknowledging that Spencer was "not the most law-abiding man in northern Arizona," but neither was he the "Geronimo" that some believed. "So say people who knew him well people who do not blame Charley Cohen for what he did, but who, nevertheless, are opposed to following a man into his grave and painting his character blacker than he was," intoned the Courier.

Cohen left Arizona to become a merchant in Fresno, California. As for Charley Spencer, he carried into eternity the reputation of a hard, friendless, unsavory soul, his contributions to taming the Territory a faded memory.

Tucson-based Leo W. Banks often delves into the lives of Arizona's frontier characters. Banks also wrote the story about the Witches' Water Pocket and the "Back Road Adventure" in this issue.

An artist, designer, and mapmaker for Arizona Highways, Kevin Kibsey lives in Black Canyon City.