_THE TRAGEDY AT MOHAWK STATION._
We called it our noon-camp, though it was really not after ten o'clockin the morning. Ours was the only ambulance in the "outfit," thoughthere were some three or four officers besides the captain. The captainhad been ordered to report at head-quarters in San Francisco beforegoing East, and was travelling through Arizona as fast as Uncle Sam'smules could carry him, in order to catch the steamer that was to leavethe Pacific coast at the end of the month. It is just a year ago, andthe Pacific Railroad was not yet completed; which accounts for thecaptain's haste to reach the steamer.
When we made noon-camp at the Government forage-station calledStanwick's Ranch, we had already performed an ordinary day's march; butwe were to accomplish twenty-five miles more before pitching our tent(literally) at Mohawk Station for the night. These "stations" are notsettlements, but only stopping-places, where Government teamsters drawforage for their mules, and where water is to be had;--thestation-keepers sometimes seeing no one the whole year round except theGovernment and merchant trains passing along _en route_ to Tucson orother military posts.
Lunch had been despatched, and I was lounging, with a book in my hand,on the seat of the ambulance,--one of those uncomfortable affairs called"dead-carts," with two seats running the entire length of thevehicle,--when the captain put his head in to say that there was anAmerican woman at the station. White representatives of my sex are "fewand far between" in Arizona, and I had made up my mind to go into thehouse and speak to this one, even before the captain had added:
"It is the woman from Mohawk Station."
The captain assisted me out of the ambulance, and we walked toward thehouse together. The front room of the flat _adobe_ building wasbar-room, store, office, parlor; the back room was kitchen, dining-room,bed-room; and here we found "the woman of Mohawk Station." I entered theback room, at the polite invitation of the station-keeper, with whom thecaptain fell into conversation in the store or bar-room.
The woman was young--not over twenty-five--and had been on the way fromTexas to California, with her husband and an ox-team, when Mr.Hendricks, the man who kept the forage-station at Mohawk, found themcamped near the house one day, and induced them to stop with him. Thewoman took charge of the household, and the man worked at cuttingfirewood on the Gila and hauling it up to the house with thestation-keeper's two horses, or at any other job which Mr. Hendricksmight require of him. She had been a healthy, hearty woman when theyleft Texas; but laboring through the hot, sandy deserts, suffering oftenfor water and sometimes for food, had considerably "shaken her," and shewas glad and willing to stop here, where both she and her husband couldearn money, and they wanted for neither water nor food--such as it is inArizona. It was hard to believe she had ever been a robust, fearlesswoman, as she sat there cowering and shivering, and looking up at mewith eyes that seemed ready to start from their sockets with terror.
"May I come in?" I asked, uncertain whether to venture closer to theshrinking form.
"Yes, yes," she said, breathing hard, and speaking very slowly. "Comein. It'll do me good. You're the first woman I've seen since--since--"
"Tell me all about it," I said, sitting down on the edge of the bed, asfamiliarly as though I had been her intimate friend for years; "or willit agitate you and make you sick?"
"No," she made answer; "I am dying now, and I have often and oftenwished I could see some woman and tell her the whole story before I die.It almost chokes me sometimes because I can't speak about it; and yet Ialways, always, think about it. I haven't seen any one but my husbandand the station-keeper these last three weeks--there is so little travelnow.
"You see, one Saturday afternoon there were two Mexicans came up thisway from Sonora, and stopped at Mohawk Station to camp for the night. Itwas a cold, rainy, blustering day, and the men tried to build their fireagainst the wall of the house. It was the only way they could shelterthemselves from the wind and rain, as Mr. Hendricks would not allow themto come into the house. Pretty soon Mr. Hendricks drove them off, thoughthey pleaded hard to stay; and Colonel B., who had arrived in themeantime, on his way to Tucson, told Mr. Hendricks that, if he knewanything about Mexicans, those two would come back to take revenge.Perhaps Mr. Hendricks himself was afraid of it, as he picketed his twohorses out between the colonel's tent and the house, for fear theMexicans might come in the night to drive them off. But they did notreturn till Sunday afternoon, when, after considerable wrangling, Mr.Hendricks engaged them both to work for him. The colonel had pulled upstakes and had gone on his way to Tucson Sunday morning, so that we werealone with the Mexicans during the night. But they behaved themselveslike sober, steady men; and the next morning they and my husband wentdown to the river, some three miles away, to cut wood, which they wereto haul up with the team later in the day. Have you been at MohawkStation, and do you know how the house is built?" she asked,interrupting herself.
"We camped there on our way out," I said; "and I remember that an opencorridor runs through the whole length of the house, and some two orthree rooms open into each other on either side."
"Very well; you remember the kitchen is the last room on the left of thecorridor, while the store-room and bar is the first room to the right.Back of this is the little room in which Mr. Hendricks's bed stood, justunder the window; and opposite to this room, next to the kitchen, is thedining-room.
"It was still early in the day, and I was busy in the kitchen, when Iheard a shot fired in the front part of the house; but as it was nothingunusual for Mr. Hendricks to fire at rabbits or _coyotes_ from the doorof the bar-room, I thought nothing of it, till I saw the two Mexicans,some time after, mounted on Mr. Hendricks's horses, riding off overtoward the mountains. When I first saw them, I thought they might begoing to take the horses down to the river; but then, I said to myself,the Gila don't run along by the mountains. All at once a dreadfulthought flashed through my head, and I began to tremble so that I couldhardly stand on my feet. I crept into the corridor on tip-toe, and wentinto the bar-room from the outside. From the bar-room I could look onMr. Hendricks's bed. He was lying across the bed, with his head justunder the window. I wanted to wake him up, to tell him that the Mexicanswere making off with his horses, but somehow I was afraid to call out orto go up to him; so I crept around to the outside of the house till Igot to the window, and then looked in. Oh, dear! oh, dear! I can'tforget the dreadful, stony eyes that glared at me from the bruised andblood-stained face; and after one look, I turned and ran as fast as Icould. Perhaps I ought to have gone into the house, to see if he werereally dead, or if I could help him or do anything for him; but I couldnot. I ran and ran, always in the direction my husband had taken in themorning. At one time I thought I heard some one running behind me, andwhen I turned to look, the slippery sand under foot gave way, and I fellheadlong into a bed of cactus, tearing and scratching my face and handsand arms; and when I got up again I thought some one was jumping outfrom the verde-bushes, but it was only a rabbit running along. Before Igot many steps farther I slipped again, and something rattled andwriggled right close by me. It was a rattlesnake, on which I had steppedin my blindness. I ran on until I could not get my breath any more, andstaggered at every step; and just when I thought I must fall down anddie, I saw my husband coming toward me. He was coming home to see whatwas keeping the Mexicans so long in bringing the horses down to theriver; and when I could get my breath, I told him what had happened. Wewent back together, but I would not go into the house with him; so hehid me in a thick verde-bush, behind some prickly-pears, and went inalone. Directly he came back to me. He had found the corpse just as Ihad described it. To all appearances, Mr. Hendricks had thrown himselfon the bed for a short nap, as the morning was very warm. The Mexicansmust have crept in on him, shot him with his own revolver, and thenbeaten him over the head and face with a short heavy club that was foundon the bed beside him, all smeared with blood.
"Then my husband said to me: 'Mary, you've got to stay here till I go toAntelope Peak and bring up Johnso
n, the station-keeper. You can't gowith me, because it's full twenty-five miles, if not more, and you can'twalk twenty-five steps. But those Mexicans are going to come back whileI am gone--I know they are, because they haven't taken any plunder withthem yet. They'll hide the horses in the mountains, most likely, andthen go down to the river to look for me; and after that they'll comeback here, and they'll look for us high and low.'
"I knew that what he said was true, every word of it; and the onlything he could do was to find me a good hiding-place a good ways offfrom the house, but still near enough for me to see the house, and thewindow where the dead man lay. Well, first I watched David till out ofsight, and then I watched the window, and then I watched and peered andlooked on every side of me, till my eyes grew blind from the glaring sunand the shining sand.
"All at once I heard some voices; and I almost went into a fit when Iheard footsteps crunching nearer and nearer in the sand. They were theMexicans, sure enough, coming up from the river, and passing within afew steps of my hiding-place. Both carried heavy cudgels, which they hadbrought with them from where they had been cutting wood in the morning.When they got near the house they stopped talking, and I saw them sneakup to it, and then vanish around the corner, as though to visit thekitchen first. A few minutes later I saw them come out of the bar-room,and, oh, heavens! I saw they were trying to follow my husband'sfootprints, that led directly to the verde-bush behind which I washiding; but the wind had been blowing, and it seemed hard for them tofollow the trail. Still they came nearer; and the terror and suspense,and the sickening fear that came over me, when I saw them brandishingtheir clubs and bringing them down occasionally on a clump ofverde-bushes, wellnigh took what little sense and breath I had left, andI verily believe I should have screamed out in very horror, and sobrought their murderous clubs on my head at once, to make an end of mymisery, if I had had strength enough left to raise my voice. But I couldneither move nor utter a sound; I could only strain my eyes to look.After a while they got tired of searching, and went back to the house,where they stood at the window a moment to look in on the dead man, asthough to see if he had stirred; then they went in at the bar-room, andcame out directly, loaded with plunder.
"One of the men carried both Mr. Hendricks's and my husband's rifle,and the other had buckled on Mr. Hendricks's revolver. They had thrownaside their _ponchos_, and one had on my husband's best coat, while theother wore Mr. Hendricks's soldier-overcoat. Even the hat off the deadman's head they had taken, and also, as was afterwards found, the blacksilk handkerchief he had on his neck when they killed him. Again theytook their way over toward the mountains, and then everything around mewas deadly still. Oh, how I wished for a living, breathing thing tospeak to, then! I should not be the poor, half-demented creature that Iam to-day, if only a dog could have looked up at me, with kind,affectionate gaze. But the half-open eyes of the man seemed staring atme from the window, and I kept watching it, half thinking that thedreadful, mangled face would thrust itself out.
"By and by the _coyotes_, scenting the dead body in the house, camestealthily from all sides, surrounding the house, and howling louder andlouder when they found that they were not received with their usualgreeting--a dose of powder and ball. At last one of them, bolder orhungrier than the rest, made a leap to get up to the window; but just ashis fore-paw touched the window-sill something was hurled from thewindow, which struck the wolf on the head and stampeded the wholeyelping pack. This was too much; and I must have fainted dead away, formy husband said that when they found me I was as stiff and cold as thecorpse in the house. What I thought had been hurled from the window wasonly a piece of a cracker-box, used as target, and put out of the way onthe broad _adobe_ window-sill, where the paw of the _coyote_ had touchedit and pulled it down over him. I would not go into the house, and asMr. Johnson thought it best to give information of what had happened atStanwick's Ranch, we all came down here together, and I have been hereever since. My husband is waiting for a chance to go back to Texas. Iwish we could get back; for I don't want to be buried out here in thesand, among the _coyotes_ and rattlesnakes, like poor Mr. Hendricks."
The ambulance had been waiting at the door for me quite a while; so Ithanked the woman for "telling me all about it," and tried to saysomething cheering to her. When I turned to leave the room she clutchedat my dress.
"Stop," she said, nervously; "don't leave me here in the room alone;--Ican't bear to stay alone!"
She followed me slowly into the bar-room, and when the man there went tothe ambulance to speak to the captain, she crept out after him and stoodin the sun till he returned.
"The poor woman," said I, compassionately; "how I pity her!"
"The poor woman," echoed the station-keeper; "those two Greasers havekilled her just as dead as if they had beaten her brains out on thespot."
The shades of night were already falling around Mohawk Station when wereached it. It was quite a pretentious house, built of _adobe_, andboasting of but one story, of course; but it is not every one in Arizonawho can build a house with four rooms,--if the doors _do_ consist of oldblankets, and the floor and ceiling, like the walls, of mud.
A discharged soldier kept the station now--a large yellow dog his solecompanion. The man slept on the same bed that had borne Hendricks'scorpse, and the cudgel, with the murdered man's blood dried on it, waslying at the foot of it.
"And where is his grave?" I asked.
The man's eye travelled slowly over the desolate landscape before us.There were sand, verde, and cactus, on one side of us, and there weresand, verde, and cactus, on the other.
"Well, really now, I couldn't tell. You see, I wasn't here when they puthim in the ground, and I haven't thought of his grave since I come. Factis, I've got to keep my eyes open for live Greasers and Pache-Indians,and don't get much time to hunt up dead folks's graves!"