# The American Magazine (1906-1956)/Volume 64/The Making of a Fighter

First installment of a serial on the Oregon land fraud trials, published August 1907. See also The Taming of the West/Discovery and The Taming of the West/Heney Grapples.
THE AMERICAN MAGAZINE
"When he was a little shaver"
THE MAKING OF A FIGHTER
HOW FRANK HENEY PREPARED IN ARIZONA FOR THE WORK HE IS NOW DOING IN SAN FRANCISCO
BY LINCOLN STEFFENS
AUTHOR OF "The Shame of the Cities," ETC.
ILLUSTRATED WITH PORTRAITS, AND DRAWINGS BY MAYNARD DIXON
TAKE anywhere a through Western train, and you are pretty sure to hear a conversation ranging, with fascinating familiarity, all over the continent—from the beaches at Nome down into Old Mexico; up through Arizona to the Denver Club, and out across the cattle ranches of Wyoming to the mines of Montana; it may hunt a wild cat in the Black Hills, buy a senatorship in Nevada, call on the President at Washington, do business with Hawaii and Hong Kong in "the bay" of San Francisco, and it is pretty sure to alight, in lowered tones, at some well-known hotel in New York. Look at the men; they may be ill-matched externally. Listen longer, and you will learn that one lives, for the present, at Seattle, the other at Tonopah, but they know the same people, the same stories, dovetailing chapters of the same history. I once heard two of them laugh ​joyously at the discovery that they had met before—on opposite sides of a general gun fight in Texas. These men are Westerners. Some of the mutual acquaintances they mention are San Franciscans, others are Oregonians, others are Nebraskans, Texans, and yet others are now New Yorkers, settled and successful. But the men I mean are of no one town, state or territory. They know the United States, and thus broadly are Americans, but of no distinct breed. They are rangers, and their own, particular range is the whole of the great, far West, which they are making, and which is making them.
Francis Joseph Heney is such a Westerner. His father immigrated from Ireland, his mother from Germany. He was born, March 17, 1859, at Lima, New York, but the family moved to San Francisco in 1863, and Frank, brought up there, calls himself a San Francisco Californian. He is that, and more. You see him now hot upon the trail of the grafting "labor" government of San Francisco, Before that we watched him track through their stolen limber lands the political-business grafters of Oregon. And before that, before anybody was looking, he helped to set up and knock down a governor and a territorial administration of Arizona. And before that he rode after cattle, ran an Indian trading post and practiced law there; and before Arizona and the Southwest—yes, and before he was admitted to the bar—he tried cases, taught school, milled and mined and gambled and drank up in Idaho. Frank Heney has the range, and he has some other traits, of the traditional Westerner: courage, for example.
The Quality of His Courage
Enemies of his admit readily that Frank Heney has courage. In parts of the West and in days when, according to tenderfoot fiction, all men were brave, he achieved a reputation for bravery. And this fame was his before he "killed his man." So there is no doubt about the physical courage of our hero. But there is little doubt about the physical courage of most Americans. It is moral courage that is rare among us, as rare, apparently, as physical cowardice. Heney is distinguished in the West, as he would be in the East, for the quality of his "nerve." He has moral courage.
Heney is a fighter who has fought, not only for his life, not for his principles, and this he has done, not only in one town, but in three or four states and territories. By following his story from the beginning, therefore, we may see what he has seen of the life and political condition,9! the West, We shall catch glimpses in Arizona of the primitive stealings of a territory; we can study in Oregon the improved corruption of a young state and get leads into the ancient, magnificent grafts of the Federal government; and finally, we shall realize, as Heney has, in San Francisco, California, the whole American system of political, industrial and financial misrepresentation. But of this later. First let us watch the development of a fighting American citizen out of a Westerner of the best fighting type.
A Fighting Boyhood
Frank Heney began fighting when he was a little shaver. His range then was "south of Market Street," which meant to a San Francisco boy about what the Ninth Ward meant in the boyhood of many a New Yorker. It meant fight. There were gangs, and these gangs were all at war; you had to fight your way home from school in a body, or, if you "got kept in" and your gang wouldn't wait, you had to fight alone against heavy odds or sneak around the block.
Frank began early to talk about going to the State University at Berkeley. His father wouldn't hear of that and, when the boy came out of grammar school, put him to work in his furniture store. Frank worried, but, dogged then as now in determination, he attended night school. His aptitude and industry so interested his teachers that they helped him out of hours and, in four months, entered him with the class of '79.
The elder Heney refused even then to let his boy go on; and Frank, in a huff, began a course of carousing which long hindered his career. But he stuck to his great purpose. Taking a teachers' examination, he taught school in Northern California, later in the night school in San Francisco, and thus, by making himself financially
"If the court won't protect me, I will protect myself"—Page 345
And then, in his freshman year, he was "fired"—for fighting. Joining the college fraternity that went in more for "fun," Heney was cited, in a college paper, as a terrible example of the demoralizing influence of secret societies; the article was anonymous. Heney demanded the name of the author and when the editor, a senior, refused it, attacked him. This happened at the railroad station. The senior drew a pistol and held the freshman at bay till the train started. Then he dropped his pistol hand and leaped upon a car. Heney sprang upon him and the two dangled there a moment. As the train gained headway, Heney's grip weakened and he dropped, but he caught the train and—the senior named the author: a fellow who had tried and failed to get into the fraternity.
Heney kept his own counsel absolutely; he deliberated all day and that night bought him a rawhide and a revolver. The whip was for the fellow who was "smaller than him"; the gun was to be used only it the smaller man should draw.
The two met at noon, coming out of class. Heney grasped his man by the collar, threw him on the floor and thrashed him till the fellow drew his gun. Dropping his whip, Heney grasped the weapon and there was a wrestling match till the crowd interfered.
A Challenge to a Duel
It was at this juncture that Heney committed the offense for which he was expelled. His victim, stung and humiliated, called out from the crowd that held him a taunt at the "brave man that would lick a fellow smaller than himself." Heney says that "hurt."
"Let him go," he called back; "give him his gun and I'll give him first shot."
The faculty could not forgive Heney for proposing a gun-play, and so, with a laugh outside but real sorrow within, he turned away to other things. His chance for a college education was gone.
But his chance for an education wasn't gone. Life, the rough life of the West, was to be Heney's teacher. He hadn't given up his instructorship at the night school and he went on there for awhile, reading, reading everything, but also he caroused. To get away from this, he applied for a school at Silver City, Idaho. It was a mining town in full blast and not every man could teach its school. The last teacher wasn't big enough, and Silver City sized up the new teacher, as most men would, for less than he was.
Heney does not look his part. He is five feet eight and a half inches in height, but slender; strong, but rather with nervous than muscular force. His head is round and his face is rosy, with a good deal of Irish in it, blond, amiable Irish. A firm chin, thin, close-set lips and a steady gaze out of the eyes—these show the man. But when he is in earnest and not in a temper he has a deprecating shake of the head and a wrinkly little smile that distracts attention from the eyes that mean business. And as for the fighting mouth, that is ever ready to laugh, a cackling, good-humored laugh. Moreover, Heney wears glasses and he came to Silver City in city clothes.
Teaching and Mining in Idaho
So when the big boys of the school opened the door of the hotel and looked in at the new teacher, they laughed.
"Get onto the dude," they said, and they told one another quite frankly in Heney's hearing what they would do to him. Heney laughed, his cackling, good-humored laugh; he foresaw what he would do to them.
And Heney made good with the boys, too, and from his success with them he drew a conclusion which has influenced his whole life. In Northern California, where also the school he had taught was called "bad," he had had to lay out some of his class with a piece of stove-wood while he licked the rest. In Silver City he used a little piece of string with a knot tied in the end of it; it hurt; but these boys will tell you that what did the business was the certainty they felt that their cackling, amiable teacher was "game and no bluffer."
Every chapter of Heney's life begins and ends with a fight, and the "dude" teacher's term in Silver City ended in "trouble." But not with the boys. It was a man's fight with a man, and it grew out of the dissipations of a mining town; for Heney did not stop drinking and gambling and fighting, as he had hoped, in his new environment. On the contrary, he drank deeper, played higher, and toward the end of his stay there Silver City was keenly aware that two men were going around with their guns loaded for each other. One of them, Heney, had made up his mind, however, that he wouldn't draw unless attacked, and the other man did not attack. The situation did not trouble the men, but it wasn't good for the school, so Heney went to mining.
He mined first at Silver City. Then he caught the Wood River excitement, and when that "busted," worked in a mill at Bonanza. At the end of the season he went in for the winter to Chalice, and was left in charge of the law office there of an attorney who had been elected to the legislature. And thus it happened that, before he was admitted to practice, or had even studied law, he tried his first case.
His First Law Case
It was a murder case. Three "tin horn" gamblers had a row with a fourth, who was killed. Since the only lawyer left in town was prosecuting attorney, the defense had to retain "the boy," Heney. Court met by day in the back room of the leading saloon, where at night the town gambled. The judge sat at the faro table, feeling ran high, but all went well till it came to the argument. Heney's nerve failed him. He was only twenty years old and he declared that he couldn't make a speech. But his clients—the whole sporting population—insisted on having "everything that belonged to a trial," so they took the boy up to the bar and "threw drinks into him" till he was in a mood for anything. And so he began his argument. As he proceeded, the prosecuting attorney interjected some abusive remarks. Heney paused, looking to the judge to protect him. But the judge was silent. The room was packed and the crowd moved uneasily, but Heney proceeded till again the prosecuting attorney interrupted, and this time he used "fighting language." Heney picked up his chair, and swinging it over his head, he exclaimed:
"If the court won't protect me, I will protect myself."
And yet, with his chair raised above his head, and all afire himself with just wrath, he paused to reflect. He meant to crush and kill the man before him and the crowd, maddened by the scene, called to him to do it. And Heney knew that if he brought down his chair on that drunken lawyer's head, everybody would go to shooting, and many men would be killed, including, for a certainty, the judge. In a flash he saw how he could win his case and avoid bloodshed. He dropped the chair behind him and putting out his hands, said to the prosecuting attorney:
"Your old gray hairs protect you."
Heney always laughs outright when he recalls this speech. "It made the old fellow wild with rage," he says, and, of course, it was more maddening than any epithets. The old fellow rose to his feet and bending his head over to Heney, ran his hands through his hair, panting:
"Just you consider every one of these old gray hairs as blacker than the blackest abyss of old black hell."
It was no use. The judge interfered with a fine of ten dollars each, and when the crowd paid Heney's on the spot, the prosecuting attorney was so enraged that he resigned. Court adjourned and the boy lawyer, lifted on the shoulders of the crowd, was carried forth into the street where a mass-meeting was held, presided over by an ex-clergyman on a beer barrel. The citizens adopted resolutions praising Heney, denouncing the prosecuting attorney, and calling on the judge to resign. The judge did not resign, but that night he discharged the prisoners on the murder count and ​held them for street rioting, a misdemeanor!
"This triumph didn't do me any good," says Heney now. "I thought I was the greatest lawyer ever."
Having begun thus to practice, he decided to study law. He returned to San Francisco, took in two years a three years' course and passed his examination before the Supreme Court (1883). But drilling rock on a wet plank undergound in the mines of Idaho had given him sciatica. He went to Arizona, meaning to practice there, but his brother Ben, who was in business at Tucson, had heard that a man who was running a cattle ranch for him was selling beeves on his own account. He asked Frank to go out there and see. Frank went and he saw; he said what he would do about it and his brother's partner "skipped." Thus it was that Frank Heney, ex-teacher, miner and counselor-at-law, became a cowboy and a cattle-rancher.
Riding, Shooting, "Dancing"
⟨As a cowb⟩oy, he ⟨gave himself⟩ up to ⟨the arts and⟩ the fol⟨lies of the ran⟩ge. His brother Ben says that every other item on the ranch bills sent to him in those days was for either whisky or cartridges, but when he went up there to "kick," Frank had malaria to show for the liquor and, to justify the ammunition, he threw a tin can out in front of the shack, and, with a six-shooter, moved it shot by shot across the ground out of range. He was teaching himself to shoot, and the other cowboys were teaching him to ride and rope and "dance."
Geronimo had his Apaches gut on the warpath and the frequent alarms brought the cattle men frequently together. They liked Heney and his education helped while away many an hour for the idlers. But they hazed the sunny "tenderfoot." They gave him bad bronchos to ride. Again and again he was thrown, but, as with the boys "south of Market," so with these horses, he always came back; up and into the saddle, "taking his medicine" even though the blood spurted from his nose and mouth. For months he submitted with unfailing good nature to all this cowboy "fun." Then one evening at a round-up he decided that "that would do." He picked out the best man among them.
"Now, Roberson, you fellows quit. Oh, you can smile," he said. "You're a gun man all right, but you've got to use your gun, I've stood enough and if you don't quit, you and Turner and all the rest of you, why, you've got to kill me or I'll kill you."
Cowboys "don't mean nothin'," when they pester the life out of you and risk your bones. They sat silent, studying Frank while he raged, and when he rode off home, Roberson and Turner rounded up his cattle and, after the rodeo, drove them over to his ranch. There they blew him up for "gettin' mad," but from that time on they let him alone. That is to say, they ceased to "josh" him, and when there were Mexican horse thieves to go out and kill, or Indians to follow, Roberson and Turner, the leaders, each tried always to get Heney in "his bunch." "He couldn't shoot," they said, "but he had sand."
An Apache Indian Trader
When the cattle business was in good shape Ben Heney asked Frank to go over to Fort Apache. Ben had an Indian trading store there and "Al" Bernard, who was
running it on shares, was selling goods on his own account. One Sunday morning Frank called Bernard into the store.
"Al," he said, "you are going away."
"What!"
"Yes," said Heney, cackling pleasantly, "you and your family and your wife's ​family, and all your other relations that have been living off this business, you are all going to pack up and move back into Tucson to-morrow."
"I guess not," said Al, and he explained, among other things, how at a word from him the commandant at the post would order Heney off the reservation. The license was in Bernard's name.
"I know that," said Heney, cackling unpleasantly. "But you are going to speak well of me to the commandant."
"Oh, I am, am I? Well, I'd like to know why."
"I'll tell you," said Heney, and the cackling ceased. Then he showed him just the kind of evidence he had been gathering. "Now you go and you go quick."
Heney's hand went back to his pistol pocket and he meant to shoot, if necessary. He knew how hard his brother had worked to get together the capital invested in this business, and he knew that if it failed, Ben would be ruined. Frank was nerved up to desperate measures. But his brother's partner decided to move, and he did move the next day.
Thus, Frank Heney became "Nan Tan Frank," the Apache Indian trader, and his training by the Indians was begun. The store stood on an upland about three miles from the army post, and in between lay the uneasy camp of the Apaches. Geronimo had about one hundred braves out on the warpath most of the time, but a couple of hundred were always at home, and bands of the warriors kept coming in to see their squaws and get supplies.
Like cowboys and all other children, Indians have their "fun." When they got drunk, especially on moonlit evenings, they had a way of riding up and down in front of the store firing off their guns and calling out to the "Nan Tan" (Captain) insults which they knew he understood for he had learned Apache. ("Only about six hundred words in the whole lingo," he says.) If he was in the store, he stayed in, but he used often to go visiting the officers at the post and sometimes he met the Indians on his way back. These encounters were good exercise for the nerves. With a whoop, the drunken devils would charge on the dead run straight at him, wheel, jostle and challenge him for whisky. There was no danger unless you showed fear, but then, as all white men know, Indians were likely to do anything. They'd kill, set fire to the store and go out on the warpath, trusting to the "treaty of peace" to cover up the particulars of crime.
At the end of a lively year and a half, Frank had for his brother a clear balance sheet and for himself some rich experience in dealing with elemental human nature in the rough, man to man. And he was pretty much of a man. But he wasn't much of a lawyer, and that's what he wanted to be. He had done no reading, and, of course, he had had no practice. Once in his ranching days a train had killed a neighbor's steer, and when the cowboys gathered round the carcass to "cuss" the road, he asked why they didn't sue. "Sue!" they shouted. "One man sue a railroad for one cow!" It was absurd. Heney said he'd take the case. They didn't know he was a lawyer, but his offer promised fun, so they all "slicked up" and rode to town to see the cowboy lawyer tackle a corporation. Heney got a judgment for $50. But how collect? Heney's client presented the bill to the station agent and when he explained that he had no authority to pay it, the cowboys yelped, "Didn't we tell you so!" But Heney wasn't through. A freight train pulled in and Heney's client approached the locomotive with a great piece of chain. Winding it around the driving wheel, he carried it under the rail and linked it up. Then he went off into the shade of the nearby water tank and, with his rifle across his knees, waited to see that nobody touched "that there attachment of his." There was some delay, much telegraphing; but in the end the agent received orders to pay and the attachment was removed. Heney always refuses to say whether this proceeding was "by advice of counsel."
When Frank Heney rode into Tucson from Fort Apache in 1888, he came panting to be at the business of life. He was nearly thirty years old and his association with the educated young officers at the post had made him feel that he was wasting his days. His saddle was hardly cool when he opened his first law office, and that was hardly warm when he appeared as one of the candidates for the Democratic county convention and as one of the jolliest crowd of young roisterers in Tucson. His boyhood wasn't quite over yet; he needed a jolt or two to turn up the serious side of his character.
The A B C of Politics
The first fact that came as a jolt to Heney was the report that he and the other delegates elected to the Democratic convention were expected to vote for Al Bernard for county treasurer. Ben Heney, a Republican, held the office and Frank knew how his brother had worked for the county. It wouldn't have been easy to find a better man for the job, but Al Bernard—the fellow Frank had driven out of Ben's store at Fort Apache! He hurried off to tell the leaders about Bernard.
His story made no impression and Heney tried a threat. He declared that if they offered Bernard to the convention, he, Heney, would denounce him from the floor. That would hurt the party, they said, and when that seemed to make no difference to Heney, they, in their turn, tried a threat. They said Heney would hurt himself. They explained how. Since they, the leaders of the dominant party, represented the solid interests of the county, they could throw business to him or keep it away; since they made and controlled the judges and the courts, they could dispense success or failure to a young lawyer; and since they owned the organization, they held the key to public honors and offices. Here is where most young men give up the fight. Here is where Heney began his. For Bernard was named before the convention, and Heney did stand up and tell all about him; and, what was more, he declared that if Bernard was nominated he would take the stump against him.
Bernard was nominated, and Heney began to campaign against him publicly and privately. But Heney had to drop the Bernard fight. He found that he was making votes for Bernard. Astonished, he asked why. He asked honest men who, he heard, had said that they had meant to vote for Ben Heney till Frank began to "throw mud." These men, his friends, explained that it was against the rules of the game for a Democrat to oppose a Democrat, also they didn't like to see private affairs dragged into politics.
"Even when the private affairs go to show that a candidate for treasurer can't be trusted?" Heney asked.
"Yes, even then," his friends answered.
For Ben's sake Frank was silent, and Ben beat Bernard by 47 votes!
First Glimpse of the System
Frank laughed, but he drew a conclusion: the leaders of his party were largely saloon men, gamblers and lawyers who represented such men, so he saw that Vice ruled his party. And he said so—out loud. He told the gamblers and saloon keepers. Standing at their bars and drinking with them, he would say, with his cackling laugh and steady eye, that while he had nothing against them or their business, he was opposed to their running politics. And he declared that he was going to fight until he had driven them out of power in Tucson.
If he had spoken as a "purist," his declaration of war would have been ridiculous, for the spirit of the territory was against "closed towns." But he didn't propose to shut up the saloons. He drank himself. He didn't gamble; he had stopped that when he left Idaho, but only because it was "folly," and it never occurred to him to use the law to compel others to stop just because he had. So with drinking. He dropped that about this time, but only because it was hurting him. And this discovery was the second jolt that came to him in this propitious period.
He bore a grudge against Calvert Wilson, the son of General Thomas F. Wilson. He wanted to "lick" the son and, quite as a separate proposition, he wanted to defeat the appointment, broached just then, of the father to be a judge in the territory. He thought these two purposes could be satisfied together by getting up some interviews against the old general. For, he reasoned, the son, having been something of a boxer at Harvard, would take notice of an attack on his father. Heney had a reporter sent out to get interviews with the leading lawyers of the town. They were all opposed to General Wilson, but, characteristically enough, refused to be quoted. Their moral cowardice disgusted Heney, so he went to them, drew them out, and, without their permission, wrote what they said, and added a statement of his own, the strongest of all. The publication of this broadside ended the hopes of General Wilson.
And, sure enough, it set the son in motion. A day or two later some friends of Heney told him in the Court House that Calvert Wilson was looking for him. Heney laughed.
​"He'll come back," he said. "I'll go to my office, Calvert will come in, and you watch me throw him out."
Heney crossed the street to his office, laid off his coat, and, by and by, Calvert Wilson called. He invited Heney out into the hall, and demanded to know——
The next minute Heney was on the floor with Wilson on top of him. "And," says Heney, "when my friends came rushing in, they didn't see me throwing Wilson out; they saw me hanging on to him to keep him from throwing me out." The spectators made the two fighters stand up and fight. Again Wilson threw Heney, and again and again; six times the Harvard man downed the Westerner and each time Heney struck on the back of his head, "good and hard." Then the crowd stopped the fight. Heney was licked, and well licked too. He was sick, as well as humiliated.
Utterly disgusted with himself, he consulted a physician, who told him that he was in a bad way physically; if he wanted to live to lick Wilson or any other man he must stop drinking and go into training. A day or two after that the butcher and the baker met Heney at daybreak running and walking two or three miles out of town, and Tucson had it that Frank Heney was crazy. But when the story of the fight got out, everybody guessed that Frank was training to "come back" at Calvert Wilson. And this was the truth.
But the effect of the training was to put Heney in good condition for work. The energy that had gone to waste went into his business, and he handled it with such vigor that his practice was soon too important to permit of street fighting. He invited Calvert Wilson to meet him privately, and badgered the man when he refused, but he did not pick a public row. Wilson was handsome about it and, after a year or two, in the great crisis of Heney's life, this quarrel was settled.
For two years after his thrashing, Heney didn't drink at all, and never since has liquor interfered with his work. But he didn't stop fighting. On the contrary, he won quickly a reputation for good, sound, logical, legal ability, and his practice became early one of the largest and most lucrative in the territory. His success came to him as a fighter, as the fighting attorney of Tucson.
The Crisis of a Fighting Life
The best example of Heney's "nerve" and of some other of his traits is the socalled "Handy Case," which ended in the shooting of Dr. Handy—the crisis of Heney's fighting life. Dr. J. C. Handy was a splendid figure of a man, big, handsome, passionate and fearless. A frontier doctor, he was also a politician. Instinctively liberal, he was kind, in a rough, hearty, easy-going way, to the sick and unfortunate. "No charge," he would say to the poor; "I'll take it out of the lucky fellows." But Handy was a bully, too, selfish when he wasn't in the mood for charity, and wilful as a child. The stories told of his outbreaks of rage sound like insanity. His wife bore the brunt of them. He left her to live with another woman, and, not content with this offense, he used to take the other woman in his buggy and drive up and down in front of his wife's house, taunting and insulting her. Apparently he wanted Mrs. Handy to sue for a divorce, and when she didn't, he did.
Having sued for a divorce, Handy wouldn't even let his wife have counsel. She employed first a lawyer name Wright, but Handy meeting him at a funeral wound up some hot remarks with a threat to "pull his nose." Wright escaped, and shortly after threw up the brief. The next lawyer that Mrs. Handy retained was ex-Judge William H. Barnes. Him also Handy frightened off, and Heney happened to see it done. He was in Barnes's office one day when Handy came in to serve some papers. The Doctor walked up close to Barnes and, glaring at him, threw the paper down on the desk. It was all very insulting, and Barnes muttered a remonstrance at Handy's retreating back.
"What's that?" the Doctor demanded, wheeling about and returning. "What's that?"
With Handy bending over him, Judge Barnes explained that he had only expressed a preference for having such papers served by counsel, not by Handy. "That was all."
"It had better be all," said Handy. "Why, you ——, I've a mind to cut your throat right now." And then, changing his emphasis, he repeated: "It had better be all—all."
And it was all. Within two hours Barnes ​had withdrawn from the case, and Tucson knew that Mrs. Handy was unable to get counsel. It was a shameful situation, this terrorism of a whole town, and a Western town at that, by one man.
But there was reason for the fear. Handy was a powerful man physically, and a quick, sure shot. Besides, he had "influence." It was no light thing to defy this man, as Heney's experience showed.
For Heney took Mrs. Handy's case. All sorts of men came to him to beg him not to go on. A committee of leading citizens called and presented a formal protest and warning. Heney listened for a while, then he said:
"All right, get her another lawyer and I will get out of the case."
That was impossible, they said.
"Then," said Heney, "I will try the case or I'll take down my shingle. I would rather be dead than have it said that a woman couldn't be defended in a civil suit in a town where I was practicing law."
Before the trial was begun the U. S. Attorney called on Heney.
"I don't want to alarm you, Frank," he said, "but Bob Paul (the U. S. Marshal), who is a friend of Handy's, told me to warn you that the Doctor has employed McClarty (a gun man) to help him. McClarty is to hang around the court room. If you make a break Handy will shoot you and McClarty will look after Ben."
Arrangements to Kill Heney
The trial was to be held behind closed doors, and when Heney came to court, there stood McClarty on guard.
"Hello, Mac," said Heney, and he ran his hands down the fellow's back; he felt his gun.
Frank sent word downstairs to Ben, who hurried up into court, and Frank put Handy on the stand.
"Doctor," he said, "do you know McClarty?"
"I do."
"Is he in your employ now?"
"He is."
"Is he standing outside those swing doors listening to what I am saying?"
"I guess he is. That's what I told him to do." And reaching back into his pocket, Handy half drew his revolver. "McClarty is there to look after your brother," he added. "I will take care of you."
At the conclusion of every session Handy waited outside for Heney and, with his friends about him, muttered insulting things. One day he threatened the judge himself in the street; but he didn't shoot. His fixed idea was not to shoot Heney first, but to incite him to draw his gun. Then the Doctor said he would take the weapon away and kill him in "self-defense." "I'll kill the —— with his own gun," was the way he put it.
With McClarty to attend him at court. Handy hired one Hank Hewitt, another gun fighter who had killed several men, to drive about with him in his buggy and "hold his horse." Thus supported, he studied the habits of Heney. He knew when and where he went for meals, and on business and evenings, and everywhere Heney went there Handy met him. And always Handy insulted him. He would drive along the street and, to Heney on the sidewalk, call out epithets, "fighting names." "One name that he called me every day I had never in my life permitted any man to call me," Heney says. "I took it then; I took it every day."
Learning What Fear Is
Mrs. Handy needed counsel, and Heney made up his mind not to fight till her case was ended.
The strain was terrific. Ben Heney, who knew all about it, urged his brother to shoot. Frank had his gun ready; he had filed off the trigger to enable him to draw it quickly, and he kept in practice, but Ben feared that Handy might catch his brother off his guard and shoot him like a dog. And Frank says himself that he was afraid of ​this. "I learned to know what fear was," he says. Often at night he would give up. "If he calls me that to-morrow, I'll shoot," he would decide. But, fresher in the morning, he would go out and when the Doctor, with McClarty or Hank Hewitt up beside him, would meet him and escort him from his home to his office, taunting him as a coward to shoot, Heney would sweat and take it.
For the year and a half that the trial dragged along, this continued and meanwhile Handy refused to give his wife money. She lived on what Heney lent her. And she also was made to suffer.
Well, a divorce was decreed and Handy got the children. But that did not end it. Heney appealed. Handy sent word to him to abandon the appeal or leave the territory, and all Heney's friends told him that the Doctor was more desperate than ever. But Heney felt free to shoot now. "I believe," he says, "that Handy had come to think that I was what he had called me, a coward. He was more afraid of Ben than he was of me." The crisis came when Frank returned alone from San Francisco whither he and Ben had gone together.
Heney Kills His Man
The day Frank got back, Handy followed him up into a real estate office. He came on the run, but after him came a deputy sheriff named Perrin, who seized the Doctor and warned him away.
But the next day, as Heney and his clerk left their office at noon. Handy appeared walking down the opposite side of the street, "Hold up," said Heney to his clerk, "there's Handy. Let's stand here and talk." Handy crossed the street and brushed past Heney's back, jostled him, stopped, and called him a name, that same old fighting name. Heney turned, and as he did so, Handy hit him in the face, seized him by the throat and jammed him against the wall. Heney reached for his gun, but he did not draw it; he saw Handy look down, watching for it. Remembering what Handy had said so often about killing him with his own gun, Heney showed both his hands, unarmed, and then, feeling Handy's grip relax on his throat, he ducked, ran backward out into the street and drew. Handy, following him, put his hand back for his own gun, but he stuck to his fixed idea; he jumped at Heney and grabbed his revolver with both hands. And just as he clutched it, Heney fired.
The bullet went tearing down diagonally through Handy's intestines. A look of amazement passed over his face, then one of murderous resolve settled there and the real struggle began. Handy weighed 200 pounds, Heney only 126, and the bigger man had counted always on his physical superiority. That his faith in his strength was well founded he showed now. For, after he was shot, he fought in the street for three or four minutes. Many witnesses saw it, and they all testify that, as the two clung to that revolver, the wounded man lifted Heney off his feet, swung him round and round, and time and time again bore him to his knees. Heney's agility saved him, that and the crowd, which finally dragged the fighters apart. And then Handy walked a block and a half to his office, lay there till he could be taken home, and did not die till next day!
When Heney went after the timber thieves of Oregon and again when he began his investigation into the "Labor" government of San Francisco, the grafters sent agents to Arizona to search his record, and they tried hard to make something out of his killing of Dr. Handy. It was no use. The hearings at the time were thorough; Heney saw to that. There were many witnesses; they all were heard, and Heney was not only discharged, he was vindicated with a triumph by "good men and true" chosen from a community which had very generally declared that it would have "given Handy both barrels long ago." All men felt, and many had said that Heney should not have taken what he did from Handy, ​But his restraint was understood for what it was, moral courage.
Single-handed Political Fights
All through the Handy episode Heney was carrying on his political war with the gang that ran his party and it was guerrilla warfare. Indeed that was the trouble with Heney's politics. He was constant, but irregular; bold, but personal. He opposed bad men, not the system that produced them, and though he often won these individual fights, his victories did very little good.
He saw the saloon men and gamblers in the county ring, and he understood why they were willing to let Al Bernard be county treasurer: they represented their business. Vice, and so long as they were free to prey upon the men and women of the county, they didn't care who had the public funds' graft. This offended Heney. He didn't notice particularly that in that ring were other, more respectable men who were engaged in other, more respectable businesses. He didn't ask why they were for Bernard. And, naturally, it didn't offend his sense of decency that an ex- Judge, William H. Barnes, the leader of the bar, should also be the political leader of the county. He didn't ask what businesses Boss Barnes represented. And he didn't fight Barnes, at first.
But the evil that he saw Heney fought. He gathered about him his friends, the* gay young Democrats of Tucson and, gay though they were, they opposed the vice ring. And they made their fights in the primaries, and always Heney or some of his crowd were elected delegates.
The young Democrats used to go to conventions with a respectable delegation and some strong alliances with other districts; and they would put up their candidates and pledge majorities for them. But when it came to the vote, some of their delegates would invariably fall down. Not many. "Just enough to beat us," Heney says now, with a laugh. "I believe Barnes let us have enough of his men to make us think we were safe and keep us from getting more. Then he would snap the whip, and they would come back. He had the patronage, the money and, if it came to a pinch, he had not only political but business pressure to bring to bear. Why, when I was licked and so mad that I wanted to bolt, I've had prominent business men come to me advising me to be loyal to the party. I don't know why I didn't tumble to the fact that Barnes had the support of all the interests, political and business, of the whole territory. But I didn't."
Heney s Challenge to the Boss
Year after year Heney was defeated, and year after year the prestige of the boss was increased by his victories, till at last Barnes went "too far." He made a reach for the courts. This alarmed some of the good men of Tucson. They thought it was time to "check" the boss. They didn't like to come out against him themselves, they looked around for some one to do the job for them, and, like the boys south of Market Street, they whistled for Frank Heney.
He was willing. It was a chance to get "strong backing." He took a day or two to consider how best to go to work, and his plan was the first sign he had given of a democratic political instinct. He had been trying to win with the help of his friends. But you can't play politics with only your friends behind you—not, at least, in a government by the people. And the people in Pima and the other counties round about Tucson belonged to the parties which belonged to the bosses who traded them off between themselves. Heney proposed now to appeal to the people. He challenged Barnes to come to an open meeting at the Opera House on the night of May 6, 1891, and there listen to and—if he could—make answer to certain charges which he, Heney, would bring against him, with the proofs. The good citizens were startled. This was going further than they had expected to go. "Don't, Frank," they pleaded. It was right, they said, to fight Barnes, as Heney had been fighting, quietly, within the party; in convention.
"Where I get licked," said Heney grimly. Ah, but they would back him now; and, besides, they didn't want to beat the boss, only to check him. Why, Barnes was one of Tucson's most prominent citizens, the leader of the bar, etc., and any public exposure of him would hurt the business and the fair fame of the city.
Fortunately Heney's friends appealed to his fears as well as their own, so he paid no ​attention to them. He opened his speech with an answer to all those who had argued that "a young man starting out in life as I am, ruins his future, ruins his prospects of advancement in his profession and of preferment in his party by having the courage and manhood to stand forth against corruption in public affairs, after a man has been nominated by his party. If that be the consequence," he said, "I accept it with pleasure."
Heney put loyalty to his country first in this speech. It was higher than his duty to his family and, as for parties, they were means to an end. "Therefore," he said, " when we find that a corrupt man has been nominated by a party, it becomes not only our privilege, but the bounden duty of every man to fall back upon the first principles which caused him to join that party, to wit: the welfare of the country generally. Patriotism and manhood must rise above party fealty and boss rule." Then he proceeded for two hours to charge, in general and in detail, with the evidence, that Boss Barnes stood for corruption in politics. Barnes wasn't there. The Boss had not accepted Heney's challenge.
Heney Becomes County Chairman
Barnes "wasn't going to pay any attention" to the "attack," but he found that he must; it was hurting him and, in a few da3rs, he came out with a reply. That was the beginning of the end of this boss. Thenceforward he was forever on the defensive. Heney followed up his advantage at the next primaries with some practical politics. He and his crowd organized a Democratic Club, which enabled them to put up a "regular" Democratic ticket. Electing a majority of the delegates, he went to the convention to make trades and dickers himself. He wasn't expert and Barnes got the ticket. But Heney had learned that party sovereignty lies in the county committees. Letting everything else go he pledged everybody to his slate for committeemen, and by threatening, if he was beaten, to go out and beat Barnes's ticket, he forced the boss's own candidates to help him hold the delegates in line. His committee was elected and he made himself chairman. Thus Frank Heney put himself in the place of the boss of Pima County.
Many Americans think that all they have to do to get good government is to elect good men to office. This had been Heney's theory and his power as boss gave him the opportunity to put his theory to the test. He was a good leader: honest, sincere and not afraid; and his followers were like him, gay, enthusiastic and unselfish. Their platform was (1st) good men in office, (2d) economy, and (3d)—as a corollary—no graft.
Heney will tell you now that, besides negative planks in your platform, you must have a positive policy for the solution of the problems of government. For example, he had been fighting all those years to dethrone the vice interests and that was accomplished when he took their place. But he didn't solve the vice problem; he didn't know it was a problem. Having "nothing against the saloon keepers and gamblers," he "let them alone"—to fight him; and they fought him.
And so with the other business interests. He knew the railroad and mining men; he was attorney for some of them. He had nothing against them, so he let them alone—to fight him. And on the quiet, they opposed him. They had nothing against him personally, but they knew from experience that they couldn't control him. He was "unsafe."
Up Against the Territorial Boss
Heney had nothing against the territorial machine of his party, either. He was a part of it. He was "down on" the governor and his administration: they were Republicans and "bad men" of course. But the Republican President of the United States had appointed them and the only hope of a change was at the approaching national election. But this couldn't concern Heney very much. His interest was in Tucson. He hoped, if a Democrat was elected President, to be appointed United States District Attorney, but he wanted the place only to be able to do things down his way. As County Chairman, Heney delivered his delegation to the territorial machine; he supported the territorial boss, Mark Smith, for renomination to Congress, and then stumped the territory for Cleveland and Smith.
In brief, Heney did not fight Boss Smith till, like Boss Barnes, Smith threw him down. When Cleveland was elected for his ​second term, Smith was reSlected^ and the Boss ofiFered voluntarily to help Heney to the appointment he sought.
"I don't want you to help," said Heney.
Smith promised faithfully not to interfere unless it was to help and yet, in Washing- ton, Heney found the boss working quietly for the other man who got the job. The other man was a railroad attorney; he had the backing of the Santa Fe road. Heney didn't understand it, but having had no promise from the Santa Fe, he didn't blame the road; all his wrath fell upon that "liar Smith." Personal though his feud was with Smith, it was so passionate that it carried Heney and his crowd out of their county into con- trol of the territory of Arizona. To get even with Smith, Heney had to fight the ter- ritorial organization and he aimed where he had won at home — at the executive commit- tee. That was made up, as the county committee was, of saloon keepers, gam- blers and attorneys for mining and railroad companies. Heney put up a "good busi- ness man" against Smith's chairman, who was a gambler, but Smith's gambler won by the two deciding votes of another " good business man." That should have opened Heney 's eyes, but it didn't; it only puzzled and enraged him. Making a Governor He carried the fight to Washington. Mark Smith and the interests back of him had a candidate for governor of the territory. Heney had to find one. He didn't have to look long; Heney 's candidate found Heney. L. C. Hughes was the man, the editor of a Tucson newspaper who had sup[x>rtedl the young Democrats. And they had helped to elect him a delegate to the convention that nominated Cleveland. When Hughes came back and suggested his own candi- dacy, Heney told him it was "impQ3sible." "And it was," says Heney now. "Hughes was a mistake, and I knew it all the time." But Hughes had a "claim." Arizona votes first among the territories which are called after all the states. Hughes had agreed with Don Dickinson to rise at the signal and, without authority, cast ten votes of his divided delegation solidly for Cleveland. He did it. The balloting was close, the ex- citement suppressed and intense; the few delegates he delivered without their consent did not decide, but they were made to seem to settle it. For the storm of protest that rose at Hughes was so overwhelmed by pre- arranged cheering that the impression given was of congratulation and victory. States changed their votes to get on the band- wagon and, well, the trick "worked." When Heney joined the other young Democrats at Washington he found that Hughes had from Don Dickinson a promise of the governorship, and that if he didn't take it, Mark Smith and his territorial com- mittee would be allowed to fill all the offices. "It was to beat Smith that we took Hughes," Heney says; " but we boimd him in advance to make no appointments with- out the approval of a majority of four of us: Meade, C. M. Bruce, L. H. Manning and myself." The history of American politics is full of governors and mayors who, to get the "honor," have surrendered all the powers of their office. No outsider can understand how a man can justify the exchange of his self-respect for an empty title, but many men make the trade. It is eSisier to under- stand why the purchasers trade the title for the power; usually they want to graft. But the "Big Four" that tied up "Governor" Hughes's hands and feet, and carried him helpless home, they thought they were going to use their dummy's power to give Anzona good government. They sat Hughes down in his chair in the Capitol, and then pro- ceeded, in good faith, mind you, to make his appointments for him. They appointed, first of all, themselves. They selected " leading citizens " for the unsalaried boards, and for treasurer a leading banker, Flem- ing. Heney took for himself the Attorney- Generalship. He seems really not to have wanted it, but, he says, "I was afraid Hughes would go to grafting, and so were the rest of us, and they said it was up to me to mount guard." Heney, on guard, began an investigation of the grafting of the retiring administra- tion. He assigned his brother Ben, an expert accountant, to examine the books of the treasurer and auditor, and Ben found graft; all petty in items, but the sum total was great enough to prove that the territory could be run on a cash basis, if the stealing could be stopped. And the stealing was stopped for a while. Heney was happy, ​the rest of the Big Four were busy and the Young Democrats were enthusiastic in their offices.
Good government didn't last long in Arizona, however. Pretty soon a change occurred. The first sign of it was the gradual disintegration of the unsalaried boards. The "leading citizens" on them tired of the work. Then the leading banker began to play politics. Heney didn't sus- pect Fleming. He assumed that a national banker, having so much at stake, would be interested in having the territory run right, and he did not learn till later that his banker-treasurer had taken a mortgage on the " Governor " by lending Hughes $6,000 on his newspaper. He let Fleming fill the places vacated by the leading citizens and by and by the Treasurer was boss, not Heney, not the Big Four.
A Banker as a Boss
Heney's suspicions were first aroused by the efforts of Hughes and Fleming to pay him extra compensation. It was the cus- tom they said, and they were right. Heney had found that Hughes's predecessor. Gov- ernor Oakes Murphy, had drawn illegally thousands of dollars for expenses in market- ing territorial bonds "out East"; and the former auditor, who was allowed $10 for affixing his seal to 1,500 of the bonds, had charged $1,500 and besides $10 "for one day's labor." This sort of graft had run all through the old administration. But Heney, the Attorney General, was suing for the recovery of these moneys and he couldn't understand why Hughes and Fleming were so anxious to have him break the law he was enforcing. Once when he was in Washington on his own political business he was notified of a suit brought by certain Eastern bankers against Fleming as treasurer to recover $10,000 put up to bind an agreement to take $500,000 of the territorial bonds. The panic of '93 had changed the bankers' minds, and all they had to sue on was a letter from John M. Dillon advising them to have the bonds re-executed by the new offi- cers of the territory. Heney went to New York to see this distinguished Wall Street attorney. Dillon was " out." "All right," said Heney to Dillon's part- ner. "These bankers think Dillon's letter means that the bonds are not valid unless they are re-executed. That isn't the law and you know it. But if Judge Dillon will write a statement that it is, I'll quit and the territory will pay back the $10,000. If he won't do that, I'm going to denounce him in the newspapers for deception and tricker}'." "Wait a moment," said Mr. Dillon's partner. He disappeared and when he came back Dillon was "in." He saw Heney, sized him up and he admitted most courteously that the bonds were valid. His clients, the bankers, dropped their contest. When Heney reported this, Hughes and Fleming voted him a handsome sum to de- fray his expenses East. That made him angry. " Whether I had earned the money or not, it was unlawful to pay me," he says, " and they knew that." The next thing was a wire from his brother Ben asking whether he should accept a warrant for $1,000 is- sued to him for his expert work. Since Frank had warned Ben that he must look to the Legislature for his pay and that he might never get it, he telegraphed him to refuse the warrant and, cutting short his trip, hurried home to see what the matter was. Why the Good Men were Bad "And I found out mighty soon," he says, "that the reason that they were so urgent about paying me extras was that they were issuing warrants to one another. They were grafting. There was the manipulation of public funds and contracts; that's what Fleming was after. And there was the smaller graft; extra salaries, commissions and expenses; and that's what Hughes was after, Hughes and the political camp fol- lowers all up and down the line." The Big Four's good government had failed. Heney 's " good men " had gone wrong. He was dis- gusted, but he fought. He brought suits against his own good men just as he had against'the bad men in the old administra- tion. The "party" and his friends pro- tested; there was a terrible hullabaloo and Hughes was put up to forbid the suits. "You can't sue without my authoriza- tion," he told Heney. "No?" said Heney. "Well, the only way you can prevent me is by removing me, and you don't dare do that." Among these suits was one against his own brother. Ben was innocent of offense, ​but he was the only responsible party on the bond of one grafter, so Frank made Ben pay. Another suit was against his law partner whom he had appointed a chancellor of the university. The law allowed the chancellors $10 a meeting, but the custom was to take $50 a month besides. "My partner was a good man," Heney says, "churchman and all that, but he loved money." He "followed the custom," and Heney made him pay back the money. They all followed the custom, and Heney, having started suits against them all and carried the first of the cases through all appeals up to the United States Supreme Court, resigned.
When the man Governor Hughes appointed in his place sent a deputy into court to dismiss the pending suits, Heney went off in a rage to Washington to demand the removal of Hughes. His charges were pretty stiff, but he did not succeed.
"Cleveland did remove Hughes," Heney told me with a steady look out of his eyes, "but not then and not for grafting." Hughes was retired a year or so later for giving honest expression to his honest conviction on the silver question. It was a rude awakening. Heney had dreamed of a United States Senator.
Democratic Arizona expected to become a state under this Democratic President and Congress and Heney, by helping to fit her for statehood, hoped to be one of the first two senators.
"But then," he cackled, "Arizona wasn't admitted. She wasn't fit, but that wasn't against her. President Cleveland didn't want any more Silver Democrats in the Senate."
Frank Heney, the fighter, was beaten. He decided to quit not only politics but the territory, and he did leave Arizona. And he thought he had left politics behind him. But he didn't quit fighting; he couldn't; he can't. He has fought since, and won, in Oregon; and we shall see how. And, as we shall see, he is fighting better still now in San Francisco. Why did Arizona beat him so badly?
"I didn't know," he answers, "and I don't know that I know now, but I know more than I knew when I left the territory. I blamed Hughes then. So long as he was honest, all the fellows were honest. The spirit of our administration was fine till the leader began to graft. Then there was a graft stampede. But how is a weak man like Hughes to be blamed when a banker beside him and a lot of best citizens behind and all around him were tempting him to eat an apple so that they could get whole orchards. I can see it now. Didn't they try me. Herrin (General Counsel for the Southern Pacific) didn't want me for an attorney when I was fighting for right things, but when I became Attorney General of the territory he offered me a railroad retainer. I didn't know why then, but I'd have found out. We were for economy. We should soon have looked into taxes, and when I had seen what the railroads and mines didn't pay, I think I'd have understood—even if I had never gone to Oregon or come back here to California. For—territories, states and cities, they're all alike.
"No, it's not a mere matter of good men and bad men. I suppose I seem always to be trying to put crooks in jail, and I am, but I know that that won't straighten the crookedness. That's what I used to think. Now I realize that my fight isn't against men but a system, and my hope is that the evidence I produce of crime may help good men and women to see that there are certain causes of all this corruption of ours, causes which they must remove if we are ever to achieve good government in Arizona, Oregon, California—the United States."
   (The next article by Mr. Steffens will tell the remarkable story of how Burns, the Secret Service detective, discovered the land frauds. The trail leads through one of the departments in Washington out into California and Oregon. The article is illuminating in its facts and its import.)