Arizona weekly enterprise., 1882-06-24
THE LAST OF NINE.

"Did you know that Tom Bailey had passed in his checks?"
 "Yes, heard it by telephone an hour ago"
 The speaker was John McWilliams, and we were sitting on the piazza of his home in Bradford.
 "Do you know the particulars, John P
 "Particulars ? Well, I don't know as there are any. Same old story, you know. Didn't pack the nitro-glycerine in the wagon carefully, and when the wagon went over log the load explod- ed and-and-that was all.
 r There was no need of further explana- tion, for could reason it all out clearly enough, and could almost fancy saw the ghastly remains of the ll-starred Tom Bailey, who went out one morning to superintend the shooting of well and ueyer came back. Bailey was an em. pioye of the Roberts Torpedo Company and John McWilliams, the man with whom I was in conversation, was his Division Superintendent on tho same "run," or district.
 "Family, John ?"
 "No--that is, he hadn't wife, but he had widowed mother and young sister"
 "What will they do?"
 "Oh, the company won't see then starve, and, beside, I guess poor olt Tom didn't die beggar. Poor olt boy l" and the bearded man at my sids sobbed like heartrbroken child.
 "I never told you about Tom and the rest of the boys, did I ?" continued thu sorrowing man.
 "The rest?"
 "Yes, there were nine of us, yor know-but you don't know, for I have never told a living soul. This suddel death of Toms quite unmans me, for am now the only one left-the last o nine"
 waited q long while for John to gail control of his feelings, fer I knew h. had story to tell of more than usus interest. It was beautiful night, full of soft moonlight and drowsy with th, hum of humanity in the city beneati our feet. A delicate, almost impercep tible mist hung about the city, and iron our hillside piazza we could see far dow the valley where the Tunungwant strean :eintly glimmered in the moonlight, all, where the huge iron tanks of oil loome, up gloomy aud black against the mello1 brightness of the night. Over at Pros pect Park, on Mount Raub, the Hgh was flashing and faring, while fsintl to our ears came the stralns of Strarla waltz. Away off on another hll tn sound of laboring engine and the thu of walking beam told that the ponder GUS drill at well WAS being lowered 1T to the earth as fast US men working nigh and day could sink the hole Dow below, the city tinshed up ct us it countless lights and shadows and fa;ntl aoated up the hum of business an pleasure. It WAS 8 strangely beautifJ night for story of oil. John spoke { last, slowly anal with evident hesitation
 "Yes," he said, "there were nine ( us, and I'm the last one alive. It's
 Iueer thing, and it makes me feel ver
 Jtrangeiy; perhaps moro so now tii. poor Tom isis"
 He couldn't bring himself to say tE
 word; he couldn't say that his frien was dead. With great effort he col tinued:
 "You doubtless know that I was i
 the army during tho late war. sa
 some pretty tough fighting, too, and u
 CT Shiloh I was made Captain, and
 he same time Tom Bailey, who was he same company, was promoted to
 Lieutenancy for bravery. He desery. . it, too, for there never was better {
 braver boy; Q triAe reckless you mi';l
 say, but brave and generous to faul
 At the close of the war ve went hon
 together, and with us went what WI
 tvfr of the company. There wasn = much, to be sure, for we had done son l. terrible fighting, and many of the bo, d had gone down through the valley : the shadow. Like the rest of the r U turned soldiers, We went into the c : country, which was just then turnir ' the heads of the people, and after knocl i ing around while and losing wh l money we had we concluded to go in - the business of shooting wells. To l. and I went into the business for ou r selves, and soon hired four of the mt ss who had been in our company and ,. friend of mine, who had been wealtE }, but was broke, to work for us. Ty IS fishermen came along thatwe had know > before, and We engaged them. Tn 5 made nine of HIS, and We used to live e one room and do all our own cookin |. for women were scarce in the oil count ,. at that time. Everything went alol l. finely and we made money hand ov r. fist. Old Col. Roberts hadn'G got tl E monopoly of the nitro-glycerine busine e then, and any man could engage in tt who cared to run the risk.
 "Our crowd was extremely fortuna ;, at first, and we were beginning to fe y that nitro-giycerine wasn't such ter !, .o ble thing as some persons made oI i. We'll, we worked along about six mont n without an accident, when one day O
 of our men vas killed while takil
 glycerina from wagon. This gave le considerable of shock, but we laid t V, blame on the mans carelessness, al n worked on as usual. Within year thr
 mora of our men were blown to fra - rnents at the same time through pu A recklessness. None of these men dra. liquor to excess so you couldn't A tribute their death to intoxication. %g ;3 rest of us were mighty careful after tn and only stayed iu the business becau S we could make money faster than at ar \ thing else. We didn't have any mo E accidents while we were doing busint 2 fer ourselves, and we began to la