The St. Johns herald., 1885-07-23

| ana c1drge all 1nQlVl0uaI cf1mes
 committed in its borders, crimes
 common to this and every other
 territory in the Union, to a general
 lax state of morality and outlawry
 of the people of the county: The
 item published by a visitor that
 men are walking about the town oi ! St Johns loaded down with guns
 and ammunition,eyeing every man
 he meets with more than ordinary curiosity and suspicion; that nc man will walk out of a night un- attended, for fear of assassination ; that the laws of the territory are set at defiance, and that to-day there is a reign of terror; that our county officials are set of thieves and scoundrels, and the credit of the county has been to- tally destroyed, is false. The originator of the scandalous reports must have had a rather severe attack of dilerium tremens or been subject to the penalty of soul sickening nightmare. Life and property are as secure in Apache county and especially in St. Johns as in any other sparsely settled county in this or any other territory. But few of our citizens carry about their persons fire arms of any kind, and cattlemen coming into town divest themselves of the incumbrance as soon as they can find proper place of deposit. The same condition pertains at the county seat as at any other place on the frontier. There are a few men that wear their pistols exposed for the same reason that some wear diamond breast pms, or cowboy hat with gee-string hanging down the back of his neck in faint immitation of a Celestial queue. These wouldbe he roes and gun sharps have an idea that it looks pretty, and gives them a character for bravery or bravado unattainable by their unadorned manhood. Visitors at St. Johns seeing one of the harmless maga- zines, with their cultivated devil may-care nonchalance, are apt to mistake them for bad men, and the report goes to his local paper that war is imminent in Apache county, by an eye witness. The paper is a reputable one, and the item is snatched first by one and then another journal till the field is covered. The air of Apache county is made pestiferous, it's credit in jured and it's people defamed by men who have brains enough to make @ readable article, and time enough to write it. There have existed evils in this county that are undergoing judicial investigation, and the millennium is much nearer than we expect if more and greater ones are not only perpetrated and made to annoy the community in the time and expense it will take to feret them out and punish the dire licts. We wish it were Apache county alone that had to suffer for the acts of lawless and unfaithfui menin positions of trust and confi- dence. But we have yet to learn that there is one county in the ter ritory without it's public grievances, without sore spots, free from taint of political tricksters and partizan hucksters, Apache county's bal ance sheet, notwithstandingFhe hue and cry, will compare favorably with the showing of the purest county in the territory. Its wealth from which it's taxes are to. be col lected, is cleaner. more solid, with healthier growth than many counties that reprint the uncom- plimentary reports of the ignorant writers.
 Apache county did not furnish members for the entire Thirteenth Legislative Assembly, nor have any of her members been threatened with indictment for their acts in that body of men of whom many uncomplimentary things. ..have been publicly uttered.