The copper era., 1905-08-10
Unsurpassed Services Offered''
Leaves from the Memory Of a Pioneer
 of Arizona.
Written for the ERA.
November days are dark a9d drear November days his sad and scar"


 November daye ofe sad and scar"
 which Burns wrote, but November in Arizona ''Arizona the goldeh'-is another picture. The warm white clouds were sailing in d sky of match less blue, the blaG&birds chirped on 1 the willows that fringed the Verde river, the Cacti that blooms after the autumn rains, breathed that delicate l perfume known only to dwellers on desert lands. Ia the east lay what seemed a aesky plain, but which was ! nc plain at all, but miles and miles of hills and hollows bordered on the other side by "a ies :sis ss:tr-tio1-y ped theatrical tUGr Peaks. It was Camp Mcdowell in the year of grace 1870. We were camped on this same Verde river, and had q portion of a beef contract at a good price and a wave of good luck had struck us Eight companies of cavalry, nearly all in the territory, had come to camp, the U. s. commissioner of h. dian affairs, Vincent Collier, and Gen. O. O. Howard, the christian warrior" with a big following had also come. Gen. Brook was told to lay awhile on his oars while a peace talk was, held with the hostile A DdSAC On1G1S. NOW we all kI1GW that from this point they Gduld only reach the Tontos, a poor sickly lot. The only bright one being, Del Shay, the chief. Now the brother-in-law of the Secretary of War Belknap was sutler. boss contractor and the "great man" at Mcdowell to whom all paid tribute, or get out. We paid and stayed, and To and behold here came over 800 men and horse to eat and drink good booze twenty-five cents a drink and gfamma hay cut with hoe s60 per ton. Our old friend, Bill Kirkland, cut that. Now you see Bill was our friend of anti-bellum days, and was much in our camp. We had gone in '62 to the Rio Grande as confederate scouts, had in the course of events relieved a mail rider in blue of his pouch, and then and there had our first look at abolition money. We call them greenbacks now, and since our re- turn had found them hard to get and still harder to hold. But we had a show now to make little wad. We would go inside in the sprihg-bless the governmental was wonderful how very loyal we had become all at once-oar reconstruction was com plete.
 Now I must tell you of High Jolley or my tale would be like the play of Hamlet with the strange Prince of Denmark left out. That name, by which he was known by all was a mis- homer, it was Alder Ali, native of Algeria, who, when boy, came as a camel driver to America with the drove brought by the government. | His contract which was with the U. $. consul at Algeria and written in French and Arabic did say that the | quartermasterd department would give him employment during his good be- havior. He was also camped with us. i Now, his place was in the post not at | the beef camp. We had met him the | year before at Reno, now abandoned. 1 We were prospecting then, we are Creoles from the far south, and | speak French and eat curry. Alder Ali spoke French and did fix up | curry in a way we had never before | seen He sprinkled the powder on dried beef and broiled it, so we were ] glad to have him, we could get the gossip of the post, eat curry and 1 talk of our friend, the sutler, with the bark of and none be wiser.
 A tall young man with a light beard had come with Gen. Towards outfit, R. c. Ross, sent by the elder ! You see some time had been given to form this peace party in the east. Del Shay was great man now angry and very difficult to approach. Get all the troopers in their white stable frocks, make signal fires, get forage cut and piled in the foothills for the stock, and from Fort Mcdowell the end would be attained. 1t is of no use to write down what we knew. Suffice to say we sat around the fire enjoying fresh cooked head of meS- cal cooked as only the Tontos knew how when a voice from the dark in French said" "Gentlemen,I T understand you" James Gorden Bennett made no mistake when he sent the speaker as his envoy with this same peace party. I had met him at the post in the day, asked him down to our camp and he had come, in way too, that was to us embarrassing, to say the least. But tohim, no. He had talked also with Alder Ali, and on some theme too, which seemed to please. He sat down took up the same strain, eat some meSCal, and in a short hour we had come to think we had known him long and our aims, our hopes, our fears were his very own. At last, re- marking that the mescal was nice fresh cooked said, ''would we care to take him out where they cooked it he might get a chance to talk with Del Shay" All at once Alder Ali spoke. Go he would and risk it, but I must also go and find the stock to ride. Now, good for you Alder Ali. You had been of late making q pri- vate roar against what we all knew was a fraud. and now you are going to risk your head to try and prove it. at once said ives" It's very boldness woke me up. If I had only thought, but that has always been my bane, and did the thinking for had not events turned out just as they did, we would no doubt have been held by those h. dians as hostages. While Reno was occupied the Tontos came in in squads, Alder Ali, in the quarter master department came to know Del Shay. Did him I think many favors, but they were supposed to be hostile. It is true some slipped in to the post and traded, and we talked and joked with them, but that meant nothing, what Ross thought we did not stop to think. He afterwards said he was wrong in his surmise as to Us, and did not know the risk he run.
 High minded notions of right are