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Miss Majesty, it was Arizona thet made Nels what he is, the Arizona desert an' the work of a cowman. He's seen ridin' at Canyon Diablo an' the Verdi an' Tonto Basin. He knows every mile of Aravaipa Valley an' the Pinaleno country. He's ranged from Tombstone to Douglas. He hed shot bad white men an' bad Greasers before he was twenty-one. He's seen some life, Nels has.
Some personal experiences may help to illustrate this feeling of panic, as I happened to be at the ranch during the time and know how it was myself. One day in the month of October, 1885, while Geronimo was making his raid through southern Arizona, my brother and I rode through Railroad Pass from Pinaleno ranch to the Lorentz Place, a distance of fifteen miles.
The native Pinaleno Indians of the San Carlos region, while inclined toward spasmodic outbreaks, were not as hostile as their western neighbors, the Mohave and Yuma Apaches. A very dangerous element was added when, in 1876, under direction of the army, Agent John P. Clum moved to San Carlos 325 Indians of the Chiricahua-Apache strain from a reservation in southeastern Arizona.
All of the springs found, but one, were insignificant and either soon went dry or fluctuated with the seasons; but the big spring, known as Pinaleno, was worth finding, and flows a constant stream of pure, soft water that fills a four-inch iron pipe.
The ranch derives its name from the Graham or Pinaleno mountains which the Indians called the Sierra Bonita because of the many beautiful wild flowers that grow there. It is twenty miles north of Willcox, a thriving village on the Southern Pacific Railroad, and ten miles south of Ft. Grant, that nestles in a grove of cotton trees at the foot of Mt. Graham, the noblest mountain in southern Arizona.
Railroad Pass is a wide break between two mountain ranges and is a fine grazing section. It is handsomely bounded and presents a magnificent view. To the north are the Pinaleno mountains, with towering Mt. Graham in their midst, that are nearly eleven thousand feet high and lie dark in the shadows of their dense pine forests.
Game, also, seemed to be abundant but very shy and as we were not particularly hunting that kind of stock, we forebore giving chase or firing at long range. After riding about among the hills back of the Pinaleno ranch and not finding anything we concluded to return home.
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