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Had all the Arizona Indians been as hostile as were the Apaches, the probabilities are that the settlement of Arizona by the whites would have been of far more recent date, for in instance after instance the Americans in Arizona were obliged to rely on the help of the peaceful Indians to combat the rapacious Apaches. Yuma is the place where the infamous "Doc" Glanton and his gang operated.
There was one very dark night in the month o' January, when I was little mair than seventeen, my faither and me were gaun to Morpeth, and we were wishing to get forward wi' the beasts as far as Whittingham; but just as we were about half a mile doun the loanin' frae Glanton, it cam' awa ane o' the dreadfu'est storms that e'er mortal was out in.
This was long before my time, and as the province of this book is merely to tell the story of life in the Territory as I saw it, it has no place within these pages. It may, however, be mentioned that Glanton was the leader of a notorious gang of freebooters who established a ferry across the Colorado at Yuma and used it as a hold-up scheme to trap unwary emigrants.
Meantime several of the sick and wounded were so far cured as to be able to return to duty. Thompson, Mr. Taylor, and several others whose names I have forgotten, and the bugler, named Glanton, still remained. One morning, while I was in the mealroom getting out dinner, I heard Captain Butler's voice calling loudly that young Butler was bleeding to death.
'Oh, what shall I do? said I, and cried and shouted for help for the snaw fell sae fast, and the drift was sae terrible, that I was feared that, even if he werena dead, he wad be smothered and buried up before I could ride to Glanton and back. And, as I cried, our poor dog Rover came couring to my faither's body and licked his hand, and its pitiful howls mingled wi' the shrieks o' the wind.
Whittingham Fair, now Whittingham Sports, a well-known rendezvous of the whole countryside, has lost some of its former splendour, but is still looked forward to with great enjoyment in the surrounding district. The old coaching road from Newcastle to Edinburgh passed through the village, crossing the Aln by the stone bridge, from whence it went on through Glanton and Wooler to Cornhill.
I couldna see where he had been hurt; and still, though he groaned but once, I didna think he was dead, and I strove and strove again to lift him upon the back o' the powney, and take him back to Glanton; but though I fought wi' my heart like to burst a' the time, I couldna accomplish it.
The Yuma Indians also operated a ferry, for which they had hired as pilot a white man, whom some asserted to have been a deserter from the United States army. One day Glanton and his gang, angered at the successful rivalry of the Indians, fell on them and slew the pilot. The Glanton gang was subsequently wiped out by the Indians in retaliation.
The little stream, which turns northward near Glanton railway station, moves on in loops and windings past Beanley, which Earl Gospatric held in former days by virtue of the curious office of being a kind of official mediator between the monarchs of England and Scotland when they came to blows; and past Bewick, with its little Norman church buried from sight amongst leafy trees.
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