carried some masculine
protector with them. A man had to be a good driver to drive a stage,
too, for the heavy brakes were not easily manipulated and there were
some very bad stretches of road.

Apropos of what I have just said about stage drivers being slain, and
the difficulty sometimes experienced in getting men to take their
places, I remember that on certain occasions I would take the place of
the mail driver from Tucson to Apache Pass, north of where Douglas now
is--the said mail driver having been killed--get fifty dollars for the
trip and blow it all in before I started for fear I might not otherwise
get a chance to spend it.

The stage I drove for this Wickenburg company was one that ran regular
trips out of Wickenburg. Several trips passed without much occurring
worthy of note; and then on one trip I fell off the box, injuring my
ankle. When I arrived back in Wickenburg I was told by Manager Pierson
of the company that I would be relieved from driving the stage because
my foot was not strong enough to work the heavy brakes, and would be
given instead the buckboard to drive to Florence and back on post-office
business.

The next trip the stage made out of Wickenburg, therefore, I remained
behind. A few miles from town the stage was held up by an overwhelming
force of Apaches, the driver and all save two of the passengers
massacred, and the contents looted. A woman named Moll Shepherd, going
back East with a large sum of money in her possession, and a man named
Kruger, escaped the Indians, hid in the hills and were the only two who
survived to tell the story of what has gone down into history as the
famous "Wickenburg Stage Massacre." I shudder now to think how nearly I
might have been on the box on that fatal trip.

I was not entirely to escape the Apaches, however. On the first return
trip from Florence to Wickenburg with the buckboard, while I was
congratulating myself and thanking my lucky stars for the accident to my
ankle, Apaches "jumped" the buckboard and gave me and my one passenger,
Charlie Block of Wickenburg, a severe tussle for it. We beat them off in
the end, owing to superior marksmanship, and arrived in Wickenburg
unhurt. Block was part owner of the Barnett and Block store in
Wickenburg and was a well-known man in that section.

After this incident I determined to quit driving stages and buckboards
and, casting about for some new line of endeavor, went for the first
time into the restauran