ed and fifty
thousand dollars in money and arms to its resources, with the intention
of enlisting as much capital as might be required from New England.
Machinery was constructed on the Atlantic seaboard, and hauled overland
from the Gulf of Mexico to the mines,--1350 miles.

The Apaches had not up to this time given any trouble; but on the
contrary, passed within sight of our herds, going hundreds of miles into
Mexico on their forays rather than break their treaty with the
Americans. They could have easily carried off our stock by killing the
few vaqueros kept with them on the range, but refrained from doing so
from motives well understood on the frontiers. There is an unwritten law
among ranchmen as old as the treaty between Abraham and Lot.

In 1857 a company of lumbermen from Maine, under a captain named Tarbox,
established a camp in the Santa Rita Mountains to whipsaw lumber at one
hundred and fifty dollars per thousand feet, and were doing well, as the
company bought all they could saw. They built a house and corral on the
south side of the Santa Cruz River, on the road from Tucson to Tubac,
called the Canoa. This wayside inn formed a very convenient stopping
place for travelers on the road. One day twenty-five or thirty Mexicans
rode into Tubac, and said the Apaches had made a raid on their ranches,
and were carrying off some hundred head of horses and mules over the
Babaquivera plain, intending to cross the Santa Cruz River between the
Canoa and Tucson. The Mexicans wanted us to join them in a cortada (cut
off), and rescue the animals, offering to divide them with us for our
assistance; but remembering our treaty with the Apaches, and how
faithfully they had kept it, we declined. They went on to the Canoa,
where the lumbermen were in camp, and made the same proposition, which
they accepted, as they were new in the country and needed horses and
mules. The lumbermen joined the Mexicans, and as they could easily
discern the course of the Apaches by the clouds of dust, succeeded in
forming an ambuscade and fired on the Apaches when they reached the
river. The Apaches fled at the fire, leaving the stolen stock behind.

The Mexicans made a fair division, and the mule trade was lively with
the lumbermen and the merchants in Tucson. With the proceeds of their
adventure the lumbermen added many comforts and luxuries to their camp
at the Canoa on the Santa Cruz, and travelers reveled in crystal and
whisky.

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