* * * * * My purpose in writing these memoirs is two-fold: First, I desired that my children should have a record which could be referred to by them after I am gone; and, secondly, that the State of Arizona, my adopted home, should be the richer for the possession of the facts I have at my disposal. I want the reader to understand that even though the process of evolution has taken a life-time, I cannot cease wondering at the marvelous development of the Territory and, later, State of Arizona. When I glance back over the vista of years and see the old, and then open my eyes to survey the new, it is almost as though a Verne or a Haggard sketch had come to life. Who, in an uneventful stop-over at Geronimo, Graham county, would believe that these same old Indians who sit so peacefully mouthing their cigarros at the trading store were the terrible Apaches of former days--the same avenging demons who murdered emigrants, fought the modernly-equipped soldier with bow and arrow, robbed and looted right and left and finally were forced to give in to their greatest enemy, Civilization. And who shall begin to conjecture the thoughts that now and again pass through the brains of these old Apache relics, living now so quietly on the bounty of a none-too-generous government? What dreams of settlement massacres, of stage robberies, of desperate fights, they may conjure up until the wheezy arrival of the Arizona Eastern locomotive disperses their visions with the blast of sordid actuality! For the Arizona that I knew back in the Frontier days was the embodiment of the Old West--the West of sudden fortune and still more sudden death; the West of romance and of gold; of bad whiskey and doubtful women; of the hardy prospector and the old cattleman, who must gaze a little sadly back along the trail as they near the end of it, at thought of the days that may never come again. And now I myself am reaching the end of my long and eventful journey, and I can say, bringing to mind my youth and all that followed it, that I have _lived_, really _lived_, and I am content. THE END. +-----------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Typographical errors corrected in the text: | | | | Page 80 recklesssly changed to recklessly | | Page 82 Wickenberg changed to Wickenburg | +-----------------------------------------------+