John Slaughter served two terms as sheriff, and when he retired from office Cochise County was as peaceable as any county in the whole Southwest. The old-timers who witnessed the passing of events during his regime invariably speak of him when they are telling of great gunmen. Yet, from the time when he started up the Pecos with that herd in the spring of 1876 until the day when he went to his San Bernardino ranch to take up life as a peaceful cattleman, he slew fewer men than some whose names are absolutely unknown. What he did he managed to accomplish in most instances without pulling a trigger. That was his way. COCHISE Darkness had settled down upon the wide mesquite flat, smoothing off all irregularities, hiding outlines until the tallest thickets were but deeper shadows merging into the lesser shades of the open places. Only one object showed, a Sibley tent glowing from the light within. Under the flaming yellow stars it stood out luminous, marking the exact center of an enormous circle; a circle roofed by the radiantly flecked heavens, bounded by mountains which rose against the sky-line, abrupt as a wall, black as ink. In the different segments of this far-flung ring the peaks of the Chiracahuas, the Grahams, the Dragoons, and the Galiuros betrayed their ranges by varying outlines. But to the eye they all formed portions of one huge circumference, whose center was a glowing point, the Sibley tent. On the translucent walls of canvas there was a weird design of black shadows, a design which was constantly shifting and taking on new shapes. And as the shadows moved, sometimes with grotesque effect and swiftly, sometimes slowly, voices filtered through the gleaming cloth to mingle with the whispering of the night wind in the bear-grass, the dull stamping of tethered horses, the intermittent jingling of bitt-chains and the steady soft footfalls of two sentries. The voices changed as often as the shadows on the tent-wall; now it was the abrupt, clipping speech of a white man and now the deep, inflectionless bass of an Indian. But most often it was the droning monotone of the post interpreter, uttering his translations in English or in the tongue of the Apache. Of what was taking place within those luminous walls of canvas, official records still exist; and of what followed there are whole volumes of further records in Washington. Dry reading in themselves, they hold the meat of a remarkable story, a story whose colorful narration has been given by its own main characters and thus has come down among the true chronicles of the old-timers.