TOMBSTONES Chapter Five

I am confident that during March of 1879 Edward Schieffelin (above) was suffering from ennui. He had new clothes, he was bathing and eating regularly, and probably for the first time in his life he was being treated with respect by strangers. But the man who had spent half his life alone, seeking his fortune over the next hill, admitted, "I never wanted to be rich, I just wanted to get close to the earth and see mother nature's gold." His discovery of the Tombstone silver lode had robbed him of whatShakespeare's Hamlet called "...the name of action". So in Philadelphia, he left negotiations for the million dollar deal to his brother Alfred and their partner, Richard Gird.

The principle investors in the richest silver strike since the Comstock lode, Frank and Phillip Corbin, had built their fortune (above) making door locks and metal trimmings for coffins. They knew nothing about mining. But because they agreed how best to profit from the Lucky Cuss and Tough Nut claims, they were welcomed as partners. 

The new corporate offices for The Tombstone Milling and Mining Company, at 425 Walnut Street in Philadelphia, issued half a million shares of stock, which were quickly snapped up by investors. Almost over night Ed Schieffelin was a millionaire. And there was more to come.

Within a year there were 3,000 working mines between the Dragoon and Mule mountains and the San Pedro River.  Besides the original four, the richest claims would be the Grand Central, the Goodenough, the Vizna, the Empire, the Tranquility, the Sydney, The Girard, The Sulphuret and The Bob Ingersoll. But none were as rich as the first. At depth the Tough Nut's vein was sometimes 20 feet wide, and required 75 men to extract it and another 80 to mill what it produced. The vein in the Grand Central mine was 8 to 12 feet wide.

Tombstone Mining and Milling sold half of the Lucky Cuss for $10,000, using the cash to fund construction of stamping mills, under newly named Superintendent Richard Gird.

Over 500 tons of ore each day from all the mines had to be transported by 16 mule team ore wagons 8 miles west to the San Pedro river, at a cost of $3.50 a ton. Along both banks, 7 deafening stamp mills were constructed, surrounded by almost identical reverberating villages of between 200 and 600 residents each, named Charleston, Contention, Fairbank and Millville.  Here running water or steam driven steel hammers, 140 "stamps" in total, pounded the ore 24 hours a day until it was reduced to powder. Separated in baths of cyanide, and then heated to 1,763 degrees Fahrenheit, the 90 % pure liquid silver was then poured into molds. Carried by stagecoach to Benson, where it met the The New Mexico and Arizona branch of the Atchison Topeka and the Santa Fe railroad, the ingots were then shipped the bars  to El Paso, Texas for ultimate refining.

In one year alone- between April 1881 and April 1882 - the San Pedro mills shipped $1.3 million worth of silver bullion to El Paso - about $30 million today.   In just 4 years greater Tombstone grew from 100 to 8,000 white males. Adding women, African Americans, Hispanics and Chinese, the real total was probably closer to 10,000 souls living in the Sonoran desert without direct access to fresh water, food, or plumbing. 

Everything had to be brought in by wagon or burro. And still the town eventually supported Vogan's 10 pin Bowling Alley And Bar, a gym, a book store, 4 churches, an ice house, one school, 2 banks, 3 newspapers, several billiard parlors, an ice cream parlor, 2 Italian, 1 French, a couple of Chinese and several Mexican restaurants, as well as many that promised "Home Cooking" and a few which actually delivered it,  110 saloons, 42 lawyers, at least 14 gambling and dance halls and at least a dozen brothels.

The Can Can French restaurant advertised "Game as wild as a tornado, chicken as tender as a maiden’s heart, ice-cream as delicious as a day in June, dessert that would charm the soul of a South Sea Islander and smiles as bright as the morning sun..." The Grand Hotel boasted 16 rooms, each "..fitted with walnut furniture and carpeted...spring mattresses that would tempt even a sybarite, toilet stands and fixtures... the walls papered, and...each room having windows." There was even limited telephone service by 1882.

Most famous (or infamous) business in Tombstone would be the tiny Bird Cage Theatre- open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week after it opened Christmas eve 1881.  It was named for the  twin balcony, 7 bedrooms 2nd floor,  suspended from the ceiling- their physical load transferred to the thick adobe exterior walls (below).  Their moral load carried by the patrons seemingly without effort 

A beer at the bar cost a dollar - equivalent to $22 today - extra if you ordered it from one of the suspended "cages" (above). These were single use spaces - prostitution being pound for pound and minute for minute the most profitable business in Tombstone. 

According to the New York Times the Birdcage was "...the wildest, wickedest night spot between Basin Street (New Orleans) and (San Francisco's) the Barbary Coast."

It was also small. Past the bar (above), the main hall was just 15 X 15 feet, not including the stage and orchestra pit. With summer temperatures routinely reaching 118°F, and with open flame gas jets providing the only lighting in the windowless building, crowded with warm bodies and clouds of cigar smoke from the basement gambling parlor, tempers and oxygen must have both been in short supply.

The only thing holding the level of sin at bay seemed to have been the lack of water, and by March of 1881 the Huachuca Water Company had trapped the flow from 3 springs behind a dam  (above) built across Miller canyon, 6,500 feet up in the Huachuca Mountains, southwest of Tombstone. Gravity forced the fresh water through the 7 inch iron pipe across 26 miles of desert to a 1 million gallon reservoir just above Tombstone. The water must have been hot.

Boasted the "Epitaph", "It is safe to say that no other town in America, of its size and population, is better supplied with amusements...Only last evening...there were meetings of firemen, Odd fellows, city council, the literary and debating society, together with a ball, a theatre, a dancing school, and a couple of private parties, all at full blast! Hurrah for Tombstone! (above)"

The town's economy rested on the strong backs and arms of its 6,000 male miners and mill workers  - mostly Cornish, Irish, Poles and Germans (above). They earned the union wage of $4 for every 10 hour shift in the tunnels. Between that sum and the pay for teamsters and support staff, $168,000 in cash was injected into Tombstone's economy each week. 

And just about as many faro dealers, bartenders, south side prostitutes, lawyers, restaurant owners, hotel clerks, bakers, Chinese laundrymen, Mexican laborers, opium den operators, life insurance salesmen and politicians did their very best to take every dime of it.  It was a miner, whose addictions had reduced him to a dish washer, who bestowed upon Tombstone it's official nickname - not El Dorado (golden city) but Helldorado.

Still, in its bloodiest year - 1881 - Tombstone, Arizona officially recorded only 6 homicides. And 3 of those were by police officers, in the shoot out at the O.K. Corral. Over the decade between the town's founding and water flooding into the mines, there were 130 "murders and self-defense" gun deaths, 18 "accidental" gun deaths and 15 self inflicted gunshot deaths. That low a death toll, when compared to the higher rates in outlying mill towns, can only be ascribed to ordinance Number 9, imposing a $25 fine for carrying a deadly weapon "...in the hand or upon the person or otherwise....within the limits of said city of Tombstone..." Guns were still readily available, but the slight delay in accessing them seems to have made all the difference.

Meanwhile Mose Drachman, resident of the little mill town of Charleston (above, bottom) - population about 350 -  and without benefit of ordinance Number 9 -  remembered "...it was not an uncommon sight to see one or more dead men lying in the street when going to work...If a dead man had a gun on him and was shot from the front, no one bothered to look for the killer.” 

Charleston's only employee was sheriff, judge, treasurer and Justice of the Peace, James Burnett, "...a known scoundrel..." "Justice Jim" operated on a strictly cash basis, kept the town treasury in his pocket, recorded no records and favored the "open carry" approach to justice.

One of the few murders in Charleston to ever go to trial occurred outside Harry Queen's saloon on 1 October, 1881.  Braggart and hothead James Hickey was on the tail end of 3 day bender, and out of money. As he staggered out the door he ran into Billy "The Kid" Claiborne (above). Hickey had been looking for the popular Claiborne for days, spoiling for a fight and calling him "a prick eating son-of-a-bitch".  The Kid tried to walk away from the drunk, and warned Hickey that if he kept following, Claiborne would kill him. When Hickey kept coming, Billy shot him down, and when Hickey got up, The Kid shot him once more in the face, killing him. It took 2 trials but Billy Claiborne was eventually found to have killed in self defense.   

More typical were 2 other murders in Justice Burnetts'  jurisdiction of Charleston (above). First, the   January of 1881 shooting of W.P. Scheider, chief engineer of the Corbin Mill, who was gunned down by Johnny-Behind-the-Deuce, AKA Micheal O'Rourke  -  and the March 1882 killing of 26 year old Martin Ruter Peel, who was murdered in full view of witnesses by 2 masked men.  Martin was an engineer for Tombstone Mining and Milling, and the son of a prominent judge. Yet no one was ever charged in his murder. O'Rourke was arrested and was threatened by a lynch mob of miners and cowboys - encouraged by Curly Bill Brocius and Johnny Ringo. The lynching was blocked by among others Wyatt Earp, who managed to lock up the killer in Tombstone.  But Johnny-Behind -The- Deuce never stood trial because he escaped jail. Thus the "Open Carry" version of justice was far from open or just.

Albert Schieffelin stayed around Tombstone long enough to build the largest adobe structure in the southwest, where men could take their wives to hear music and see theatre -  Schieffelin Hall. Then he left for Los Angeles, where he died in 1885, of the consumption he contracted in the mines. Richard Gerd ran the mills for years, eventually selling his share of the flooding mines for $800,000. But the finder, Ed Schieffelin ,  never returned to Tombstone. 

Eventually Ed (above) bought a ranch near the Schieffelin homestead in the Rogue Valley in Oregon. But even a wife and child, and mansions outside of San Francisco and in Los Angeles could not hold him. In May of 1897 Ed suffered a heart attack, alone in a California mountain cabin, still looking for "Mother Nature's Gold". When he died, Ed was not yet 50 years old.  He left his wife Mary, "...all...real and personal properties, in...California", and gave the rest of his fortune to his only surviving brother, Jay.

As his will requested Ed was buried 3 miles east of Tombstone, near the dry wash where he had first found ore. In his coffin he was provided with a pick. a shovel and his old canteen, should the afterlife offer him opportunities for more prospecting. His tombstone (above) is, as he requested, "a monument, such as prospectors build when locating a mining claim." It was as if he were saying this was where his life ended, after 15 years of searching and 20 years before his death.

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TOMBSTONES Chapter Four

I bet during his quiet moments in the White House, 55 year old Rutherford Bichard Hayes (above) often wondered, "Why the hell did I ever take this damn job?" "Old Granny" Hayes should have felt lucky. 

Despite losing the November 1876 election by a quarter million popular votes - thanks to the Klu Kux Klan's brutally effective voter suppression program (above) - and despite being tied with 63 year old New York Democratic Governor Samuel Tilden with 183 electoral votes,  Republican "Ruther-fraud" would be named "President Defacto",  earning Hayes the additional nickname of "Old 8 to 7" -  the split on the 15 member commission which finally settled the election in February of 1877 in his favor

But having won the office Hayes was forced to admit, "I am not liked as a President by the politicians...in the press, or in Congress." In order to win the office he had been forced to promise to remain a one term President, Still Democrats considered the Republican Hayes "The Usurper". 

And Republicans, such as Senator Rosco Conkling of New York,  called his election, "...the Austerlitz of American politics" because Hayes won by sacrificing the rights of 4 million recently enfranchised African Americans. He had also been forced to promise to withdraw federal troops from southern states which had not yet moved to integrate African-Americans into their political systems.

Determined to hold Rutherford's feet to the fire, in 1877 the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives  reduced the army to just 25,000 men and held up their budgets,. That year became known as "The Year the Army Didn't Get Paid".   But Democrats boasted of foiling "His Fraudulancy's" dreams for a war with Mexico.  And they refused to budge, even while Texas citizens were suffering from Indian and criminal raids crossing the Rio Grande River. 

Struggling against such road blocks, Secretary of War, 42 year old penny pinch-er George McCrary, authorized the army to cross the Rio Grande in "hot pursuit" of Mexican raiders, which they did 23 times over the decade. And the Secretary of State, 60 year old William Maxwell Evarts, vowed not to recognize the new Mexican government of 47 year old General Porfiro Diaz until the raids were stopped, because, ".. not one single man, so far as is known to this government, has been punished".

Time did not improve the situation of poor President Hayes. In the mid-term elections of November 1878, the Democrats retained their hold in the House of Representatives, - 141 Democrats to 132 Republicans, with 13 Greenback and 7 independents. And for the first time since before the Civil War, the Democrats gained control of the Senate as well - 42 to 31 seats.  Rutherford was smart enough to know what a disaster this partisanship was for the country, warning the Democrats,, "Extreme party action...would ruin the party....The party out of power gains by all partisan conduct of those in power."  No one on the other side was listening, of course. Winners never learn from their victories.

After failing 3 times to override Hayes' veto of pro - Klu Klux Klan legislation, the Democrats slashed funding for the United States Marshals Service, which was still enforcing laws against the nighttime rides by terrorists in white robes. With no funding for new Deputies, or Federal judges in the territories, Republican officials in Arizona and New Mexico were left without the means to prosecute rustlers and thieves who were funded by cross border raids into Chiluahua and Sonora. In short, by crippling the executive branch the Democrats in Washington were matching the anarchy on the Mexican side of the border.  Speaking of which...

The political pressure in Mexico to respond to the "Hot Pursuit" was irresistible. Ignaio Vallarta, the 47 year old Minister of Foreign Affairs, angerly charged it treated Mexican citizens ".. as savages,” and President Diaz (above) ordered the Mexican Army to " Repel with force" any invasion of Mexican soil. And it was about then that 37 year old General José Guillermo Carbó was dispatched to Sonora, to bring things under control.

He was a good choice, a complex man made up of equal parts thinking military officer and poet. And he quickly came to love the mountains and deserts of Sonora, writing, "You are my new homeland:

if someday You are in danger, I swear, Sonora, O my country! I will rush to defend you." With the Mexican reorganization of the border region, Secretary Everts modified the hot pursuit policy, telling 60 year old U.S. General Edward Ord that "Whenever Mexican troops are present and prepared to intercept retreating raiders", he was to withdraw and let them do the work.

In fact as the American and Mexican officers made the effort to meet each other they found they had a good deal in common. Both were being trained on the Prussian model. Both were being starved for funds by their divided governments. Both were facing the same enemies - the Apache and gangs of criminals. And both sides knew the last thing they wanted was to fight  each other. In April of 1878, the American officers convinced the American diplomats and politicians to recognize the Diez government of Mexico.

The biggest problem was that the Sonoran blancos (above) remained the only "job creators", in Sonora. And increasingly that state became the supplier of food - cattle and wheat - to the Americans. Because of the high import/export duties, this was usually done through smuggling. And the Haciendas were usually paid in manufactured goods smuggled south. The third largest town in Sonora was Magdalena,  half way between Hermosillo and Tuscon, Arizona. Magdalena reaped the profits as a way station in the smuggling trade. But that was not unmitigated good news. When the largest land owner in the district, Manuel Mascarenas, was arrested and charged with stealing his neighbors'  cattle and selling them in Arizona, his patrone, Louis Torres, made the charges disappear.

The lack of liquidity and of order also drove many Sonoran businesses to take on silent American partners, a practice called "petate del muerto" - or the repose of the dead. These relationships were used for legal as well as illegal businesses. It would have been a mutually beneficial business except the Americans usually saw no reason to allow their Sonoran partners to profit at all. American butchers, supplying beef to Nevada miners, certainly showed no hesitation when they could increase profits by stealing cattle from Sonoran ranchers, rather than buying them.  And every once in awhile Mexican frustrations boiled to the surface, producing a cross border "raid", as happened with the Galeyville, Arizona butcher named Miller McCallister.

The story goes that Miller had gone south with enough silver to buy 80 head of cattle. Instead opportunity presented itself on the moon lit un-fenced scrub land 10 miles south of the Sonoran town of Fronteras.  McCallister and 4 of his partners - George Turner, John Oliver, H.A. Garcia and William "Curly Bill" Brocius  - stumbled upon 500 head of cattle.  And without bothering to notify their owner, the Americans drove the herd north. After slipping through the twisting Guadalupe Canyon and safely across the border, the Yankees drove the cows across the San Simon Valley, to the west face of the Peloncillo Mountains. Their next goal was to pass through the confines of Skeleton Canyon (above) on the border between New Mexico and Arizona..  But as they approached the watering hole of the San Simon Cienega or marsh (below) in the Peloncillos,  just at dawn on Thursday, 13 May, 1880,  the weary rustlers were confronted by a determined wiry dark man with a double barreled shotgun resting in his arms.

Standing in the half light, the man challenged the startled Americans in accented English, "I am Senior Jose Juan Vasquez," he declared, "and these are my cattle. You are free to go home, to your own side of the border. But my cattle stay here." Instead of simply riding away, one the Americans rashly opened fire.  

Instantly 40 vaqueros began blasting away from rocks. When the gunfire finally slowed and stilled,  not only was McCallister dead, but so were Turner, Olvier and Garciea. There were reports some of the wounded cowboys had been tortured to death by the Mexican ranch hands after they realized their boss, Senior Vasquez, had also been killed. However no proof of this was ever offered.

Shortly thereafter a report in the newspaper "The Southwest",  published in Silver City, New Mexico,  claimed that local physician Dr. Henry Woodville had treated the sole American survivor of what was being called the Skeleton Canyon Massacre - William "Curly Bill" Brocius (above). And the career of Brocius is emblematic of the matching anarchy on the American side of the border.

The story was that Curly Bill and another man had robbed a stagecoach in Texas, killing the driver and a passenger. During their trial both bandits had escaped, and in 1878 Curley Bill reappeared in Southern New Mexico,  where he fell in with an older desperado named , Robert E. "Dutch" Martin. Dutch made his living stealing silver and cattle in Sonora, and killing any Mexicans who got in his way.  He would then sell his stolen goods in the United States, where he was a respected businessman.  Curly Bill became Dutch Martin's second in command over the outlaw Cow Boys.  Martin mostly stayed in New Mexico, while Brocius spent considerable time in the growing market around Tombstone,  Arizona. 

Geologist Raphael Pumpelly, who was familiar with mining regions from Michigan to Japan, said that in the San Pedro River towns surrounding Tombstone, (above) - Fairbank, Charleston and Milltown, "Murder was the order of the day...everyone goes around armed to the teeth." In Charlestown it was not unusual to find at least one dead body on the street every morning,  These deaths were not investigated as a murder if  "the wound was in the front or a gun was found nearby",  And if the victim were a 'nigger' African American, a "greaser" Hispanic American, or a "Chink" Asian American, not even then. 

It was Pumpelly who described the Tombstone mining district as having little "pretense of civilization".   And that was the division across the Sonora desert border region - between the thieves  who sought and profited from anarchy, and the thieves who sought to profit from order. 

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TOMBSTONES Chapter Three

I know what James Holmes said he was thinking as the lunatic approached, "waving his arms and shouting like a mad man". Holmes said he feared for his life. If that was true, it was courageous when he stepped from the cool dark of Brunckow's adobe (above) into the dessert sun to display his double barrel shot gun. He said he warned the hulking figure "not to move a foot". But the big man, whom Holmes recognized as Milton Duffield, "The Most Violent Man in Arizona", infamous for his "withering temper, belligerent and disputatious" nature, whose fists were “as big as any two fists to be seen...”, and who always carried an arsenal of weapons, kept coming. And Holms insisted that reputation justified what he did next. But because there were no witnesses to corroborate his version of this 4 June, 1874 confrontation. Still,  I harbour doubts as to Mr. Holms' veracity.

Edward Laurence Schieffelin (above) was not an educated geologist like Frederick Brunckow. But Ed had been criss-crossing the Basin and Range province since he was 17, looking to reverse his family fortunes. Yet separated by 16 years  and by a yawning education gap, both men, Brunckhow and Schieffelin, ended up in the same 3 room adobe, a mile east of the San Pedro River. 

 Army Scout Al Sieber warned Edward about prospecting in Apache territory of southern Arizona. "The only rocks you will find there will be your tombstone." But in the spring of 1877, about 8 miles from the Brunckow adobe, Ed found chunks of silver "float", rocks washed down by the occasional cloudbursts and gully washers during the summer "Monsoons".  He started working his way back up the wash, toward the plateau at the southern end of the Dragoon Mountains (above), toward a tilted plane called Goose Flats.

In 1852 the 42 year old Milton Duffield (above) abandoned a wife and child to seek California gold. His pugnacious personality made him so unpopular in the gold fields that in 1854 he was confronted at gunpoint by 3 antagonized acquaintances. Milton killed one and wounded another. Within ten years he's reputation earned him appointment as the first Federal Marshal of Arizona Territory. Shortly thereafter a drunken lout named "Waco Bill" boasted he could not wait to meet the new marshal. Whereupon, Milton, who had been drinking at the same bar, knocked Bill down, shot Bill in the stomach and then grandly introduced himself.

Ed Schieffelin spent June and July combing Goose Flats mesa for the source of the red and black silver ore. The vein he found was 50 feet long and 12 inches wide before it disappeared into the earth. It was so rich in silver, that a coin pressed against it left an imprint. Gathering samples of the ore, Ed built 3 foot high stone cairns bracketing the site, "staking his claim", and then hurried to the San Pedro river camp of would-be rancher, William Griffith, who had offered to "stake" Ed if he found a likely spot. At the end of August the two traveled the 70 miles northwest to Tuscon, where, on 3 September 1877 Griffith paid the $5.00 double filing fee to the county clerk. Ed called his new mine the "Tombstone" and Griffith's "The Grave Yard".

When a lynch party broke into the Phoenix jail, Marshal Milton Duffield defended his 4 prisoners - sort of.  As they tied him to a chair, he warned the vigilantes, "You can hang a Mexican, and you can hang a Jew and you can hang a nigger, but you can't hang an American." Evidently, they could - hanging all four men. Once he was released, Marshal Duffield found it politically expedient not to arrest the prominent members of the lynching party.

Schieffelin (above) and Griffith showed their ore samples to several Tuscon miners, and none thought the rocks worth a chemical examination. Griffith accepted their judgment and bowed out of the partnership. But with only 30 cents to his name, Ed Schieffelin could not afford to surrender his dream.  However, in his present incarnation, he could attract no other investors. One observer described him in 1877 as having "...black hair that hung several inches below his shoulder and a beard that....was a mass of unkempt knots and mats", and wearing "...clothing pieced and patched from deer skins, corduroy and flannel..." Ed gathered up his ore samples and headed out to find his brother Al, who was working at the Silver King mine 100 miles north of Tuscon, in Globe, Arizona.

Marshal Duffield continued to inspire people to try and kill him. One would-be assassin even took a shot at him in open court. Finally, in 1865, offended by his low salary, Milton resigned. The lack of a badge did nothing to mediate his personality. One night in a whore house a friend, John Gregory Bourke, asked Duffield just how many weapons he carried. Milton was just drunk enough not to take offense, and proceeded lay his ever present hand gun on the table, joined by a second gun from a hidden shoulder holster, and derringers from his vest pocket, tucked into his boot, his hip pocket, his front pant pocket and a rear pant pocket. Then he began to produce a variety of knives. Eventually Milton Duffield lay 11 weapons on the table, and no one thought he had completely disarmed.

The north central Arizona town of Globe earned its name in 1875 when a round clump of horn silver was found on Apache lands. When Ed Schieffelin arrived in the fall of 1877, there were 3 mines operating in the area. But Ed's brother Al had just left town, chasing a new silver strike, 300 miles north on the Big Sandy River, at the foot of the Poachie Mountains. Ed spent 2 weeks working at the Champion mine in Globe to earn enough money to make the trip. When he arrived in the new town of Signal, it had a post office and barely 100 residents, one of whom was Al Schieffelin. After a brief reunion (the brothers had not seen each other in 4 years) Ed showed his ore samples to a number of other miners, none of whom thought them worth anything. That night Ed got drunk, and threw his samples as far as he could into the desert night.

Milton Duffield went into real estate, speculating in mining claims. And he continued offending people. When he got into a poker argument, Milton knocked his opponent to the ground, then kicked him in the head. And for good measure, Milton ended the discussion by shooting the stunned man in the ass. One night in June of 1870, 2 men tip toed into his bedroom. Milton awoke to the pain of an axe slicing into his shoulder. He fought the attackers off, sending them retreating into the dark. But it cost Milton his right thumb, in addition to 31 stab wounds

In February of 1878 a new assayer arrived in Signal. His name was Richard Gird. When Ed Schieffelin worked up the courage to show him some ore samples he had missed throwing away the previous fall, Gird was interested enough to run some chemical tests. Three days later he informed Al and Ed the ore tested as being worth $2,000 a ton. The three men (above) made a handshake deal on the spot. Gird bought a second hand blue spring board wagon, and a mule for Ed, and the partners headed back to the Goose Flats mesa.

Time, and his lifestyle was taking a toll on Milton Duffield. His dark eyes still flashed, but his dark hair was turning white. Since the nighttime attack he "...no longer took pleasure in rows, but acted like one who had enough of battles..." Known now generally as "Old Duffy" Milton concentrated on speculating in other people's mining claims. And in 1872 Milton acquired claim to the "Bronco" mine and the adobe, once owned by Frederick Brucnkow (above). A year later, in a tax ploy, he transferred ownership of the mine to his Phoenix landlady, Mrs. Mary E. Vaghn.

In the early spring of 1878 the three partners occupied the Brunckow adobe (above). Gird built an assay furnace in the remains of the cabin's fire place, and the Schieffelin brothers began chipping away at the lode on Goose Flats. The vein proved worth the $2,000 a ton estimate, just as Gird had predicted, but there was barely a ton of it. The vein pinched out three feet below ground level. Al and Gird were despondent, but Ed insisted there was more silver in hills above the mesa, and set out to find it.

The day that Milton Duffield rode his wagon out to the Brunckow adobe - Thursday, 5 June, 1874, he was 64 years old. "Old Duffy" knew he was going to confront a claim jumper - James T. Holmes. Holmes had occupied the cabin a few weeks before, and had ostentatiously begun working the Bronco mine. But Milton knew there was not enough silver left in the 14 year old Bronco to be worth digging out, dragging to the surface and grinding into dust. Apache's and local bandits had murdered some 20 men within sight of the cabin, and it seems that Milton might even have been trying to talk sense to the younger man. It may even have been that his arrival was not a surprise to Holmes, since "Old Duffy" made the trip unarmed.

On Tuesday, 17 June, 1879, Ed Schieffelin arrived in Tuscon driving a battered blue spring wagon. He stopped first at the county recorder's office, to register 2 new mining claims above Goose Flats - the "Tough Nut" and "The Lucky Cuss".  He also filed paperwork forming a legal partnership, The Tombstone Gold and Silver Mining Company. Then, Ed delivered his buggy load of silver bullion to the bank, making a deposit the bank valued at $18,744 - almost half a million in today's currency. 

The 90 foot wide "Tough Nut" (above) vein would assay out at $15,000 a ton. And it would not pinch out for ten years.

Milton B. Duffield (above) , "The Most Violent Man in Arizona", was buried near the Brunckow adobe. But the Marshal testified he had been killed by a double barrel shotgun blast to the head. The wound suggested that James Holmes had laid in wait and assassinated "Old Duffy".   And it was said that in jail Holmes confessed to having been paid $2,000 to eliminate the old man. But who paid him would remain a mystery. Holmes "escaped" before his trial, and was never seen or heard from again. Maybe he changed his name and moved to California, or maybe his employers shut his mouth forever. Much of Milton Duffield's estate had already been signed over to his Phoenix landlady, Mrs. Mary E. Vaghn, hinting the old man was near broke. What was left would be contested by his three wives - the one abandoned in West Virginia, one in California and one in Arizona. About the only thing the first Marshal of Arizona Territory never did, was divorce.

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