TOMBSTONES Chapter Fourteen

I can't imagine what the hell Pete Spence - aka Elliot Larkin Ferguson - was thinking when he and that smug violent little (5.4") lunatic Frank Stillwell (above) held up the south bound Bisbee Stage on Thursday, 8 September, 1881. The Sandy Bob line carried no strong boxes so this less than dynamic duo were reduced to robbing the passengers, miners and gamblers who had little cash southbound, going into the little mining town 25 miles south of Tombstone. And probably every one of the 200 residents squeezed into the narrow "Puerta de los Mulos" knew Pete and Frank personally, since the pair jointly owned a livery stable in Bisbee. Stillwell was just 24, but he had already gunned down an Hispanic waiter who brought him tea instead of coffee. But Spence had been a Texas Ranger. Not for long, since he was also a little crazy, but he should have been too smart for this hold up.

Some thought this lunatic larceny had something to do with Robert Crouch, a 50 year old California coach driver who had entered a cut-throat competition with the established Arizona Mail and Stage Company. Because the new entrepreneur had red hair and a freckled face, they called him and his business the "Sandy Bob" line.  And it was a hard business in the best of times. Paying passengers and freight barely met operating costs. The Arizona Mail could also count on a $15.00 a month fee for carrying Wells Fargo insured strong boxes 3 times a week between Charleston and the rail head at Benson. But the real profits were in carrying the United States Mail. Seeking to promote growth, the USPS paid $50 a month for daily delivery between Tombstone and Charleston, and $78.00 for three times a week delivery between Tombstone and Bisbee.

But when Arizona Mail and Stage balked at delivering to the tiny San Pedro River community of Hereford, 7 miles due west of Bisbee, "Sandy Bob" snapped it up.  He was even willing to wait to be reimbursed by Arizona Mail, which continued to collect from the USPS. So maybe there was a nefarious plot to generate bad publicity for the upstart Sandy Bob line, and they hired Frank and Pete as their agents. But that seems unlikely because the future of all stagecoach lines in Arizona had been determined in March around a conference table in far off Boston, Massachusetts.

On one side of that table sat William Barstow Strong, President of the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe Railroad conglomerate. On the other sat the President of the Southern Pacific Railroad et al., Mr. Charles Crocker. At this meeting the SP agreed to lease their tracks between Lodi, New Mexico and Benson, Arizona for use by ATSF trains. And ATSF agreed to share profits from a new line they would build south from Benson, through the mill town of Fairbank, Arizona, to the border at Nogalas Mexico, where it would connect with their Sonoran line, reaching the Pacific via the port of Guaymas. The minute that agreement had been reached, the most profitable stage coach lines in Arizona were living on borrowed time. So why go to all the trouble to annoy a competitor when everybody's business was going to shrink over the next six months to a year?

Like the Guadalupe Canyon Massacre, the beginning of the Benson to Guaymas rail line was another indication that the age of outlaws was coming to an end. Two months earlier, about midnight on Thursday, 14 July 1881, the career of freelance and infamous hot head Henry McCarthy, aka William Bonney, aka Billy the Kid (above), came to an abrupt end in rural Lincoln County, New Mexico when he was shot dead slipping into his girlfriend's bedroom. 

 And the day before the Bisbee Stage Mutt and Jeff robbery, a successful 15 year criminal career, which included at least 9 bank robberies, 8 train and 4 stage coach holdups also came to an end. On a tight turn 2 miles west of Glendale, Missouri the James gang pulled off their last armed train robbery. The division of the paltry $6,000 take, caused some discouragement among the members.

And 6 months later, in St. Joseph Missouri, Mr. Thomas Howard, aka Jesse James himself, would be assassinated by one of his own gang. These were indicators.

In a decade the Federal government would recognize what was happening that summer of 1881. The Census Bureau would announce in 1890 there was no longer anywhere in America with less than 2 persons per square mile, nor significant numbers migrating west. The frontier had ceased to exist. And according to historian Fredrick Jackson Turner (above), "The Significance of the Frontier..." in America was that it had made Americans exceptional - more violent, more inventive, less restricted by traditions. 

The same census also determined that over the previous 40 years the population of native Americans had been reduced by almost half - 401,000 to 248,000 - proof that Americans were not like other nations who butchered and starved minorities, such as the Ainu in Japan, the Armenians in Turkey, the Hindus in Pakistan, the Muslims in India, and the Romani, the Cathars and the Irish in Europe. Except of course we did.  But all that was big picture stuff.

The little picture was that Pete Spence and Frank Stillwell needed a couple of hundred dollars for the up coming weekend. And Frank was so disliked that one Tombstone resident predicted that when he died Frank would be the "chief attraction" in hell.  So on that dark night of 8 September, 1881, these two chuckle heads wearing masks blocked the road and forced the passangers to hand over any "sugar" they had on them. All noticed the smaller of the thieves repeatedly used that word - "sugar" - to refer to money. It was a favorite phrase of Frank Stillwell, a man whose inquest jury laughed when the coroner described his body as the most shot up corpse he'd ever seen. And Cochise County Marshal Johnny Behan knew the instant he received the telegram announcing the Sandy Bob hold up, that Frank Stillwell had to be the chief suspect. He was, after all, one of Johnny's own deputies..

And this might be the proper moment to ask why the crooks never thought to cut the telegraph lines which criss-crossed southern Arizona. The Apache did, every chance they got.  But "white" criminals never seemed to think of delaying law enforcement by just clambering up the nearest pole and snipping the thin wire. And it was not just the fools Stillwell and Spence. In March the would-be robbers of the Benson stage had also left the telegraph wires intact, allowing for immediate pursuit. But I digress.

Part of Deputy Marshal Frank Stillwell's job was collecting county taxes, but Behan noticed the money from Bisbee always seemed to be late and always seemed to be short, which meant so was Johnny's 10% cut.  So Behan, not usually known for his dedication, wasted no time in dispatching to Bisbee ,a 28 year old mining engineer, fast draw shooter and part time deputy, David Nagal  along with 35 year old Deputy William Milton "Billy" Breakenridge (above).   Billy was also a Federal Deputy Marshal, and a cool man with a gun. And knowing that Frank Stillwell was the suspect, he and Dave were joined by deputized Federal Marshals Wyatt and Morgan Earp, and Wells Fargo detective, Marshal Williams.

The Tombstone lawmen interviewed the passengers of the held up stage, and learned about the thief who asked for "sugar". And in checking the crime scene they identified a distinctive boot heel mark in the sand. Checking with a Bisbee cobbler, they were told that Frank Stillwell had new heels put on his boots that very morning. A search of the shoemaker's trash produced the source of the distinctive heel prints, and all 5 lawmen proceeded directly to the livery stables where they found Frank and Pete, still recovering from their night time crime spree. The master criminals were arrested and transported directly back to Tombstone. Which is where things started to get confused.

Charged with highway robbery and theft, both men were arraigned in front of a Justice of the Peace on Tuesday 13 September.  Bail was set at a hefty $7,000 each. And then, to the Earps surprise, Frank's bail was guaranteed by his old boss, Charles Hamilton "Ham" Light.  Light had managed teamsters in Prescott, and Frank Stillwell had been his enforcer. Then about 1880, "Ham" moved to Tombstone. He owned a corral there, and rented out apartments on the northwest corner of 3rd and Fremont, in his Aztec house. It got is name because it also contained the offices of his Arizona Trading Company. In other words, Charles "Ham" Light was far more than he appeared to be.

Light's willingness to put up $7,000 in property to guarantee Frank Stillwell's appearance in court, would seem to indicate a couple of things. Either "Ham" trusted that Frank would show up or he feared what Frank would tell the lawmen if he was supported by Light.  There was also the possibility that like Luther King before him, once out of jail, Frank Stillwell would shortly be dead. That possibilty was reinforced when Johnny Behan chose this time to fire Frank for "accounting irregularities".   But the rapidity with which both bails were supplied - Ike Clanton guaranteed Pete Spence's $7,000 bond - hinted that if "Ham" Light and Ike Clanton were not the money men behind the Cochise County Cowboy's rustling ring, they were both closely connected to those who were.

Whatever the reason for the quick bond, the Earps (above) were not willing to allow these two miscreants out of their clutches. Almost immediately Pete and Frank were re-arrested, and transferred to Tuscon for trial in Federal court, beyond the immediate reach of the Cow Boy forces in Tombstone.  To make matters worse, the Republican Tombstone Epitath now insisted the pair were being charged with the robbery of the Tombstone to Contention stage coach. 

Knowing Pete Spence (above) and Frank Stillwell were innocent of that charge, the McLaury brothers and the Clanton family were convinced the Earps were now framing their opponents, as the Cow Boys had done to Doc Holliday. As Wyatt Earp later testified, "since the arrest of Spence and Stilwell, veiled threats were being made that the friends of the accused will 'get the Earps.'" In fact the pair had been charged with interfering with the United States Mail, which justified the Federal charge.

It didn't matter. By the end of September 1881, with Pete (above) and Frank in jail, the Cow Boys could feel walls, real and imagined, closing in on them.  They were willing to believe in a conspiracy against them, because they had conspired against others. And in response to the rising tensions, the Earps moved their families into adjoining rooms at the Cosmopolitan Hotel. Both sides were hunkering down into armed camps. 

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TOMBSTONES Chapter Thirteen

I know what 21 year old John Pleasant Gray was thinking on the evening of Saturday, 13 August, 1881, when he first saw the bloody man staggering through the yellow tabosa grasses. He was frightened, fearing an Apache raiding party must have ambushed the workmen who had spent a month building the adobe cabin he had slept in for the first time last night. The laborers had left the day before, escorted by the ranch hands, leaving only himself and the cook in their isolated outpost 15 miles north of the Mexican border. And in the clear air of the New Mexico dusk, John could see the dark brown blood caked on the man's lower face, as he stumbled across the distance between them.

Raised in civilized Sacramento, California, and the Sonora, Mexico port of Guyamas, John Gray had never seen the Animus mountains before the spring of 1881. He could not know that Apaches could rarely afford attacking large parties of whites. John had never seen the Sonoran Desert before 1880, when after graduating college he joined his family in Tombstone, Arizona.

John's father, 56 year old (in 1881) "Colonel" Mike Lee had lived in Tombstone  almost since before it was a town - 1879. He had lived there long enough to be sued by Ed Schefflin for stealing ore from The Good Enough claim. But Mike had served in the California Legislature, and hired expensive Sacramento lawyers, who counter sued Ed - and won. The title of "Colonel" was purely ornimental. Mike Lee had been born in Tennesse and raised in Texas, and moved to California in 1849, but he never served in the milia in any of those places. 

In Tombstone(above) Mike Gray owned a boarding house, was secretary to the town council, and served as a Justice of the Peace, where he acquired the title of "Judge".  As such Judge Gray spent his time arrainging alledged drunks, petty thieves and killers, and assessing taxes. He was a "mover and a shaker" in Tombstone, well known as "selfish and dishonest" and "a slippery character". That spring of 1880,   looking to give his returning son John Pleasant a good start in life. Judge Gray paid the infamous Curley Bill Brocius $300 sight unseen for 300,000 acres of land on the slopes of the Animus Mountains, in New Mexico. And he sent John and his 18 year old son Richard "Dixie Dick" Lee Gray, to manage the palce, although neither of them had any more expericence at ranching than did Judge Colonel Mike Gray himself.

Curly Bill Brocius (above) did not actually own paper to the land in the Animus mountains. He claimed a homestead there. 

Brocius and he and his partner, Robert E. "Dutch"  Martin (above),  often grazed cattle there, which they had rustled in Sonora Mexico, and driven across the border through Guadalupe canyon, about 20 miles south of Martin's ranch around a New Mexico the spring called Cloverdale.  In Sonora 'Dutch' Martin was known as a thief and a murder, responsible for killing a dozen Mexican citizens a year.  But in Cloverdale Robert Martin was a respected businessman, with a wife and child.

Just about the time John Pleasant Gray was graduating from the University of California, businessman Dutch Martin had been murdered - shot in the head from ambush by rustlers who had lately taken to rustling the largest rustler's cattle.  'Dutch' Martin was 45 years old when he died, and William "Curley Bill" Brocius (above) was nearly 40 himself. Where the freckled faced "Curley Bill" had once been, ".. able to hit running jackrabbits, shoot out candle flames...and ...quarters from between the fingers of "volunteers, " the middle aged alcoholic Curley Bill's world was beginning to blur at the edges, like Wild Bill Hickock's before him. Hickok had died at 39, so Brocius the gunman was living on borrowed time. Time to change careers. And time to replace Dutch Martin in the Rustlers Trail.

The trail began between the western foot of the Dragoon Mountains and eastern rampart of the Mule Mountains, centered upon the San Pedro River (above, left). There, cattle were fattened on the feed lots of the Clanton and McLaury ranches before being slaughtered to feed the hungry miners in Tombstone and its mill town outliers of Charleston, Contention, Fairbank and Millville. The cows had arrived in this promised land from the east, by crossing the Dragoons through South Pass, and enduring the water-less desert of the Sulfur Springs Valley. The drovers had prepared the cows for this endeavor by fattening and watering them on the slopes of the 6,000 foot high Chihuahua Mountains (above, right), at way stations like the Horse Shoe Valley 7-Up ranch , whose owner of record was a San Francisco barkeep named "Buckskin" Frank Leslie - recruited by Curley Bill.

The Chiricahua mountain ranches were a rest stop after the herds had traversed the north-south San Simon Valley, which they had crossed after resting on the slopes of the Pedrogosa or Peloncillo Mountains, transited by the easy, well watered Skeleton Canyon on the Arizona-New Mexico border (above). 

Between the western mouth of Skeleton Canyon, it had been an easy drive across the San Bernadino Valley from the Animus Mountains, where the new Gray Ranch (above) was to provide ample grass and water, just 15 miles north of the beginning of the trail - the American side of the the winding, deadly pass through the Guadalupe Mountains.

The man who finally staggered into the Gray ranch that Saturday evening had spent the day traversing an arm of the San Bernadino Valley, on foot. He was exhausted, sunburned, dehydrated, and incoherent. It was some time before he could even identify himself. But when John Gray learned the man was not one of the construction workers, but a Cow Boy named Harry Ernshaw he panicked. Ernshaw had been in the rustler party with as his 19 year old brother.  "Dixie Lee "Gray had been gone south of the border to learn the rustler art under the tutelage of Old Man Clanton himself. As quickly as he could, John saddled a horse and went for help. He rode 20 miles east, to the slopes of the highest peak of the Animus mountains, Mount Gillespie. Here, he knew was a "Cow Boy" camp.

John Gray would dramatically described the  twisting canyon ride on dawn Sunday 14 August 1881, and the growing dread he felt approaching the grassy clearing where he had been told his brother's body lay. 

"Out of the clear sky," John recalled, "a black speck appears and soon other black specks ... Soon they are high overhead, beginning to circle slowly...circling round and round - and you know that somewhere within that circle on the earth below lies a corpse..." When the canyon walls fell away, John remembered the top of every tree in the clearing supported at least one of those "fiendish looking" birds. Sixty years later he said he thought of every buzzard as, "the worlds most vigilant undertaker."

The image of the 4 bodies was burned into his mind. "All were perfectly nude...Billy Lang...Jim Crane...Old Man Clanton...and my brother Dick, just turned nineteen....We found the dead body of Charlie Snow...about a half-mile from the camp. The other cowboy, Billy Byers, we found alive some five miles away. He was shot through the front of the abdomen and the ball had gone clear through his body..."  Byers was "completely out of his head", but he would recover.

John recalled, "We took our dead back to the ranch." There they ripped up the cabin's flooring to make coffins. "We buried the four bodies in a little square plot on the top of the nearby knoll."

Before its first stolen herd had even reached the new oasis, the Gray Ranch had turned to dust in the mouths of its new owners. In his 1940 memoir "All Roads Led To Tombstone", John Pleasant Gray sanitized the events of that summer, as people are wont to do with time. He remembered, "My father and I felt conditions were too hard at the time to fight against."  He did not mention that the naked scavaged corpse of his 19 year old brother had represented the inflated cost of stolen Sonoran cattle. But Judge Gray had $300 invested in the property, and John Gray remembered his father insisted they hold onto the property. "I made a trip out from Tombstone every month," he remembered, "to sleep one night at the ranch in order to comply with the preemption law." And to visit his brother's grave. In closing that early episode in his long life he added that after the Guadalupe Canyon Massacare, "Even the rustlers kept out of the valley for fear of meeting the Mexicans."

A few years later, Judge Gray sold the rustler's oasis to the George Hearst, father of William Randolph Hearst, for $12,000. So in the end I guess it proved worth the life of Judge Gray's youngest son. But John Gray never said so.

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TOMBSTONES Chapter Twelve

I know what Tombstone (above) City Marshal Ben Sippy was feeling when he took his leave of absence on 6 June, 1881. He was feeling trapped. Which would be odd only if humans were one dimensional heroes and villains. In the flesh Ben was a hell of a lawman. Just after his election in January of 1881, Marshal Sippy faced down a mob of Cow Boys who wanted to string up the young hot headed gambler Micheal "Mike" "Johnny Behind the Deuce" O'Rouke. The Earps, Virgil, Wyatt and Morgan stood behind him, as well as Bat Masterson. Not a bad supporting cast. Never the less it was Ben Sippy who ran the risk of being shot first, and he did not waver. He should have been famous as a cold eyed, steel nerved western lawman, you might say a real life Wyatt Earp. Instead he became an historical footnote, because of the malaria that seemed to hang over him. Ben Sippy couldn't seem to handle money.

Ben had been chosen to finish out Fred White's term as Town Marshal by The Tombstone Epitath, and its editor John Clum. And the January election that saw Clum elected mayor, also saw Ben Sippy elected Marshal in his own right. But almost immediately the relationship between the Town Marshal and town turned sour. It was a repeat of Ben's experiences in Weatherford, Texas, just west of Fort Worth. Under his tenure as law officer and tax collector in both towns, money started to evaporate. And his bills started to pile up, unpaid. It wasn't that Ben was openly crooked, like Cochise County Marshal Johnny Behan and his "10% grafters" would prove to be. It seems that Ben just could not handle money, his own or other people's. The constant need to plug his financial dikes seems to have distracted him, as if he was financing an addiction - but whether it was an opium den, or laudlem, one particular woman, women in general or just whiskey nobody knew. And after 22 June, 1881, nobody was interested.

It started just after 4:30pm that day - the longest day of the year - when a quartet of porters at the small Arcade Saloon were struggling to manhandle a full 300 pound,46 inch tall by 24 inch wide, 46 gallon oak barrel of whiskey out from behind the bar. It was a time of day when sensible Hispanic residents were practicing the art of the siesta. But the mercenary Americans refused to bow to such common sense. The thermometer had peaked well above 90 degrees Fahrenheit, The air was so dry, the sweat evaporated right off the work men's skin. 

Out side, both Allen (above, Arcade is on right, half way up the street) and Fifth streets (opening to the right) were nearly empty. And in the shadowy narrow interior of the Arcade, languid drunks nursed warm beers while listless games of faro and poker were being played almost out of habit. But the owner, being a penny pincher by profession, ordered the weary stock men to pause in their efforts, to allow interia to regain its hold on their awkward burden, remove the barrel's tap and measure the liquid within. He did not want to miss even a dime of credit for the sour whiskey.  So the workmen did as they were told. Which is how they damn near burned down the entire town of Tombstone.

Once tapped it had been discovered the whiskey in the barrel had "gone sour", succumbing to the heat and an inefficient seal, the alcohol evaporating and the heat spoiling the grain broth left behind. Braving the "waft of acetone" and fungus billowing up from small opening,  one workman slid a stick gauge (above) into the liquid,  but let it slip from his fingers. It disappeared with a slunk into the thickening witches' brew. And after uttering a curse at his own mistake, the poor dumb soul leaned over the barrel to see if he could spy the missing tool in the murk, and he forgot the lighted cigar clenched in his teeth.

As the Tombstone Nugget explained, "A terrific explosion followed, scattering the blazing fluid in all directions and enveloping the whole structure in flames in the twinkling of an eye." But, the Nugget noted with a touch of annoyance, "...of the four men who stood around that portentous barrel not one of them was even singed." The Arcade, however, was not so lucky. The flames greedily consumed the bone dry wood, erecting a wall of flames that blocked the front door of the tiny establishment. As if a switch had been thrown, the suddenly electrified patrons, in unison, abandoned their languid reposes, and scrambled for the back door.

Three doors west, in the Golden Eagle Brewery, owner Edward Milton Joyce heard shouts of "Fire!", saw the flames, and tried to rescue $1,200 in cash from his safe.  But the flames drove him out of the building. Around the corner on Fifth Street, at "Saffors and Company Bank", the manager had the opposite problem. At the first shouts of fire, he threw all the cash into the safe and spun the dial, and just managed to escape as the building roof crashed in behind him. The entire block went up in flames within five minutes.

Within another half hour, the blazing beast  had consumed the tinderbox buildings north to Fremont Street, and south to Toughnut.  Wrote John Clum, "Everybody went wild. Your correspondent picked up a little girl who was returning from school and got bewildered...I passed one house where a lady and her two daughters were engaged in...futile efforts to get a five hundred pound piano out of the house..."  

When the flames hit the row of "bawdy houses" east of Sixth Street the denizens were forced to drop whatever they had in in hand, and wearing in what they had or did not have on, to run out of doors. One prostitute ran from her place of business carrying "a bird-cage in hand, and a dress in the other. Another rushed frantically down the street, attired in a robe of Burlap, with vail of green mosquito netting on her bead. "  Amazingly, somehow, nobody was killed or even seriously burned. 

Four square city blocks - 60 buildings, 20% of the town - were consumed within 45 minutes. The only thing that stopped the fire was a desperate bucket brigade and because the down wind end of the fire ran out of town to burn. In three quarters of an hour one hundred souls lost their living space, and $300,000 went up in smoke, most of it uninsured. And yet before the last ember had winked out, somebody put up a sign in front of a pile of timber ashes, which read, "We will reopen when it cools."

The fires never touched the mines, and with silver still coming out of the ground and wages still being paid, rebuilding began almost immediately. Eighteen days later Ms. Clara Brown attended the opening of the rebuilt "Golden Eagle" - now renamed "The Crystal Palace".  She assured her readers in far off San Diego that "The Palace " was "...simply gorgeous...The bar is a marvel of beauty...Every evening music from a piano and a violin attracts a crowd..." There were fewer wood frame structures this time, many opting for adobe, such as the new Wells Fargo Office and the Bird Cage Theatre ", built in the vacant lot where Sheriff Fred White had died.

Since Marshal Sippy was out of town, Deputy U.S. Marshal Virgil Earp (above) stepped in. He hired dozens of temporary officers to police the burned out areas, ending all looting. He assigned 18 men as around the clock guards for the safe at the Wells Fargo office, now repository of most of the town's cash. He did so well that by the end of June, Ben Sippy had been fired. Ben left behind angry creditors, but no solid evidence of any crimes committed. But Ben also gave the town it's new marshal - Virgil Earp, now wearing 2 hats, with jurisdiction not only in the town, but across the entire territory as Deputy Federal Marshal for Tombstone.

While the rebuilding was reaching its peak, Joe Hill rode back into town, collecting the watch and cash he had left with Virgil. But he brought only bad news - depending on how you looked at it. All 4 of the men who had tried to rob the Bisbee stage were now dead. Escapee Luther King had been killed, probably by his fellow Cochise County Cow Boys, because he had identified his accomplices to the Earp posse.  Harry Head and Jim Crane were executed by the same because they had botched the robbery, and killing the driver Bud Pierpot had brought too much attention on the rustlers. 

But most troubling of all for the Cow Boys was the death of one time jeweler Bill Leonard, who ran south, away from the vengeful Cow Boys and the determined Earp posse, until he found friends who had yet to hear of the Bisbee stage fiasco.  But in escaping across the border into Mexico, Bill Leonard crossed paths with a rustling party returning north with 800 head of cattle,  lead by Old Man Clanton.  Unfortunately, the Clanton party were being tracked by Sonorian Ruales under Commandant Felipe Neri.

Just at dawn on 13 August, 1881 about 25 Mexican militia opened fire on the rustlers, killing 4 of them - Bill Leonard probably died in his sleep.  Dick Gray and Billy Lang died trying to escape. And "Old Man" Newman Hawes Clanton was shot while leaning over the breakfast fire. The slaughter in the canyon was undeniable proof that law and order was closing the open frontier, from both sides of the border. The anarchy, which had allowed rustlers a viable business model, was being squeezed out of existence.

For the Clanton and the McLaury families, the death of their patriarch (above) was a body blow. The grief, and the tightening web of law enforcement on both sides of the border,  induced a feeling of helplessness, and anger.  Wyatt Earp would later testify that after the Guadalupe Massicure, “Ike Clanton and Frank McLaury,....shunned us, and Morgan, Virgil Earp, Doc Holliday and myself began to hear their threats against us.”  The fuse that had been burning for 20 years, had suddenly been cut short.

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