lled
another white man there was seldom much outcry, unless the case was
cold-blooded murder or the killer was already unpopular. But let a
Mexican or an Indian lift one finger against a white man and the whole
strength of the Whites was against him in a moment; he was hounded to
his hole, dragged forth, tried by a committee of citizens over whom
Judge Lynch sat with awful solemnity, and was forthwith hung.

More or less of this was in some degree necessary. The killing of an
Apache was accounted a good day's work, since it probably meant that the
murderer of several white men had gone to his doom. To kill a Mexican
only meant that another "bad hombre" had gone to his just deserts.

And most of the Mexicans in Arizona in the early days were "bad
hombres"--there is no doubt about that. It was they who gave the Mexican
such a bad name on the frontier, and it was they who first earned the
title "greaser." They were a murderous, treacherous lot of rascals.

In the Wickenburg stage massacre, for instance, it was known that
several Mexicans were involved--wood-choppers. One of these Mexicans was
hunted for weeks and was caught soon after I arrived in Phoenix. I was
running my dance hall when a committee of citizens met in a mass-meeting
and decided that the law was too slow in its working and gave the
Mexican too great an opportunity to escape. The meeting then resolved
itself into a hanging committee, broke open the jail, seized the
prisoner from the arms of the sheriff and hung him to the rafters just
inside the jail door. That done, they returned to their homes and
occupations satisfied that at least one "Greaser" had not evaded the
full penalty of his crimes.

Soon after a Mexican arrived in town with a string of cows to sell.
Somebody recognized the cows as ones that had belonged to a rancher
named Patterson. The Mexican was arrested by citizens and a horseman
sent out to investigate. Patterson was found killed. At once, and with
little ceremony, the Mexican with the cattle was "strung up" to the
cross of a gatepost, his body being left to sway in the wind until
somebody came along with sufficient decency to cut it down.

Talking about lynchings, reminds me of an incident that had almost
slipped my mind. Before I went to Wickenburg from Tucson I became
partners with a man named Robert Swope in a bar and gambling lay-out in
a little place named Adamsville, a few miles below where Florence now is
on the Gila River. Sw