ope was tending bar one night when an American shot
him dead and got away. The murderer was soon afterward captured in
Tucson and lynched in company with two Mexicans who were concerned in
the murder of a pawnbroker there.

* * * * *

In Phoenix I married my first wife, whose given name was Ruficia. Soon
afterwards I moved to Tucson, where, after being awarded one child, I
had domestic trouble which ended in the courts. My wife finally returned
to Phoenix and, being free again, married a man named Murphy. After this
experience I determined to take no further chances with matrimony.
However, I needed a helpmate, so I solved the difficulty by marrying
Paola Ortega by contract for five years. Contract marriages were
universally recognized and indulged in in the West of the early days. My
relations with Paola were eminently satisfactory until the expiration of
the contract, when she went her way and I mine.

Before I leave the subject of Phoenix it will be well to mention that
when I left I sold all my property there, consisting of some twenty-two
lots, all in the heart of the city, for practically a song. Six of these
lots were situated where now is a big planing mill. Several lots I sold
to a German for a span of mules. The German is alive today and lives in
Phoenix a wealthy man, simply because he had the foresight and acumen to
do what I did not do--hang on to his real estate. If I had kept those
twenty-two lots until now, without doing more than simply pay my taxes
on them, my fortune today would be comfortably up in the six figures.
However, I sold the lots, and there's no use crying over spilled milk.
Men are doing today all over the world just what I did then.

I had not been in Tucson long before I built there the largest saloon
and dance-hall in the Territory. Excepting for one flyer in Florence,
which I shall speak of later on, this was to be my last venture into the
liquor business. My hall was modeled after those on the Barbary Coast.
It cost "four-bits" and drinks to dance, and the dances lasted only a
few minutes. At one time I had thirteen Mexican girls dancing in the
hall, and this number was increased on special days until the floor was
crowded. I always did good business--so good, in fact, that jealousy
aroused in the minds of my rivals finally forced me out. Since then, as
I have said, with the single Florence exception, I have not been in the
dance-hall business, except