ortune certainly very curiously and originally made. I
made it by selling ham sandwiches!

Charlie Brown owned a saloon not far from the Old Church Plaza. It was
called Congress Hall, had been completed in 1868 and was one of the most
popular places in town. Charlie was fast becoming a plutocrat. One night
in the saloon I happened to hear a man come in and complain because
there wasn't a restaurant in town that would serve him a light snack at
that time of night except at outrageous prices.

"That's right," said another man near me, "if somebody would only have
the sense to start a lunch-counter here the way they have them in the
East he'd make all kinds of money."

The words suggested a scheme to me. The next day I saw Brown and got his
permission to serve a light lunch of sandwiches and coffee in the saloon
after I had finished my work at the house. Just at that time there was a
big crowd in the town, the first cattle having arrived in charge of a
hungry lot of Texan cowpunchers, and everyone was making money. I set up
my little lunch counter, charged seventy-five cents, or "six-bits" in
the language of the West, for a lunch consisting of a cup of coffee and
a sandwich, and speedily had all the customers I could handle. For forty
consecutive nights I made a clear profit of over fifty dollars each
night. Those sandwiches were a mint. And they were worth what I charged
for them, too, for bacon, ham, coffee and the other things were 'way up,
the three mentioned being fifty or sixty cents a pound for a very
indifferent quality.

Sometimes I had a long line waiting to buy lunches, and all the time I
ran that lunch stand I never had one "kick" at the prices or the grub
offered. Those cowboys were well supplied with money, and they were more
than willing to spend it. Charlie Brown was making his fortune fast.

After I quit Brown's employ, John McGee--the same man who now is
secretary of the Arizona Pioneers' Historical Society and a well-known
resident of Tucson--hired myself and another man to do assessment work
on the old Salero mine, which had been operated before the war. Our
conveyance was an old ambulance owned by Lord & Williams, who, as I have
said, kept the only store and the post office in Tucson. The outfit was
driven by "Old Bill" Sniffen, who will doubtless be remembered by many
Arizona pioneers. We picked up on the way "Old Man" Benedict, another
familiar character, who kept the stage station and ranch at S