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The Overland Mail
by
Nor were the Indians the only savage men in that wilderness. Arizona was becoming a haven for fugitives from California vigilance committees and for renegade Mexicans from south of the boundary. The road-agents went to work along the route, and near Tucson they did a thriving business.
Yet with all these enemies and obstacles, it is a matter of record that the Butterfield overland mail was only late three times.
In spite of runaways, bad roads, floods, sand-storms, battles, and hold-ups, the east and west bound stages usually made the distance in twenty-one days. And there was a long period during 1859 when the two mails–which had started on the same day from the two termini–met each other at exactly the half-way point. Apparently the Wells-Butterfield interests had won the struggle. Service was increased to a daily basis and the compensation was doubled. The additional load was handled with the same efficiency that had been shown in the beginning.
It is hard, in these days of steam and gasolene and electricity, to understand how men did such things with horse-flesh. The quality of the men themselves explains that. One can judge that quality by an affair which took place at Stein’s Pass.
“Steen’s Pass,” as the old-timers spelled it–and as the name is still pronounced–is a gap in the mountains just west of Lordsburg, New Mexico. The Southern Pacific comes through it to-day. One afternoon Mangus Colorado and Cochise were in the neighborhood with six hundred Apache warriors, when a smoke signal from distant scouts told them that the overland stage was approaching without an armed escort. The two chieftains posted their naked followers behind the rocks and awaited the arrival of their victims.
When one remembers that such generals as Crook have expressed their admiration for the strategy of Cochise, and that Mangus Colorado was the man who taught him, one will realize that Stein’s Pass, which is admirably suited for all purposes of ambush, must have been a terribly efficient death-trap when the Concord stage came rumbling and rattling westward into it on that blazing afternoon.
There were six passengers in the coach, all of them old-timers in the West. And they were known as the Free Thompson party, from the name of the leader. Every one of these men was armed with a late model rifle and was taking full advantage of the company’s rule which allowed the carrying of as much ammunition as one pleased. They had several thousand rounds of cartridges.
Such a seasoned company as this was not likely to go into a place like Stein’s Pass without taking a look or two ahead; and six hundred Apaches were certain to offer some evidence of their presence to keen eyes. Which probably explains why the horses were not killed at once. For they were not. The driver was able to get the coach to the summit of a low bare knoll a little way off the road. The Free Thompson party made their stand on that hilltop.
They were cool men, uncursed by the fear of death, the sort who could roll a cigarette or bite a mouthful from a plug of chewing-tobacco between shots and enjoy the smoke or the cud; the sort who could look upon the advance of overwhelming odds and coolly estimate the number of yards which lay between.
These things are known of them and it is known that the place where they made their stand was far from water, a bare hilltop under a flaming sun, and round about them a ring of yelling Apaches.
There were a few rocks affording a semblance of cover. You can picture those seven men, with their weather-beaten faces, their old-fashioned slouching wide-rimmed hats, and their breeches tucked into their boot-tops. You can see them lying behind those boulders with their leathern cheeks pressed close to their rifle-stocks, their narrowed eyes peering along the lined sights; and then, as time went on, crouching behind the bodies of their slain horses.