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Show h**»'- -• a mail stage on the Denver - Santa Fe run. One may iftal^Mbr ^MI'•_-_;.* "i. •\Jt, .frJJ *•*-! wonder why the initial YW was scratched several times on the gun. Did it have any connection with the Maxwells, I wonder? Later he and Lorenzo Hubbell ran the mail from Fort Wingate to Fort Apache, with headquarters at Deer Spring. On one of these occasions (probably in the early *70's) Dan reported that Zuni pueblo was completely deserted, the Indians settling in various Indian and Mexican villages until the following season. Dan stated that only a few cats greeted him as he passed through the pueblo. Doubtless the story is quite true, for following successive seasons of drought and failure of crops, some Zuni families have moved to other localities -like the Hopi and Jemez pueblos-in recent years. Reaching Gallup one morning, I called on Cotton, whom I asked about Dan, as usual. "I haven't seen him for several weeks," he replied. "The last time he was here he told me that he had been laid up with a bad sore in his hip. Nothing he tried for healing the wound was effective-not even wagon-grease did any good; but one day he got a Mexican to bend a hook at the end of a piece of bailing-wire and to probe the wound. 'Then, what do you think?' said Dan. 'Damn me if he didn't pull out a bullet; then I remembered being shot there about forty years ago!'" \ Another time Dan called on Cotton wearing an ugly fresh scar across his forehead. Asked how it occurred, Dan promptly responded, "Oh, a friend of mine tried to part my hair with a pick-handle!" We have seen something of Dan's character; now what of his appearance? A few undated photographs kindly lent to me by his daughters, and a couple that I have had for a long time, reveal somewhat of his features. When last I saw him, about 1921 or 1922, he was living in a little coal-mining town west of Gallup. He was then about 87 or 88 _ years of age, perhaps a little older. When he entered Sawtelle in 1923, he gave his age as 87, but the date of his birth he did not know. His torso was rather barrel-shape; his eyes were gray, as likewise was his hair. All the while I knew him his complexion was florid. Dan's absence of teeth was accounted for by the fact that, suffering from pain in the mouth, he extracted every tooth with a piece of wire. He evidently believed in the efficacy of baling wire in surgical operations. O, yes, I forgot to mention earlier that Dan, like many frontiersmen, "would cuss with almost every breath." His favorite expletive was, "Well, well, I hope I never go to hell, but I know I will!" I have mentioned Frank Hamilton Cushing, the ethnologist, several times. I find, however, that as early as 1883 Cushing wrote from Zuni to Dan introducing, of all persons, Adolf F. Bandalier, the noted historian of the Southwest, who later was more closely associated with Cushing during the Hemenway Expedition in 1886-1889- The letter, which was lent to me by Mrs. Garduno, is interesting enough in this connection to read: °b * |
