Miscellaneous: Big Jud Pritchard, blacksmith—set broken arm and wired up fractured jaw, impossible to replace ear. Seventeen other men treated for minor lacerations and abrasions, apparently resulting from having been stepped on by a large horse.
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Bucksnort, Arizona,
April 14, 1885.
Honorable Governor of Arizona,
Phoenix, Arizona
Honorable Sir:
I am writing to you to ast you to please see that jestice is did and stop an innercent man from being hounded by his enemies before he loses his patience and injures some of them fatally. I am referring to my pore persecuted brother, Pike Bearfield, of Wolf Mountain, Texas, now a fugitive from jestice and subsisting on prickly pears and horned toads somewheres in the Guadalupe Mountains. That ain’t no fitten diet for a white man, Yore Honor.
You have maybe saw the pack of lies which was writ about him in that dang newspaper The Bucksnort Chronicle which the only reason I ain’t shot the editor is because I am a peaceful and law-abiding man same as all us Bearfields, especially Pike. But let him beware! The editor, I mean. Truth is mighty and will prevail!
In that article about Pike, which was writ as soon as the editor sobered up on the morning of the 11th (he claims he was knocked cold by Pike the day before but it’s my opinion he was jest drunk) he claims Pike come out of his way jest to make trouble in Bucksnort. That’s a lie. Pike had been to San Simeon to pay a fine for a friend of his’n and was on his way back to the Triple Arrer ranch where we’ve both worked ever since we come out from Texas. He went by Bucksnort on his way to the ranch. Maybe you will say what the devil was he going by Bucksnort for, that is in the oppersite direction from the ranch, but Pike is very sociable and will go a long way out of his way jest to visit a town and meet folks and buy them drinks. As for that story about him storming out of San Simeon on the morning of April 10th spurring like a Comanche and waving his guns and announcing that he’d show them Bucksnort illegitimates whether they could keep San Simeon folks out of their dad-blasted town well, shucks, maybe he did holler and shoot off his pistols a little as he rode out, but that was jest high spirits. You know how us cowboys is, always full of fun and frolic.
His enemies has tried to make something out of the fack that he made the ride from San Simeon to Bucksnort in about a hour when it ordinarily takes a man about four hours to ride it. They say why was he splitting the road like that if he warn’t coming with war-like intention. But they don’t know Pike’s hoss, Satanta, which Pike ketched wild out of a Kiowa hoss herd and broke hisself, at the risk of his life. Satanta can outrun any critter in the Territory and he generally goes at a high lope. He ain’t careful about stepping around anything which happens to git in his way, neither, and probably Pike was shooting to warn them folks which he met to git out of his way, so they wouldn’t git tromped on. Pike has got a arful soft heart that way and don’t want to see nobody git hurt. They warn’t no use for them to take to the bresh and later accuse him of trying to murder them. If he’d been trying to hit them he would of, instead of jest knocking their hats off.
As for what actually happened at Bucksnort when he got there, they has been so many lies told about it that it plumb discourages a honest man. But this here is a plain, unvarnished account which I hope you will forgit all them yarns which Pike’s enemies has been telling, they air all prejudiced and anyway some of them air still addled in the brains and not responsible. Well, this is the way it was:
They is, or was, a very insulting sign at the aidge of Bucksnort which warned folks from San Simeon to keep out of the derned town. It now appears that it was shot all to pieces on the morning of the 10th, and folks air accusing Pike of doing it as he rode into town. Well, maybe he did kind of empty his pistol into the sagebrush, but they ain’t no use in abusing him because their derned sign happened to be where he was shooting. He didn’t put it there. Us cowboys frequently shoots into the air as we comes into town. It’s a kind of salute to the town, and a mark of respeck. As for that there deperty who got his hat shot off account of Pike seeing it sticking up in the sagebresh, why, that was jest a friendly joke. Pike was jest trying to be sociable. It hurt Pike’s feelings when the deperty ran off hollering halp murder and that’s why he shot the feller’s suspender buttons off—if the deperty didn’t bust them off hisself running through the sagebresh. He didn’t have no business hiding out there in the first place.
Pike then went on into town and tied his hoss, as quiet and peaceable as you please, and went into the Miners’ Delight Saloon. How do I know why the folks in the saloon all left by way of the back door as he come in at the front? Maybe they had to go home to dinner or something. The bartender was one of these hot-tempered, overbearing cusses which don’t deserve no sympathy. It appears they was some shots fired by somebody which cracked the mirror behind the bar and busted all the ceiling lamps, and the bartender seems to have blamed it on Pike. But he had no business making a play at Pike with a sawed-off shotgun. I reckon a man has a right to pertect hisself, which is why Pike kind of tapped him with a beer kag to shake his aim. I cain’t see as it was Pike’s fault that the bartender’s head went through the kag.
It now appears that the sheriff and the marshal was both expecting Pike, and it looks to me like they is something crooked about that. You cain’t trust these Bucksnort coyotes. Anyway, the deperty Pike met at the aidge of town was supposed to let the sheriff know the minute Pike hit town, and the marshal had bribed the deperty to tell him before he told the sheriff. Anyway, they was both depending onto that deperty to let ’em know when Pike come, but he run off into the desert when Pike shot at him, so the first thing they knowed about it was when they heard the shooting in the Miners’ Delight. The sheriff started for there on the run, and the marshal come up from the other direction.
But before they got there Pike had left. They warn’t nobody left in the Miners’ Delight but the bartender and he was unconscious, and Pike is that sociable he likes crowds of people around him. So he went acrost the street to the Bear Claw Saloon and Gambling Hall, and imejitly all them miners started picking on him. They ain’t no use in them trying to pertend that he started it. They say he was war-like and boastful, and try to prove this lie by bearing down on the fack of him announcing that he was a woolly wolf from the Hard Water Fork of Bitter Creek as he come through the door. But that warn’t no brag. It was jest a plain statement of fack, as anybody knows who is acquainted with Pike.
As for that roulette wheel, it ought to have been shot apart long ago. Pike probably knowed it was crooked, and jest couldn’t endure to see the men losing their hard-earned dough on it. He is arful soft- hearted. But that gambler, Ace Tremayne, he couldn’t take a joke, and mild-mannered as Pike is, he aint the man to endure being shot at with .41 caliber derringers at a distance of four foot. Ace somehow got cut right severe whilst him and Pike was rassling around on the floor. I reckon Pike’s bowie must of fell out of his boot and Ace rolled on it or something.
But several of them overbearing Bucksnort bullies taken the matter to heart, notably Jud Pritchard the blacksmith, and he ought to of knowed better’n to lay holt of Pike like he done. I reckon a man has got a right to defend hisself. Jud thinks he is a whole lot of man because he is six and a half foot tall and has licked most of them miners, but when you stack him up agen Pike he don’t look so big neither in size nor in fighting capacity. Pike allus fights a man like the man wants to fight, so he waded into Jud bar’-handed and Jud begun to holler halp murder the cow puncher is killing me. So several miners jumped in and taken a hand and Pike was dealing with them when the sheriff and marshal come running up.