Gunsights

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The gentleman from Harper's Weekly, who didn't know mesquite beans from goat shit, looked up from his reference collection of back issues and said, “I've got it!” Very pleased with himself. “We'll call this affair…are you ready? The Early-Moon Feud.”

The news reporters in the Gold Dollar shrugged and thought some more, though most of them went on calling it the Rincon Mountains War, which seemed to have enough ring to it.

Somebody said, “What's the matter with the Sweetmary War?” Sweetmary being the name of the mining town where all the gawkers and news reporters had gathered to watch the show. The man from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat wanted to call it the Last of The Great Indian Wars. Or-he also mentioned to see how it would sound-the Great Apache Uprising of 1893. Or the Bloody Apache Uprising, etc.

The man from the St. Louis newspaper was reminded that, first, it wasn't an uprising and, second, there weren't just Apache Indians up in the mountains; there were also some niggers. The man from St. Louis, being funny, said, “Well, what if we call it the Last of the Great Indian-Nigger Wars?” A man from Florence said, “Well, you have got the chili-pickers in it also. What about them?” Yes, there were some Mexican settlers too, who had been farming up there a hundred years; they were also involved.

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