"Dare; dat vill do, mine frient, dat vill do. I gifs you an-*odder two viks mit der shane-gang fur gontembt ov goort; how you like dat?"
Many sly jokes were cracked at the old judge's expense, and many side-splitting stories narrated of his eccentricities and curious legal interpretations; but it was noticed that the supply of tramps was steadily diminishing, and the town improving in every essential. If the Judge ever made a mistake on the side of mercy I never happened to hear of it, although I do not attempt to say that he may not, at some time in his legal career, have shown tenderness unrecorded. He certainly did heroic work for the advancement of the best interests of Tucson and a good part of southern Arizona.
The orders of the War Department transferring General Crook to the command of the Department of the Platte arrived in the middle of March, and by the 25th of that month, 1875, he, with his personal staff, had started for the new post of duty. A banquet and reception were tendered by the citizens of Prescott and northern Arizona, which were attended by the best people of that section. The names of the Butlers, Bashfords, Marions, Heads, Brooks, Marks, Bowers, Buffums, Hendersons, Bigelows, Richards, and others having charge of the ceremonies, showed how thoroughly Americanized that part of Arizona had become. Hundreds walked or rode out to the "Burnt Ranch" to say the last farewell, or listen to the few heartfelt words of kindness with which General Kautz, the new commander, wished Crook godspeed and good luck in his new field of labor. Crook bade farewell to the people for whom he had done so much, and whom he always held so warmly in his heart; he looked for the last time, it might be, upon the snowy peak of the San Francisco, and then headed westward, leaving behind him the Wonderland of the Southwest, with its fathomless cañons, its dizzy crags, its snow-mantled sierras, its vast deserts, its blooming oases—its vast array of all the contradictions possible in topography. The self-lacerating Mexican penitente, and the self-asserting American prospector, were to fade from the sight, perhaps from the memory; but the acts of kindness received and exchanged between man and man of whatever rank and whatever condition of life were to last until memory itself should depart.
The journey from Whipple or Prescott to Los Angeles was in
