The Last Shootist (40 page)

Dr. Frederick Sweet
was
Bisbee's surgeon when Phelps Dodge built their first hospital in 1900 so that their company physician no longer had to operate on kitchen or barroom tables. C. E. Doll
did
operate his Atlantic and Pacific Portrait Studio north of Bisbee's Castle Rock in 1901.

Ease Bixler and Anel Romero are fictional characters, representative of the young people who flocked to the booming towns along the Mexican border to make their fortune catering to the miners and ranchers creating this new wealth. Red Jean, though,
is
based on a famous prostitute, Irish Mag, whom one of the best copper claims in Bisbee was even named after. Irish Mag kept her small cottage up Mule Pass and her parrot in a scrub oak outside. The bird was known for its salty remarks the rowdy miners had taught it.

*   *   *

The better histories of the great copper boom in Bisbee are
History of Bisbee, 1877 to 1937
(University of Arizona master's thesis by Annie M. Cox) and
Bisbee, Not So Long Ago
by Opie Rundle Burgess. Carlos A. Schwantes's
Bisbee: Urban Outpost on the Frontier
(1992) and
Bisbee: Queen of the Copper Camps
by Lynn R. Bailey (2002) are filled with old photographs of the mines and businesses and unique mountainside houses, plus stories about the colorful residents' lives in that famous copper camp. The only period novel set in these southern Arizona mining towns I found was
Tacey Cromwell
(1942) by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Conrad Richter. Richter's descriptions of the turn-of-the-century social life in the old mining town are by a famous writer who obviously spent time there. I did, too, with a Scottsdale High School pal, Rob Uhl, and later my mother, Kathryn, on several trips to scout Bisbee's old library and mining museum. Microfilm of their old newspapers,
The Arizona Daily Orb,
succeeded by
The Bisbee Daily Review,
as well as the weekly “Bisbee Jottings” in
The Tombstone Epitaph,
I read in the University of Arizona's excellent library in Tucson.

The incorporation of the city Ease Bixler mentions took place in Bisbee in 1902, and their new council's first act was to ban women from saloons. Gambling was outlawed in Bisbee in 1907, prostitution was banned there in 1910, Arizona became a state in early 1912, and Prohibition hit the newest state in America right between the eyes in 1915. Free-wheelin' days in that famous old mining mecca were
officially
over.

Much less has been written about mining in remote eastern Arizona, although
The History of Arizona's Clifton-Morenci Mining District, Volume 1: The Underground Days
by Ted Cogut and Bill Conger (1999) covers early copper mining there thoroughly.
History of Clifton
by James Monroe Patton (University of Arizona master's thesis, 1945) was also enlightening. The descriptions of the saloons and businesses on Conglomerate Avenue and the incredible violence in the brothels and saloons along Chase Creek, from which “a body a day” was pulled in one three-month period in 1883, came from Patton's later published graduate thesis. Clifton's amazing level of murder and violence slackened but continued blazing through the 1890s. Henry Hill
was
the stable owner in South Clifton, and a new Shannon Copper smelter
had
been blown in along the San Francisco River just after the turn into the twentieth century.

Up-canyon, Morenci was just as rough and lacked water and sewage facilities during its formative years. Even into the 1950s, Phelps Dodge operated a private brothel for its miners in that isolated, totally company-run town. The Chinese
were
allowed to live in Clifton (unlike in Bisbee), and the only hostelry Gillom rooms in, the Clifton Hotel, did host an alarming number of scorpions. Fires and floods periodically wiped out parts of both towns, but the rival copper companies and their supporting businesses quickly rebuilt along the polluted San Francisco River to continue their lucrative operations. The mining must never stop was the copper companies' motto and continues in Morenci to this day.

Luther Goose is fictional, but there were rough pimps like him investing secretly in parlor houses or operating them openly with equally tough madams. And a Blue Goose Saloon
did
exist in Clifton at the nineteenth century's finish.

 

About the Author

 

Miles Swarthout is the son of bestselling novelist Glendon Swarthout, who wrote the original classic Western
The Shootist
. Miles Swarthout cowrote the screenplay of the film adaptation of
The Shootist,
which became John Wayne's final film. Swarthout's
The Sergeant's Lady
won a Spur Award for Best First Novel from the Western Writers of America. He resides in Playa del Rey, California.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

 

THE LAST SHOOTIST

 

Copyright © 2014 by Miles Swarthout

 

All rights reserved.

 

Cover art by Michael Koelsch

 

Afterword photograph courtesy of the El Paso Public Library, Aultman Collection

 

A Forge Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

 

www.tor-forge.com

 

Forge
®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

 

eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected]

 

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

 

ISBN 978-0-7653-7678-7 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4668-5193-1 (e-book)

 

e-ISBN 9781466851931

 

First Edition: October 2014