The Wrong Hill to Die On: An Alafair Tucker Mystery #6 (Alafair Tucker Mysteries)
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This time, the Cavalry did not wait for orders from Washington to respond. Col. Frank Thompkins and thirty-two cavalrymen from the Thirteenth took off after the fleeing raiders and chased them into Mexico, killing many before the Villistas managed to escape into the rugged Sierra Madre mountains.
President Carranza was incensed by the intrusion, but the U.S. populace was not going to be appeased without payback for the killing of Americans on American soil. Under intense pressure from Wilson, Carranza grudgingly allowed Gen. Pershing to enter Mexico and pursue Villa’s army across Sonora and Chihuahua for nine months. In January 1917, World War I intervened and Pershing was called back to take command of the newly formed U.S. Expeditionary Forces. Villa was never apprehended. He retired in 1920, but in 1923, after deciding to become involved in Mexican politics once again, he was assassinated by persons unknown.
The Yaqui, the Motion Picture
For three weeks in December of 1915, a major Hollywood motion picture entitled The Yaqui was shot in Tempe, thanks to the influence of its lead actor, Hobart Bosworth. A former stage actor, Bosworth had lived in Tempe in 1906–1907, working as an artist and painter before leaving for California, where he went into the movie business, eventually making feature pictures for release to the Universal Film Company out of Universal City, California. Bosworth chose to shoot his movie in Tempe both for the scenery and the availability of Mexican and Indian extras. Close to two hundred locals were hired to act as crowds and armies in the picture.
The story of The Yaqui was taken from the book The Land of the Broken Promise, by Dane Coolidge, an acquaintance of Bosworth’s who had also lived in Tempe.
Twenty people came to Tempe from California for the filming, including the director Lloyd Carleton, Hobart Bosworth as Tambor the Yaqui, Goldie Caldwell as his wife Modesta, and Dorothy Clark as his daughter Lucia. Yona Landowska played a sympathetic ranch owner’s wife. The teenaged Dorothy was accompanied on the shoot by her mother, Ethel. Several years after she appeared in The Yaqui, Dorothy was involved in a Hollywood scandal with a married man.
For the purposes of this story I moved the timing of the shoot forward three months to March of 1916. Otherwise, the cast and crew did in fact come to Tempe by train, bringing with them 700 pounds of TNT, and blew up the abandoned Rural School building for a scene in the movie. Though there were plenty of splinters and shards there is no report that money rained down on the crew or the townspeople who were there to observe.
While the movie was being shot, Bosworth treated the town to a showing of his first movie, Fatherhood, and the cast and the townspeople did pose for a group photograph in front of the Goodwin Opera House. If a print of either the photo or of The Yaqui movie still exists, I am not aware of it.
Curandera
A curandera (female) or curandero (male) is a traditional Spanish-American healer. There are many different kinds of curanderas, including massage therapists, psychic healers, and midwives. Mrs. Carrizal was a yerbera, a specialist in herbal remedies. Curanderas are known to use their talent only for good and usually do not charge for their services, whereas brujas (witches) will use their knowledge for evil, to cast spells and hexes. A curandera’s power to cure is considered a gift from God that is acquired early in life, sometimes through a sacred vision or experience.
The Real People
Hobart Bosworth
Hobart Bosworth may not be a household name today, but he was a major figure in the motion picture industry at the turn of the twentieth century. He started his professional life as a Broadway actor in the late 1800s, but after he lost his voice and could no longer project to an audience, he moved to Arizona to work as an artist for a couple of years before going back East to enter the silent movie business in 1908.
The West apparently made a lasting impression on him, because he came to Los Angeles in 1909 and starred in what is thought to be the first film to be shot on the West Coast, In the Sultan’s Power. Bosworth founded his own company in 1913 and shot several pictures before joining with Paramount in 1916. After talkies came along in the late 1920s Bosworth had a long career as a character actor, mostly in B movies, working until shortly before his death in 1943.
Marshal Joe Dillon
Joseph P. Dillon was the U.S. Marshal for the District of Arizona during the period our story is set. I used his name, but the character of Marshal Dillon in this tale is my own creation.
Fred “Cap” Irish
Fred “Cap” Irish was one of Tempe Normal School’s most popular and influential instructors. Irish was the school’s first athletic director, coaching football and men’s and women’s basketball. In 1916, he oversaw enrollment, taught chemistry, and was in charge of the local militia. Irish Hall, built in 1940 and named for Fred Irish, is in use at Arizona State University to this day.
Dr. Benjamen B. Moeur
In 1916, Benjamin B. Moeur was a fixture in Tempe, Arizona. He had immigrated to Arizona from Texas with his family, eventually ending up in Tempe 1896 and quickly becoming the busiest and most popular physician in town. He was a well-known philanthropist who never charged a widow, a preacher, or the family of a serviceman for medical services.
Besides his medical practice, Moeur was a successful businessman, served on the Tempe School Board and on the Board of Education at the Tempe Normal School. He also started a scholarship program that gave loans to schoolteachers. He was a delegate to the Arizona Constitutional Convention in 1910 and was responsible for drafting the state constitution’s educational provisions.
Moeur became the Democratic governor of Arizona in 1932, at the height of the Great Depression. The state was deep in debt and unemployment was rampant, but he was able to reduce government expenses, institute a personal income tax, sales tax, and luxury taxes while reducing property taxes. He instituted relief programs for the unemployed and brought millions of dollars in federal aid programs to the state. By the end of his first term, the state was solvent again.
Moeur’s most notorious act during his governorship was to call out the Arizona National Guard in 1934 to stop construction of Parker Dam on the Colorado River. The purpose of the dam was to divert water from the river and send it to Southern California, but according to the Arizona attorney general, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Water District had no right to build on Arizona’s territory without permission, much less steal its water. Moeur declared martial law and sent two patrol boats (converted riverboats), forty riflemen, and twenty machine gunners to stop construction on the Arizona side of the Colorado River. Unfortunately, the boats ran afoul of some cable and had to be towed free by the Californians. The sortie of the Arizona Navy was the last time one state took up arms against another.
Moeur died in Tempe in 1937, less than four months after leaving office.
Fr. Lucius Zittier
In 1914 a missionary Franciscan Friar by the name of Lucius Zittier petitioned Congress for forty acres of land so the Yaquis could permanently settle on the site of the present-day town of Guadalupe. The Fr. Lucius whom Alafair and Elizabeth met when they drove to Guadalupe to pay their respects to the Arrudas is my own creation.
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