snug cabin at the mouth of Madera Canyon. He would be back soon.
On February 20, Page’s party was 30 miles north of Tucson. Two Hispanic men and a woman rode in the wagon while the three men scouted ahead. As they halted to water their horses along a wash in the Catalina Mountains, the Apaches struck.
Cotton turned toward his friends, only to see both of them slumped over their galloping horses. The Apaches’ shots spooked the oxen, who lurched forward and caused the wagon to tumble off the road and down into a steep ravine. As the Apaches rushed the overturned wagon and flailing oxen, Cotton and the three Hispanics beat a hasty retreat toward Tucson, which they reached about noon the next day.
Charles Brown, who operated Tucson’s premier saloon, attempted to raise a force to ride to the assistance of the two men, but the news from Apache Pass had unnerved the town’s bold frontiersmen. William S. Oury, who had just returned from Apache Pass, finally recruited three men to accompany them. Cotton guided the party back to the canyon.
At dawn, the call of the scavenger birds led them to Page. His dead body lay in a mesquite thicket several hundred yards from the wagon. His horse, with its throat cut, lay beside him. Scott’s saddle, pistol and blanket were also there. The wounded men had fought off the Apaches for at least a day before Scott tried to leave and secure help. The men had killed the horse to drink its blood.
They buried Page where they found him and, two weeks later, another party discovered Scott’s mutilated body. Oury took Page’s kerchief, pocketbook and a lock of his hair to give to Larcena.
Elias took his daughter Larcena to the big stone house on his border farm along the Santa Cruz so that her sisters could look after her. In September, Larcena bore a daughter who she named Mary.
In time, the Apaches came to kill Larcena’s father and two of her brothers. A young woman of deep religious conviction, Larcena bore all her tribulations with grace, but often remarked over and over: “God is good, and knows best…God is good, and knows best.”
Paul Andrew Hutton researched Larcena Pennington while writing The Apache Wars: The Hunt for Geronimo, the Apache Kid, and the Captive Boy Who Started the Longest War in American History, published by Crown in May 2016. He has published 10 books and teaches history at the University of New Mexico.