cena.
Page would hear none of that. He commandeered a wagon and tenderly placed his wife into it. He and the doctor drove the team as carefully as possible along the rough mountain trail down Madera Canyon and then north on the rutted road to Tucson. Page wanted Larcena to be under the constant care of the doctor.
She clung precariously to life for several weeks, and then began a seemingly miraculous recovery. When Radcliff saw her again that summer, he recalled being amazed at the “blooming woman before me.”
The many scars slowly healed, at least those of the flesh. That summer, Page took his bride to the cabin he had built for her near the mouth of Madera Canyon, 10 miles from Kirkland’s Canoa ranch. There, they could begin life anew.
They did not know peace for long.
Terror and Tragedy
On January 27, 1861, Aravaipa raiders struck Johnny Ward’s ranch in the Sonoita Valley and kidnapped his 11-year-old stepson Felix.
Captain Ewell had departed for the East, and an inexperienced young lieutenant was sent in pursuit of the Apaches. He traveled to Apache Pass, where he confronted Chiricahua Chief Cochise about the lost boy.
When Cochise denied involvement, the soldiers seized several of his people as hostages. The chief escaped, and when the hostages were hanged, he began a bloody war of retribution.
Within 60 days of the incident at Apache Pass, the Apaches seemed to strike everywhere. Cochise’s warriors hit five stage stations, repeatedly attacked the mail coaches and swept through the Santa Cruz Valley, killing 150 of the hated White Eyes, including Poston’s brother. One of the first victims of the war was Larcena’s husband.
Wadsworth had hired Page and two other sawmill men, Alf Scott and Jim Cotton, to escort a supply wagon he needed delivered to Fort Breckenridge. A heavy snowfall that January disrupted work at the pinery, so Page saw the job as a nice opportunity to pick up extra cash. He needed the money, for Larcena was pregnant with their first child. Page bade a melancholy farewell and left her in their 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 