Some years ago Mr. Harry Adams, a cattleman of Vermajo Park, New Mexico,
told me he had been in the Tonto Basin of Arizona and thought I might
find interesting material there concerning this Pleasant Valley War.
His version of the war between cattlemen and sheepmen certainly
determined me to look over the ground. My old guide, Al Doyle of
Flagstaff, had led me over half of Arizona, but never down into that
wonderful wild and rugged basin between the Mogollon Mesa and the
Mazatzal Mountains. Doyle had long lived on the frontier and his
version of the Pleasant Valley War differed markedly from that of
Mr. Adams. I asked other old timers about it, and their remarks
further excited my curiosity.

Once down there, Doyle and I found the wildest, most rugged, roughest,
and most remarkable country either of us had visited; and the few
inhabitants were like the country. I went in ostensibly to hunt bear
and lion and turkey, but what I really was hunting for was the story
of that Pleasant Valley War. I engaged the services of a bear hunter
who had three strapping sons as reserved and strange and aloof as he was.
No wheel tracks of any kind had ever come within miles of their cabin.
I spent two wonderful months hunting game and reveling in the beauty
and grandeur of that Rim Rock country, but I came out knowing no more
about the Pleasant Valley War. These Texans and their few neighbors,
likewise from Texas, did not talk. But all I saw and felt only inspired
me the more. This trip was in the fall of 1918.

The next year I went again with the best horses, outfit, and men the
Doyles could provide. And this time I did not ask any questions.
But I rode horses--some of them too wild for me--and packed a rifle
many a hundred miles, riding sometimes thirty and forty miles a day,