Leaving Yuma

Interviewed in 1937 as a contributor to the American Legends Collection, J.T. Latham narrated the events of a dangerous trek he guided into the badlands of Sonora, Mexico, in exchange for a pardon from the term he was serving in Yuma Territorial Penitentiary. Acting Deputy Sheriff Del Buchman who made the offer, and described the situation: "Six days ago a train on its way to Hermosillo was stopped by bandits. Seven Americans were taken off. Four were shot on the spot, but a woman and her two kids were taken away. Now, here's the kicker. On the very same day those three were pulled off the train, her husband gets a proposal from a bandit chief named Chito Soto that ain't nothing but a ransom demand wrapped in fancy words. This Soto claims he's a major in something called an Army of Liberation. He wants the ransom delivered to Sabana by May Sixteenth, which is eight days from today. They're threatening to start carving on them kids on the Seventeenth if they don't get the...their ransom on time."

The ransom Buchman chose not to mention was three machine-guns and a dozen cases of .30-40 Krag ammunition that Latham has to transport through two hundred miles of hostile desert inhabited by revolutionaries, bandits, Yaqui Indians, and very few water holes. And that turns out to be the easy part.