Naco Debacle
Jeff Kidder vs. Naco Policia
By: Bob Boze Bell 11/03/2009
Arizona Ranger Jeff Kidder rides into Naco, Arizona, to renew his commission. Upon finding out that Capt. Harry Wheeler is chasing outlaws in the Chiricahua Mountains, Kidder crosses the border to “meet friends.”
Removing his gunbelt, Kidder sticks into his waistband his silver-plated Colt and into his coat pocket six cartridges from his gunbelt.
Kidder eats supper on the Mexican side, then strolls through the small downtown, visiting several cantinas. Around midnight he spends time with a soiled dove, “Chia.” After he dresses and walks to the front door, he notices a silver dollar which he carried in a vest pocket is missing. He goes back inside, grabs Chia by the arm and accuses her of stealing it. Chia strikes Kidder with her fist and starts screaming, “Policía!” Within minutes, two Mexican police officers, Tomas Amador and Dolores Quias, arrive on the scene and open fire.
Tomas’s first shot strikes Kidder in the stomach, just left of the navel. Falling to the floor, Kidder pulls his Colt and gets off several shots, hitting both his assailants. Quias was hit in the thigh; Tomas took a bullet to the knee. Kidder stands himself up and staggers out the doorway into the night.
He heads toward the U.S. boundary, some 300 yards. Several Mexican citizens fire at him, and Kidder angles off to the fence to the left of the border crossing. Too weak to climb through the fence, Kidder reloads his pistol with his last six cartridges.
Led by the Chief of Police Victoriano Amador, the brother of an officer who shot Jeff in the cantina, the Mexicans close in on the Arizona Ranger. Kidder nicks the chief in the side, then runs out of bullets as he yells to his attackers that he is all in.
Chief Amador and a score of men rush to Kidder, who is sitting against the fence, and begin hitting him with pistol barrels. They drag him to the juzgado (government court and jail) with bystanders kicking him all the way. After stripping him of all his valuables, they dump him onto the floor of a jail cell.
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