February 2018 34 NEW TECHNOLOGY Try Before You Buy! OticonOpnTM , the first hearing device that revolves around you. With OticonOpnTM , you can hear what you want to hear, even in the most complex listening environments. The groundbreaking technology in Oticon Opn processes sounds 50 times faster, giving your brain total access to the sounds around you. Because it works in harmony with your brain, it puts you – not your hearing aid – in charge of which sounds you focus on. The result is you understand speech better, with less effort. With Oticon Opn, you can open up to the world around you, and participate more in all that life has to offer. AWARD WINNING 2017 W. Wickenburg Way Wickenburg, AZ 85390 TEST YOUR OWN HEARING Call Today and Schedule a FREE Hearing Evaluation (928) 684-2000 www.hearingaidswickenburg.com Hi-Tech Hearing 2017 W. Wickenburg Way • Wickenburg, AZ 85390 1. Do you hear... but not understand? 2. Do you have problems understanding in church or the theater? 3. Do people seem to mumble? 4. Do you have trouble hearing in a crowd? 5. Do you have difficulty understanding some voices on T.V.? 6. Do words seem to run together? 7. Do you have to “strain” to understand? If you answered ‘yes’ to any of the questions above, it is probably time to have your hearing professionally evaluated. Merrill B. Hunter NBC-HIS Nationally Board Certified & Factory Trained • 40+ years in the Hearing Industry • 6 years in the engineering of hearing aids • Was on the Advisory Board of 3-M and involved in the development of some of the first computerized hearing aids • 30 years retail hearing experience in Sun City • Guest speaker at Conventions, Universities and Seminars • Member American Auditory Society its leg. Valenzuela wrapped the bullion in the saddle blanket and slung it over his shoulder. He made it across the raging river and continued to flee on foot. The posse was right behind him and soon caught up with him. The fugitive was ordered to halt, an order he ignored. A shotgun roared and Valenzuela fell after a lone piece of buckshot pierced his skull. Other’s Nabbed Later Two of the gang had fled down the Hassayampa toward Mexico after the killings. They were not among those chased by the posse, having split from the rest of the gang. In the fall, Burt Alvord arrests two men, one tall, one short, at Fairbanks. One of the two men, named Escalante and Demara, carried a watch that was said to belong to Harvey Howe. Howe had loaned a watch to John Johnson, who was carrying it when he was killed. The two men were indicted by the Maricopa County Grand Jury in November on three counts of murder each, one for each victim. In December, one, Damara stood trial for the murders. The following month Escalante was tried. Howe could not positively identify the watch taken from the fugitives as his own. It was an ordinary silver Elgin. Evidence was produced that both men had been employed in Florence at the time of the murders. Damara was acquitted at his trial. The judge ordered a new trial for Escalante but the District Attorney decided not to prosecute in the face of the inability of Howe to positively identify the watch and work records from Florence. The District Attorney had witnesses that put the two men at Smith’s Mill the morning of the murders and later that morning with Vega, Valenzuela and a fifth man at a well that was just a short distance from where the ambush and murders took place. Two years earlier, Barney Martin and his family were brutally murdered and their bodies burned with their wagon to make it appear they died by an Indian attack. A man named Raveal, arrested months after the Martin killings, in Phoenix in connection with another crime, told a gruesome tale to authorities about the slaughter of the Martin family. He said the Vega gang, of which he was one, surrounded the wagon after forcing it off the trail at the depression. Martin was ordered down from the wagon. As he stepped down, Vega stabbed him. Martin died instantly. Mrs. Martin and the boys jumped from the wagon. She was on her knees, begging Vega not to kill her and her sons when Vega grabbed one of the boys and slit his throat in front of the terrified woman. He then grabbed the other and slashed his throat. According to Raveal, Vega then grabbed the hysterical woman by the hair, pulled her head back and nearly severed it from her body. He and his gang then threw the bodies in the wagon, pulled it several hundred yards off the trail, piled it full of mesquite and burned it. Raveal said he lit the fire. He also said Stanton watched the entire slaughter from his horse on a nearby hill. A Haunted Dip in the Trail The murders of the four members of the Martin family and the three-man Gribble party bothered teamsters plying the Wickenburg and Phoenix trail for years after 1888. It was not infrequent that teamsters camped near the area reported hearing blood-curdling screams pierce the night. Others heard a rapid series of shots like those that cut down Gribble, Johnson, and Doolittle. Some say they heard the off mare of the team scream when she was hit after Gribble’s shotgun discharged when he was falling. Some just refused to camp near the area at all. Francisco Vega and his gang were the prime suspects in the Martin killings as well as the known murderers of Gribble, Johnson, and Doolittle. Valenzuela is the only Vega gang member who paid the price for the latter killings. Vega fled to Mexico where he reportedly formed another gang and killed some two dozen people in a reign of terror that lasted well into the 1890’s. The blood he left in the sands in that dip in the trail about midway between the Agua Fria and the Hassayampa at Wickenburg was Vega’s main heritage on the Arizona Territory side of the border, one that hung heavily over that spot on the trail for years. For those who know what took place there in 1886 and 1888, that spot in the old wagon and stage route to this day sends chills through those passing this blood-soaked dip in the old trail. Courtesy Arizona Historical Society/Tucson Gribble Murder Scene, eight miles from Desert Well and ten miles from Smith’s Mill. continued from page 33