As the United States bustled into the twentieth century, Arizona continued to lanquish as a territory with an unsavory reputation for frontier lawnessness.  Rustling was rampant, bank and train robberies and street shootings were common.  Because general outlawry was a primary reason that statehood had not been granted, Arizona leaders organized a law and order campaign.  In September 1901 the territory formed a company of Arizona Rangers, while county and local peace officers accelerated their own efforts.

A month  after the company was orgainzed, Ranger Tafolla and Duane Hamblin joined a posse trailing a gang led by Bill Smith, one of Arizona's most notorious criminals. After being arrested for cattle rustling in 1898,  Smith had engineered a bold escape.  After a year in New Mexico, he returned to Arizona and formed a gang of cattle and horse thieves.

Rancher Henry Barrett, whom Smith's gang had frequently victimized, led the posse.  In addition to Barrett and the Ranger, the posse was comprised of  Hank Sharp ( Apache County Deputy Sheriff),  Bill and Arch Maxwell, Lorenzo Crosby, Pete  Peterson and Elijah Holgate.

The gang was driving a herd of stolen horses south into Eastern Arizona's  mountanious, timbered  Black River wilderness country.  On Tuesday October 8, the outlaws camped at Reservation Creek, in a gorge 200 yards wide and 100 feet deep near the headwaters of the Black River.  They shot a bear late that cold afternoon and were engaged in skinning the beast.  Some of the gang members had started supper, while bloodhounds prowled the perimeter.  Suddenly, one hound  nervously barked out an alarm and Bill Smith scrambled to the top of the rim for a look.  He darted back to the camp with news that several  men were approaching.  Al and George Smith began to move the horses out of the clearing.

The posse had heard the three rifle shots that had brought down the bear and a ride of half a mile brought them to a bloody trail in the snow.  Signs indicated that two men had packed out freshly killed game on a horse.  The posse sensed their prey was near and followed the trail in the final hours of daylight.

The  nine posse  members tied their horses to a cluster of  bushes and crept the last 300 yards through the snow on foot.  They moved in from the west as the sun set between Mount Ord and Old Baldy.   The outlaws thus enjoyed the protection of the shadowed gorge, while the sun's rays highlighted the rim to the east and made it difficult to fire into the rustler's camp.  Most of the possemen crawled to prone positions on the rim, but the two Rangers and Bill Maxwell boldly advanced into the clearing.  In the open, they were starkly silhouetted against the whitenes of the snow.

Barrett shouted from the rim for the lead man to get down.  Hamblin flattened onto the ground, but Tafolla and Maxwell ignored their danger.  Maxwell called out an order for the outlaws to surrender.

"All  right", replied Smith.  "Which way do you want us to come out?"

"Come right out this way," directed Maxwell.

The outlaw leader walked toward the lawmen, dragging a new  Savage .303 rifle behind him.  Suddenly, Smith brought up the Savage repeater and opened up from a distance of forty feet.   Tafolla went down, shot through the torso, while Maxwell was  hit in the forehead and died on the spot.  Smith darted for cover as the other outlaws began firing from behind tree trunks.  Tafolla gamely emptied his Winchester, and his companions opened up from the rim.  Most of the rifles were loaded with black powder cartridges;  and a haze of white smoke began to spread through the gorge as gunshots echoed off the surrounding wall.   Barrett's fire was especially effective.  He was armed with a Spanish Mauser captured in Cuba, and its smokeless, steel-jacketed rounds ripped through the little pine trees that shielded the outlaws.  Two rustlers were wounded, shot in the foot and leg and one of their hounds was killed.  After a few moments, the gunfire ended as the gang retreated into the timber.

During the shooting, Hamblin had worked his way around  to the outlaws' mounts.  He found nine saddle horses and a pack mule, drove the animals away, and put the rustlers afoot.  Desperately, Smith and his men pressed into the wilderness and escaped into the sudden mountain nightfall.

Back in the clearing ,Tafolla lay on his back, shot twice through the middle and moaning for water.  Bill Maxwell  was dead, his big hat had three bullet holes in the crown.  As the posse closed in they found the dead hound, along with the saddles, bridles, camp gear and the fleeing outlaws' abandoned belongings.  Tree trunks throughout the gorge were scared with bullet marks.  The clearing, forty miles  south of   St. Johns, would become knowns as,    "The Battle Ground."

Bill Maxwell's hat was left on the ground, and cowboys who later had occasion  to ride through The Battle Ground superstitiously refused to touch the bullet ridden sombrero.  Posse members carried Maxwell's body to where they had  tethered their horses and laid him out on two saddle blankets.  Hank Sharp and Arch Maxwell rode east for help from the Mormon community of Nutrioso, where the Maxwell homestead was located.  Hamblin, Barrett, Peterson, Holgate, and Crosby stayed behind to provide crude care for Tafolla, who was in agony.  Tafolla realized that he was dying, and before he lost consciousness he pulled out a silver dollar from his pants pocket and handed it to Barrett.

"Give this dollar to my wife", gasped Tafolla.  "It , and the month's wages coming to me, will be all she'll  ever have."  Tafolla died at midnight.  He was the first and only Arizona Ranger slain in the line of duty.  His wife was given a small pension.

The Arizona Rangers and other officers converged on the area, but Bill Smith and his gang had escaped into nearby New Mexico.  A forbidding  haunt of outlaws had been penetrated, however, and the Smith Gang never resumed operations in Arizona.  ( Rumors later surfaced that Smith sailed from Galveston to Argentina).

The Rangers continued to target other Arizona gangs and prominent outlaws, and their efforts markedly reduced lawlessness in the territory.  With little need remaining for the hard band of hard-driving frontier lawmen's services, the territoral legislature disbanded the Rangers in 1909.  Three years later, Arizona achieved statehood.