WHO SHOT FIRST?

KLONDYKE'S CEMETERY sits high on a ridge overlooking the broad sweep of Aravaipa Canyon, about 35 miles west of Safford. Prickly pear cactuses and a handful of grave markers rise from its tall, tawny grasses. Among the latter are those of the Power family, who made their home in the remote, rugged canyons of the Galiuro Mountains, about 15 miles south of here.

Dozens of books and articles have been written about the shootout at the Power cabin, and the accounts include a memoir by Tom Power. Tom's brother John, in many ways Tom's opposite, was a man of few words. This cemetery, a lovely, lonely spot, is the only place he ever recorded his version of that history. "Shot down with hands up in his own door," reads his father's headstone. "Poisoned by unknown person," his sister's reads. Those few words sum up all John ever said about what happened. And he etched them in stone.

More than 100 years later, the circumstances surrounding those deaths remain hotly debated. What's beyond dispute is that on February 10, 1918 a few months after the death of his daughter, Ola May - Jeff Power was killed in a dawn shootout at his home, as were three lawmen who went there to serve a warrant.

The incident led to one of the largest manhunts in the state's history and helped bring back the death penalty in Arizona. Tom and John Power served more than 40 years in prison as the slain lawmen's 19 young children grew to middle age. Many still argue passionately about what happened. And those who knew for certain have carried the truth to their graves.

RESTLESS AND AMBITIOUS, Jeff Power was born in Texas during the Civil War. After his parents parted ways, his mother, Jane, joined her 24-year-old son and his nascent family as they moved to New Mexico. Jane stood 5 feet tall, but what she lacked in stature, she made up for in spirit. According to family lore, she once chased her husband out of a bar with a horsewhip. Jeff was working on the roof of a new home when it collapsed, injuring his mother and killing his wife. A widower at 28, Jeff drifted, working odd jobs, while Jane took care of his four young children. They were nearly all grown by the time the family arrived in the Klondyke area around 1910. John, then 20, was quiet and serious, unlike his gregarious 18-year-old brother Tom. Dark-haired and pretty, 16-year-old Ola shared John's shyness. Charley, the oldest, was aspiring and entrepreneurial; the 22-year-old had begun buying cattle as a teenager and had bought a mining claim at a former goat ranch on Rattlesnake Creek.