Smoking – Good for his Health?

A guard owed his life to giving cigarettes to a prisoner.

Gene Middleton owned a stage service in Arizona. In 1889, he did a favor for a friend, Gila County Sheriff Glenn Reynolds: he transported nine prisoners to the territorial prison at Yuma. But the captives broke away, killing Reynolds and a deputy. Middleton was shot in the neck. According to some stories, an Apache prisoner was about to finish him off with a rock when the Apache Kid stopped it. Middleton had been nice to the Kid, giving him cigarettes along the way. Middleton survived the encounter and lived until 1929.