 In July 1881, several Mexican smugglers heading for Tucson or Tombstone and carrying silver were ambushed and killed in an area called Skeleton Canyon.The killers were never positively identified, but Mexicans just across the border always suspected that those murders were committed by outlaw Cowboys.A ranch owned by "Old Man" Clanton in the Animas Valley in New Mexico was used at times by the Cowboys as a way station for selling the stolen cattle.