Читать книгу On The Border With Crook - John Gregory Bourke - Страница 5

Table of Contents

STRANGE VISITORS—SOME APACHE CUSTOMS—MEXICAN CAPTIVES—SPEEDY AND THE GHOST—THE ATTACK UPON KENNEDY AND ISRAEL’S TRAIN—FINDING THE BODIES—THE DEAD APACHE—A FRONTIER BURIAL—HOW LIEUTENANT YEATON RECEIVED HIS DEATH WOUND—ON THE TRAIL WITH LIEUTENANT CUSHING—REVENGE IS SWEET.

WE had all sorts of visitors from the adjacent country. The first I remember was a squaw whose nose had been cut off by a brutal and jealous husband. The woman was not at all bad looking, and there was not a man at the post who did not feel sorry for the unfortunate who, for some dereliction, real or imagined, had been so savagely disfigured.

This shocking mode of punishment, in which, by the way, the Apache resembled some of the nations of antiquity, prevailed in full vigor until after General Crook had subjected this fierce tribe to law and discipline, and the first, or, at least, among the very first, regulations he laid down for their guidance was that the women of the tribe must be treated just as kindly as the men, and each and every infraction of the rule was threatened with the severest punishment the whole military force could inflict. Since then the practice has wholly died out among both the Apaches and the Hualpais.

Then there came an old withered crone, leading a woman somewhat younger, but still shrivelled with the life of care and drudgery which falls to the lot of the Apache matron, and a third member of this interesting party, a boy ten or twelve years old, who was suffering from the bite of a rattlesnake, which had caused his right leg to shrink and decay. The medicine-men of their band had sung vigorously and applied such medicine as they thought best suited to the case, but it proved to be beyond their skill, and they had advised this journey to Camp Grant, to see what the white man’s medicine could do for the sufferer.

Still another interesting picture framed in my memory is that of the bent old dotard who wished to surrender on account of frankly confessed impotency to remain longer on the war-path. Battles were for young men only; as people grew older they got more sense, and all should live as brothers. This world was large enough for everybody, and there should be enough to eat for the Indians and the white men, too. There were men whose hearts were hard and who would not listen to reason; they wished to fight, but as for himself, his legs could not climb the mountains any longer, and the thorns were bad when they scratched his skin. His heart was good, and so long as this stone which he placed on the ground should last he wanted to let the Great Father know that he meant to be his friend. Had his brother, the post commander, any tobacco?

Many an hour did I sit by the side of our friend and brother, watching him chip out arrow-heads from fragments of beer bottles, or admiring the dexterity with which he rubbed two sticks together to produce flame. Matches were his greatest treasure, and he was never tired begging for them, and as soon as obtained, he would wrap them up carefully in a piece of buckskin to screen from the weather. But we never gave him reason to suspect that our generosity was running away with our judgment. We were careful not to give him any after we found out that he could make fire so speedily and in a manner so, strange, and which we were never tired of seeing.

These members of the tribe were all kept as prisoners, more to prevent communication with the enemy than from any suspected intention of attempting an escape. They were perfectly contented, were well fed, had no more to do than was absolutely good for them in the way of exercise, and except that they had to sleep under the eyes of the sentinels at night, were as free as any one else in the garrison. Once or twice Indian couriers came over from Camp Apache—or Thomas, as it was then called—in the Sierra Blanca. Those whom I first saw were almost naked, their only clothing being a muslin loin-cloth, a pair of pointed-toed moccasins, and a hat of hawk feathers. They had no arms but lances and bows and arrows. One of them bore a small round shield of raw-hide decked with eagle plumage, another had a pretty fiddle made of a joint of the bamboo-like stalk of the century plant, and a third had a pack of monte cards, cut out of dried pony skin and painted to represent rudely the figures in the four suits.

Their lank, long black hair, held back from the eyes by bands of red flannel; their superb chests, expanded by constant exercise in the lofty mountains, and their strongly muscled legs confirmed all that I had already learned of their powers of endurance from the half-breed Mexicans and the tame Apaches at the post—people like Manuel Duran, Nicolas, and Francisco, who were what were then known as tame Apaches, and who had never lived with the others in the hills, but belonged to a section which had made peace with the whites many years previously and had never broken it; or escaped captives like José Maria, José de Leon, Victor Ruiz, or Antonio Besias, who had been torn away from their homes in Sonora at an early age, and had lived so long with the savages that they had become thoroughly conversant with all their ideas and customs as well as their language. Nearly all that class of interpreters and guides are now dead. Each had a wonderful history, well worthy of recital, but I cannot allow myself to be tempted into a more extended reference to any of them at this moment.

The fact that the post trader had just received a stock of new goods meant two things—it meant that he had made a mistake in his order and received a consignment different from the old goods which he had hitherto taken so much pride in keeping upon his shelves, and it meant that the paymaster was about to pay us a visit, and leave a share of Uncle Sam’s money in the country.

There were two assistants in the store, Paul and Speedy.

Paul was getting along in years, but Speedy was young and bright. Paul had at one period in his life possessed some intelligence and a fair education, but whiskey, cards, and tobacco had long ago blunted what faculties he could claim, and left him a poor hulk, working for his board and drinks at such odd jobs as there were to do about the premises. He had been taught the trade of cabinet-making in Strassburg, and when in good humor, and not too drunk, would join and polish, carve and inlay boxes, made of the wood of the mesquite, madroño, manzanita, ash, and walnut, which would delight the eyes of the most critical.

Speedy was the most active man about the post. He was one of our best runners, and by all odds the best swimmer in the cool, deep pools which the San Pedro formed where it came up out of the sands a short distance below the officers’ quarters, and where we often bathed in the early evening hours, with some one of the party on guard, because the lurking Apaches were always a standing menace in that part of Arizona.

I do not know what has become of Speedy. He was an exceptionally good man in many ways, and if not well educated, made up in native intelligence what others more fortunate get from books. From a Yankee father he inherited the Maine shrewdness in money matters and a keenness in seeing the best points in a bargain. A Spanish mother endowed him with a fund of gentle politeness and good manners.

When he came to bid me good-by and tell me that he had opened a “Monte Pio,” or pawnbroker’s shop, in Tucson, I ventured to give him a little good advice.

“You must be careful of your money, Speedy. Pawnbroking is a risky business. You’ll be likely to have a great deal of unsalable stuff left on your hands, and it don’t look to me as if five per cent. was enough interest to charge. The laws of New York, I believe, allow one to charge twenty per cent. per annum.”

“Cap., what’s per annum?”

“Why, every year, of course.”

“Oh, but you see mine is five per cent. a week.”

Speedy was the only man I ever knew who had really seen a ghost. As he described it to us, it had much the appearance of a “human,” and was mounted on a pretty good specimen of a Sonora plug, and was arrayed in a suit of white canvas, with white helmet, green veil, blue goggles, and red side whiskers. It didn’t say a word to my friend, but gave him a decidedly cold stare, which was all that Speedy cared to wait for before he broke for the brush. A hundred yards or so in rear there was a train of pack mules, laden with cot frames, bath-tubs, hat boxes, and other trumpery, which may or may not have had something to do with the ghost in advance. Speedy and his mule were too agitated to stop to ask questions, and continued on into Hermosillo.

Information received about this time from Sonora reported that an English “lud” was “roughing it” in and about the Yaqui country, and it is just possible that he could have given much information about the apparition had it been demanded; but Speedy persisted in his belief that he had had a “call” from the other world, and was sorely depressed for several weeks.

Speedy rendered valuable help in our self-imposed task of digging in the “ruins” alongside of our quarters—vestiges of an occupancy by a pre-historic race, allied to the Pueblos of the Rio Grande or to the Pimas and Papagoes.

Broken pottery, painted and unpainted, a flint knife or two, some arrow-heads, three or four stone hatchets, and more of the same sort, were our sole reward for much hard work. The great question which wrought us up to fever heat was, Who were these inhabitants? Felmer promptly decided that they were Phoenicians—upon what grounds I do not know, and it is very doubtful if Felmer knew either—but Oscar Hutton “’lowed they mout ’a’ bin some o’ them Egyptian niggers as built the pyramids in th’ Bible.”

The paymaster had come and gone; the soldiers had spent their last dollar; the last “pay-day drunk” had been rounded up and was now on his way to the guard-house, muttering a maudlin defiance to Erin’s foes; the sun was shining with scorching heat down upon the bed of pebbles which formed the parade-ground; the flag hung limp and listless from the pudgy staff; the horses were out on herd; the scarlet-shouldered blackbirds, the cardinals, the sinsontes, and the jays had sought the deepest shadows; there was no sound to drown the insistent buzz of the aggravating flies or the voice of the Recorder of the Garrison Court just assembled, which was trying Privates A. and B. and C. and D. and others, names and rank now forgotten, for having “then and there,” “on or about,” and “at or near” the post of Camp Grant, Arizona, committed sundry and divers crimes against the law and regulations—when, straight across the parade, with the swiftness of a frightened deer, there ran a half or three-quarters naked Mexican, straight to the door of the “comandante’s” quarters.

He was almost barefooted, the shoes he had on being in splinters. His trousers had been scratched so by the thorns and briars that only rags were now pendent from his waist. His hat had been dropped in his terrified flight from some unexplained danger, which the wan face, almost concealed by matted locks, and the shirt covered with blood still flowing freely from a wound in the chest, conclusively showed to have been an Apache ambuscade.

With faltering voice and in broken accents the sufferer explained that he was one of a party of more than thirty Mexicans coming up from Tucson to work on the ranch of Kennedy and Israel, who lived about a mile from our post down the San Pedro. There were a number of women and several children with the train, and not a soul had the slightest suspicion of danger, when suddenly, on the head of the slope leading up to the long “mesa” just this side of the Cañon del Oro, they had found themselves surrounded on three sides by a party of Apaches, whose strength was variously put at from thirty to fifty warriors.

The Americans and Mexicans made the best fight possible, and succeeded in keeping back the savages until the women and children had reached a place of comparative safety; but both Kennedy and Israel were killed, and a number of others killed or wounded, our informant being one of the latter, with a severe cut in the left breast, where a bullet had ploughed round his ribs without doing very serious damage. The Apaches fell to plundering the wagons, which were loaded with the general supplies that ranchmen were in those days compelled to keep in stock, for feeding the numbers of employees whom they had to retain to cultivate their fields, as well as to guard them, and the Mexicans, seeing this, made off as fast as their legs could carry them, under the guidance of such of their party as were familiar with the trails leading across the Santa Catalina range to the San Pedro and Camp Grant. One of these trails ran by way of Apache Springs at the northern extremity of the range, and was easy of travel, so that most of the people were safe, but we were strongly urged to lose no time in getting round by the longer road, along which the Apaches were believed to have pursued a few men.

The Mexican, Domingo, had seen Sergeants Warfield and Mott, two old veterans, on his way through the post, and they, without waiting for orders, had the herd run in and saddles got out in anticipation of what their experience taught them was sure to come. Every man who could be put on horseback was mounted at once, without regard to his company or regiment, and in less than twenty minutes the first detachment was crossing the San Pedro and entering the long defile known as the Santa Catalina Cañon—not very well equipped for a prolonged campaign, perhaps, as some of the men had no water in canteens and others had only a handful of crackers for rations, but that made no difference. Our business was to rescue women and children surrounded by savages, and to do it with the least delay possible. At least, that was the way Colonel Dubois reasoned on the subject, and we had only our duty to do—obey orders.

A second detachment would follow after us, with a wagon containing water in kegs, rations for ten days, medical supplies, blankets, and every other essential for making such a scout as might become necessary.

Forward! was the word, and every heel struck flank and every horse pressed upon the bit. Do our best, we couldn’t make very rapid progress through the cañon, which for its total length of twelve miles was heavy with shifting sand.

Wherever there was a stretch of hard pan, no matter how short, we got the best time out of it that was possible. The distance seemed interminable, but we pressed on, passing the Four-mile Walnut, on past the Cottonwood, slipping along without a word under the lofty walls which screened us from the rays of the sun, although the afternoon was still young. But in much less time than we had a right to expect we had reached the end of the bad road, and halted for a minute to have all loose cinches retightened and everything made ready for rapid travelling on to the Cañon del Oro.

In front of us stretched a broken, hilly country, bounded on the east and west by the Tortolita and the Sierra Santa Catalina respectively. The summer was upon us, but the glories of the springtime had not yet faded from the face of the desert, which still displayed the splendors of millions of golden crocuses, with countless odorless verbenas of varied tints, and acres upon acres of nutritious grasses, at which our horses nibbled every time we halted for a moment. The cañon of the Santa Catalina for more than four miles of its length is no wider than an ordinary street in a city, and is enclosed by walls rising one thousand feet above the trail. Wherever a foothold could be found, there the thorny-branched giant cactus stood sentinel, or the prickly plates of the nopal matted the face of the escarpment. High up on the wall of the cañon, one of the most prominent of the pitahayas or giant cacti had been transfixed by the true aim of an Apache arrow, buried up to the feathers.

For the beauties or eccentricities of nature we had no eyes. All that we cared to know was how long it would take to put us where the train had been ambushed and destroyed. So, on we pushed, taking a very brisk gait, and covering the ground with rapidity.

The sun was going down in a blaze of scarlet and gold behind the Tortolita Range, the Cañon del Oro was yet several miles away, and still no signs of the party of which we were in such anxious search. “They must have been nearer the Cañon del Oro than the Mexican thought,” was the general idea, for we had by this time gained the long mesa upon which we had been led to believe we should see the ruins of the wagons.

We were now moving at a fast walk, in line, with carbines at an “advance,” and everything ready for a fight to begin on either flank or in front, as the case might be; but there was no enemy in sight. We deployed as skirmishers, so as to cover as much ground as possible, and pick up any dead body that might be lying behind the mesquite or the palo verde which lined the road. A sense of gloom spread over the little command, which had been hoping against hope to find the survivors alive and the savages still at bay. But, though the coyote yelped to the moon, and flocks of quail whirred through the air when raised from their seclusion in the bushes, and funereal crows, perched upon the tops of the pitahayas, croaked dismal salutations, there was no sound of the human voices we longed to hear.

But don’t be too sure. Is that a coyote’s cry or the wail of a fellow-creature in distress? A coyote, of course. Yes, it is, and no, it isn’t. Every one had his own belief, and would tolerate no dissent. “Hel-lup! Hel-lup! My God, hel-lup!” “This way, Mott! Keep the rest of the men back there on the road.” In less than ten seconds we had reached a small arroyo, not very deep, running parallel to the road and not twenty yards from it, and there, weak and faint and covered with his own blood, was our poor, unfortunate friend, Kennedy. He was in the full possession of his faculties and able to recognize every one whom he knew and to tell a coherent story. As to the first part of the attack, he concurred with Domingo, but he furnished the additional information that as soon as the Apaches saw that the greater number of the party had withdrawn with the women and children, of whom there were more than thirty all told, they made a bold charge to sweep down the little rear-guard which had taken its stand behind the wagons. Kennedy was sure that the Apaches had suffered severely, and told me where to look for the body of the warrior who had killed his partner, Israel. Israel had received a death-wound in the head which brought him to his knees, but before he gave up the ghost his rifle, already in position at his shoulder, was discharged and killed the tall, muscular young savage who appeared to be leading the attack.

Kennedy kept up the unequal fight as long as he could, in spite of the loss of the thumb of his left hand, shot off at the first volley; but when the Mexicans at each side of him fell, he drew his knife, cut the harness of the “wheeler” mule nearest him, sprang into the saddle, and charged right through the Apaches advancing a second time. His boldness disconcerted their aim, but they managed to plant an arrow in his breast and another in the ribs of his mule, which needed no further urging to break into a mad gallop over every rock and thorn in its front. Kennedy could not hold the bridle with his left hand, and the pain in his lung was excruciating—“Jes’ like ’s if I’d swallowed a coal o’ fire, boys,” he managed to gasp, half inarticulately. But he had run the mule several hundreds of yards, and was beginning to have a faint hope of escaping, when a bullet from his pursuers struck its hind-quarters and pained and frightened it so much that it bucked him over its head and plunged off to one side among the cactus and mesquite, to be seen no more. Kennedy, by great effort, reached the little arroyo in which we found him, and where he had lain, dreading each sound and expecting each moment to hear the Apaches coming to torture him to death. His fears were unfounded. As it turned out, fortunately for all concerned, the Apaches could not resist the temptation to plunder, and at once began the work of breaking open and pilfering every box and bundle the wagons contained, forgetting all about the Mexicans who had made their escape to the foot-hills, and Kennedy, who lay so very, very near them.

Half a dozen good men were left under command of a sergeant to take care of Kennedy, while the rest hurried forward to see what was to be seen farther to the front.

It was a ghastly sight, one which in its details I should like to spare my readers. There were the hot embers of the new wagons, the scattered fragments of broken boxes, barrels, and packages of all sorts; copper shells, arrows, bows, one or two broken rifles, torn and burned clothing. There lay all that was mortal of poor Israel, stripped of clothing, a small piece cut from the crown of the head, but thrown back upon the corpse—the Apaches do not care much for scalping—his heart cut out, but also thrown back near the corpse, which had been dragged to the fire of the burning wagons and had been partly consumed; a lance wound in the back, one or two arrow wounds—they may have been lance wounds, too, but were more likely arrow wounds, the arrows which made them having been burned out; there were plenty of arrows lying around—a severe contusion under the left eye, where he had been hit perhaps with the stock of a rifle or carbine, and the death wound from ear to ear, through which the brain had oozed.

The face was as calm and resolute in death as Israel had been in life. He belonged to a class of frontiersmen of which few representatives now remain—the same class to which belonged men like Pete Kitchen, the Duncans, of the San Pedro; Darrel Duppa and Jack Townsend, of the Agua Fria; men whose lives were a romance of adventure and danger, unwritten because they never frequented the towns, where the tenderfoot correspondent would be more likely to fall in with some border Munchausen, whose tales of privation and peril would be in the direct ratio of the correspondent’s receptivity and credulity.

It was now too dark to do anything more, so we brought up Kennedy, who seemed in such good spirits that we were certain he would pull through, as we could not realize that he had been hit by an arrow at all, but tried to console him with the notion that the small round hole in his chest, from which little if any blood had flown, had been made by a buck-shot or something like it. But Kennedy knew better. “No, boys,” he said sadly, shaking his head, “it’s all up with me. I’m a goner. I know it was an arrow, ’cause I broke the feather end off. I’m goin’ to die.”

Sentinels were posted behind the bushes, and the whole command sat down to keep silent watch for the coming of the morrow. The Apaches might double back—there was no knowing what they might do—and it was best to be on our guard. The old rule of the frontier, as I learned it from men like Joe Felmer, Oscar Hutton, and Manuel Duran, amounted to this: “When you see Apache ‘sign,’ be keerful; ’n’ when you don’ see nary sign, be more keerful.”

The stars shone out in their grandest effulgence, and the feeble rays of the moon were no added help to vision. There is only one region in the whole world, Arizona, where the full majesty can be comprehended of that text of Holy Writ which teaches: “The Heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork.” Midnight had almost come, when the rumble of wheels, the rattle of harness, and the cracking of whips heralded the approach of wagons and ambulance and the second detachment of cavalry. They brought orders from Colonel Dubois to return to the post as soon as the animals had had enough rest, and then as fast as possible, to enable all to start in pursuit of the Apaches, whose trail had been “cut” a mile or two above Felmer’s, showing that they had crossed the Santa Catalina Range, and were making for the precipitous country close to the head of the Aravaypa.

The coming day found our party astir and hard at work. First, we hunted up the body of the Apache who had shot Israel. Lieutenant George Bacon, First Cavalry, found it on a shelf of rock, in a ravine not a hundred yards from where the white enemy lay, shot, as Israel was, through the head. We did not disturb it, but as much cannot be averred of the hungry and expectant coyotes and the raw-necked buzzards, which had already begun to draw near.

The trail of the savages led straight toward the Santa Catalina, and a hurried examination disclosed a very curious fact, which later on was of great importance to the troops in pursuit. There had been a case of patent medicine in the wagons, and the Apaches had drunk the contents of the bottles, under the impression that they contained whiskey. The result was that, as the signs showed, there were several of the Indians seriously incapacitated from alcoholic stimulant of some kind, which had served as the menstruum for the drugs of the nostrum. They had staggered from cactus to cactus, falling into mesquite, in contempt of the thorns on the branches, and had lain sprawled at full length in the sand, oblivious of the danger incurred. It would have been a curious experience for the raiders could we have arrived twenty-four hours sooner.

Fully an hour was consumed in getting the horses and mules down to the water in the Cañon del Oro, and in making a cup of coffee, for which there was the water brought along in the kegs in the wagons. Everything and everybody was all right, excepting Kennedy, who was beginning to act and talk strangely; first exhilarated and then excited, petulant and despondent. His sufferings were beginning to tell upon him, and he manifested a strange aversion to being put in the same vehicle with a dead man. We made the best arrangement possible for the comfort of our wounded friend, for whom it seemed that the ambulance would be the proper place. But the jolting and the upright position he was compelled to take proved too much for him, and he begged to be allowed to recline at full length in one of the wagons.

His request was granted at once; only, as it happened, he was lifted into the wagon in which the stiff, stark corpse of Israel was glaring stonily at the sky. A canvas ’paulin was stretched over the corpse, half a dozen blankets spread out to make as soft a couch as could be expected, and then Kennedy was lifted in, and the homeward march resumed with rapid gait. Animals and men were equally anxious to leave far in the rear a scene of such horror, and without whip or spur we rolled rapidly over the gravelly “mesa,” until we got to the head of the Santa Catalina Cañon, and even there we progressed satisfactorily, as, notwithstanding the deep sand, it was all down grade into the post.

In crossing the San Pedro, the wagon in which Kennedy was riding gave a lurch, throwing him to one side; to keep himself from being bumped against the side, he grasped the first thing within reach, and this happened to be the cold, clammy ankle of the corpse. One low moan, or, rather, a groan, was all that showed Kennedy’s consciousness of the undesirable companionship of his ride. The incident didn’t really make very much difference, however, as his last hours were fast drawing near, and Death had already summoned him. He breathed his last in the post hospital before midnight. An autopsy revealed the presence of a piece of headless arrow, four or five inches long, lodged in the left lung.

The funeral ceremonies did not take much time. There was no lumber in that section of country for making coffins. Packing boxes, cracker boxes, anything that could be utilized, were made to serve the purpose, and generally none Were used. The whole garrison turned out. A few words from the Book of Common Prayer—“Man that is born of woman,” etc.; a few clods of earth rattling down; then a layer of heavy rocks and spiny cactus, to keep the coyotes from digging up the bones; more earth; and all was over, excepting the getting ready for the pursuit.

This was to be prosecuted by Lieutenant Howard B. Cushing, an officer of wonderful experience in Indian warfare, who with his troop, “F” of the Third Cavalry, had killed more savages of the Apache tribe than any other officer or troop of the United States Army has done before or since. During the latter days of the preceding fall, 1869, he had struck a crushing blow at the courage of the Apaches infesting the country close to the Guadalupe Range in southwestern Texas, and had killed and wounded many of the adults, and captured a number of children and a herd of ponies.

But Lieutenant Franklin Yeaton, a brave and exceedingly able officer, just out of West Point, was fatally wounded on our side, and the more Cushing brooded over the matter, the hotter flamed his anger, until he could stand it no longer, but resolved to slip back across country and try his luck over again. He had hauled Yeaton and the rest of the wounded for four marches on rudely improvised “travois” across the snow, which lay unusually deep that winter, until he found a sheltered camping-place near the Peñasco, a branch of the Pecos, where he left his impedimenta under a strong guard, and with the freshest horses and men turned back, rightly surmising that the hostiles would have given up following him, and would be gathered in their ruined camp, bewailing the loss of kindred.

He had guessed rightly, and at the earliest sign of morning in the east was once again leading his men to the attack upon the Apaches, who, not knowing what to make of such an utterly unexpected onslaught, fled in abject terror, leaving many dead on the ground behind them.

All this did not exactly compensate for the loss of Yeaton, but it served to let out some of Cushing’s superfluous wrath, and keep him from exploding.

Cushing belonged to a family which won deserved renown during the War of the Rebellion. One brother blew up the ram Albemarle; another died most heroically at his post of duty on the battle-field of Gettysburg; there was still another in the navy who died in service, I do not remember where; and the one of whom I am speaking, who was soon to die at the hands of the Apaches, and deserves more than a passing word.

He was about five feet seven in height, spare, sinewy, active as a cat; slightly stoop-shouldered, sandy complexioned, keen gray or bluish-gray eyes, which looked you through when he spoke and gave a slight hint of the determination, coolness, and energy which had made his name famous all over the southwestern border. There is an alley named after him in Tucson, and there is, or was, when last I saw it, a tumble-down, worm-eaten board to mark his grave, and that was all to show where the great American nation had deposited the remains of one of its bravest.

But I am anticipating altogether too much, and should be getting ready to follow the trail of the marauders. Cushing didn’t seem to be in any particular hurry about starting, and I soon learned that he intended taking his ease about it, as he wanted to let the Indians be thrown off their guard completely and imagine that the whites were not following their trail. Let them once suspect that a party was in pursuit, and they would surely break up their trail and scatter like quail, and no one then could hope to do anything with them.

Every hoof was carefully looked at, and every shoe tacked on tight; a few extra shoes for the fore-feet were taken along in the pack train, with fifteen days’ rations of coffee, hard tack, and bacon, and one hundred rounds of ammunition.

All that could be extracted from the Mexicans in the way of information was pondered over, and submitted to the consideration of Felmer and Manuel Duran, the guides who were to conduct the column. Some of the Mexican men were composed and fully recovered from the effects of their terrible experience, and those who were wounded were doing well; but the women still trembled at the mere name of an Apache, and several of them did nothing but tell their beads in gratitude to Heaven for the miracle of their escape.

In Arizona, New Mexico, and southwestern Texas it has been remarked that one has to ascend the bed of a stream in order to get water. This rule is especially true of the Aravaypa. There is not a drop, as a usual thing, at its mouth, but if you ascend the cañon five or six miles, the current trickles above the sand, and a mile or two more will bring you to a stream of very respectable dimensions, flowing over rocky boulders of good size, between towering walls which screen from the sun, and amid scenery which is picturesque, romantic, and awe-inspiring. The raiders left the cañon of the Aravaypa at its most precipitous part, not far from the gypsum out-crop, and made a straight shoot for the mouth of the San Carlos. This, however, was only a blind, and inside of three miles there was no trail left, certainly not going in the direction of Mount Turnbull.

Manuel Duran was not at all worried; he was an Apache himself, and none of the tricks of the trade had the slightest effect upon his equanimity. He looked over the ground carefully. Ah! here is a stone which has been overturned in its place, and here some one has cut that branch of mesquite; and here—look! we have it, the shod-hoof track of one of Israel’s mules! There is nothing the matter at all. The Apaches have merely scattered and turned, and instead of going toward the junction of the Gila and the San Carlos, have bent to the west and started straight for the mouth of the San Pedro, going down by the head of Deer Creek, and over to the Rock Creek, which rises in the “Dos Narices” Mountain, not twelve miles from Grant itself. Patient search, watching every blade of grass, every stone or bush, and marching constantly, took the command to the mouth of the San Pedro, across the Gila, up to the head of the Disappointment Creek, in the Mescal Mountains, and over into the foot-hills of the Pinal—and not into the foot-hills merely, but right across the range at its highest point.

The Apaches were evidently a trifle nervous, and wanted to make as big a circuit as possible to bewilder pursuers; but all their dodges were vain. From the top of the Pinal a smoke was detected rising in the valley to the north and east, and shortly afterward the evidence that a party of squaws and children, laden with steamed mescal, had joined the raiders, and no doubt were to remain with them until they got home, if they were not already home.

Cushing would hardly wait till the sun had hidden behind the Superstition Mountains or the Matitzal before he gave the order to move on. Manuel was more prudent, and not inclined to risk anything by undue haste.

He would wait all night before he would risk disappointment in an attack upon an enemy whom he had followed so far. Manuel wouldn’t allow any of the Americans, to come near while he made his preparations for peeping over the crest of the “divide.” Tying a large wisp of palmilla or bear’s grass about his head, he crawled or wriggled on hands and knees to the position giving the best view down the valley, and made all the observations desired.

The night was long and cold and dark, and the men had been at least an hour in position overlooking the smouldering fires of the enemy, and ready to begin the attack the moment that it should be light enough to see one’s hand in front of him, when an accidental occurrence precipitated an engagement.

One of the old men—one of the party of mescal gatherers who had joined the returning war-party—felt cold and arose from his couch to stir the embers into a blaze. The light played fitfully upon his sharp features and gaunt form, disclosing every muscle.

To get some additional fuel, he advanced toward the spot where Cushing crouched down awaiting the favorable moment for giving the signal to fire. The savage suspects something, peers ahead a little, and is satisfied that there is danger close by. He turns to escape, crying out that the Americans have come, and awakening all in the camp.

The soldiers raised a terrific yell and poured in a volley which laid low a number of the Apaches; the latter scarcely tried to fight in the place where they stood, as the light of the fire made their presence perfectly plain to the attacking party. So their first idea was to seek a shelter in the rocks from which to pick off the advancing skirmishers. In this they were unsuccessful, and death and ruin rained down upon them. They made the best fight they could, but they could do nothing. Manuel saw something curious rushing past him in the gloom. He brought rifle to shoulder and fired, and, as it turned out, killed two at one shot—a great strong warrior, and the little boy of five or six years old whom he had seized, and was trying to hurry to a place of safety, perched upon his shoulders.

It was a ghastly spectacle, a field of blood won with but slight loss to ourselves. But I do not care to dilate upon the scene, as it is my intention to give only a meagre outline description of what Arizona was like prior to the assignment of General Crook to the command. The captured women and boys stated they were a band of Pinals who had just returned from a raid down into Sonora before making the attack upon the wagons of Kennedy and Israel. Some of their bravest warriors were along, and they would have made a determined fight had they not all been more or less under the influence of the stuff they had swallowed out of the bottles captured with the train. Many had been very drunk, and all had been sickened, and were not in condition to look out for surprise as they ordinarily did. They had thought that by doubling across the country from point to point, any Americans who might try to follow would surely be put off the scent; they did not know that there were Apaches with the soldiers.