Chapter III (1)

THE RETURN TO CAMP GRANT—LANCED TO DEATH BY APACHES—THE KILLING OF
MILLER AND TAPPAN—COMPANY QUARTERS—APACHE CAPTIVES—THE
CLOUD-BURST—APACHE CORN-FIELDS—MEETING COLONEL SANFORD—ENTRAPPED IN
AN APACHE AMBUSCADE—AN OLD-TIMER’S REMINISCENCES OF TUCSON—FUNERAL
CROSSES ON THE ROADSIDE—PADRE EUSEBIO KINO—FIRST VIEW OF TUCSON—THE
“SHOO FLY” RESTAURANT.

Of the return march very little need be said. The story would become too long, and there would be needless repetition if an attempt were to be made to describe each scout in detail. There are others to come of much more importance, and covering the same region, so that the reader will lose nothing by the omission.

There was the usual amount of rough mountain climbing, wearing out shoes and patience and nerve strength all at one and the same time; there was the usual deprivation of water to be expected in the arid wastes of southern Arizona, where springs are few and far between; there were the usual tricks for getting along without much to drink, such as putting a pebble or twig in the mouth to induce a more copious flow of saliva; and when camp was made and the water was found to be not all that it might be, there were other tricks for cleaning it, or, at least, causing a deposition of the earthy matter held in suspension, by cutting up a few plates of the nopal and letting them remain in the kettle for a short time, until their mucilaginous juice had precipitated everything. But a still better plan was to improve the good springs, which was a labor of love with officers and men, and many a fine water hole in Arizona has been the scene of much hard work in digging out, building up with cracker boxes or something to hold the water and keep it from soaking into the earth.

Camp Grant was reached at last, and the prisoners turned over to the care of the guard, and Lieutenant Cushing, his first duty in the Territory accomplished with so much credit to himself and his men, made ready to start out on another and a longer trip just as soon as the signal should be given by the post commander.

Our troop was peculiarly situated. It had a second mount of ponies, captured from the Apaches against whom Cushing had done such good service in southwestern Texas. Orders came down in due time from San Francisco to turn them in and have them sold by the quartermaster; but until these orders came—and owing to the slowness of mail communications in those days, they did not come for several months—we had the advantage of being able to do nearly twice as much work as troops less fortunately placed.

The humdrum life of any post in Arizona in those days was enough to drive one crazy. The heat in most of them became simply unendurable, although here the great dryness of the atmosphere proved a benefit. Had the air been humid, very few of our garrison would now be alive to tell of temperatures of one hundred and twenty and over, and of days during the whole twenty-four hours of which the thermometer did not register below the one hundred notch.

There was a story current that the heat had one time become so excessive that two thermometers had to be strapped together to let the mercury have room to climb. That was before my arrival, and is something for which I do not care to vouch. I give the story as it was given to me by my friend, Jack Long, of whom I am soon to speak.

In every description of Arizona that I have ever seen, and I claim to be familiar with most if not all that has appeared in print, there occurs the story of the soldier who came back to Fort Yuma after his blankets, finding the next world too cold to suit him. I make reference to the story because many worthy people would find it hard to believe that a man had been in Arizona who did not tell this story in his first chapter, but it has grown to be such a mouldy military chestnut that I may be pardoned for omitting it.

There were all kinds of methods of killing the hours. One that interested everybody for a while was the battles which we stirred up between the nests of red and black ants, which could be found in plenty and of great size close to the post. I have seen the nests in question three or four feet high, and not less than six feet long, crowded with industrious population. The way to start the battle was to make a hole in each nest and insert cans which had lately been emptied of peaches or other sweets.

These would soon fill with the battalions of the two colors, and could then be poured into a basin, where the combat _à outrance_ never failed to begin at once. The red ants were much the braver, and one of that color would tackle two, and even three, of the black. If the rumpus lasted for any length of time, queens would appear, as if to superintend what was going on. At least, that was our impression when we saw the large-bodied, yellow-plush insects sallying from the depths of the nests.

We had not been back in the post a week before we had something to talk about. A Mexican who was doing some work for the Government came up to confer with the commanding officer as to details. He left the adjutant’s office before mid-day, and had not gone one thousand yards—less, indeed, than rifle-shot—from the door, when an Apache, lurking in ambush behind a clump of palmilla, pierced him through and through with a lance, and left him dead, weltering in his own blood. To attempt pursuit was worse than useless, and all we could do was to bury the victim.

It was this peculiarity of the Apaches that made them such a terror to all who came in contact with them, and had compelled the King of Spain to maintain a force of four thousand dragoons to keep in check a tribe of naked savages, who scorned to wear any protection against the bullets of the Castilians, who would not fight when pursued, but scattered like their own crested mountain quail, and then hovered on the flanks of the whites, and were far more formidable when dispersed than when they were moving in compact bodies. This was simply the best military policy for the Apaches to adopt—wear out the enemy by vexatious tactics, and by having the pursuit degenerate into a will-o’-th’-wisp chase. The Apaches could find food on every hillside, and the water-holes, springs, and flowing streams far up in the mountains were perfectly well known to them.

The Caucasian troops, of whatever nationality, would wander about, half-crazed with thirst, and maddened by the heat of the day or chilled by the cold winds of night in the mountains, and unable to tell which plants were of value as food and which were not.

The Apache was in no sense a coward. He knew his business, and played his cards to suit himself. He never lost a shot, and never lost a warrior in a fight where a brisk run across the nearest ridge would save his life and exhaust the heavily clad soldier who endeavored to catch him. Apaches in groups of two and three, and even individual Apaches, were wont to steal in close to the military posts and ranchos, and hide behind some sheltering rock, or upon the summit of some conveniently situated hill, and there remain for days, scanning the movements of the Americans below, and waiting for a chance to stampede a herd, or kill a herder or two, or “jump” a wagon-train.

They knew how to disguise themselves so thoroughly that one might almost step upon a warrior thus occupied before he could detect his presence. Stripped naked, with head and shoulders wrapped up in a bundle of yucca shoots or “sacaton” grass, and with body rubbed over with the clay or sand along which it wriggled as sinuously and as venomously as the rattler itself, the Apache could and did approach to within ear-shot of the whites, and even entered the enclosures of the military camps, as at Grant and Crittenden, where we on several occasions discovered his foot-prints alongside the “ollas,” or water-jars.

On such occasions he preferred to employ his lance or bow, because these made no sound, and half or even a whole day might elapse before the stiffened and bloody corpse of the herder or wagoner would be found, and the presence of Indians in the vicinity become known. At least twenty such examples could be given from my own knowledge, occurring at Prescott, Tucson, Camp Grant, Camp Crittenden, Tres Alamos, Florence, Williamson’s Valley, and elsewhere. They were regarded as the natural features of the country, and every settler rather expected them as a matter of course. Well did Torquemada, the Spanish writer (A.D. 1709), deplore the inability of the Spaniards to make headway against this tribe of naked savages.

Californians old enough to remember the days when San Francisco had a Mining Stock Exchange, may recall the names of Lent and Harpending, who were two of the most prominent of the members. An expedition, equipped at the expense of these gentlemen, made its way into Arizona to examine the mining “prospects” discovered in the vicinity of Fort Bowie. They had to come overland, of course, as there were no railroads, and wagons had to be taken from Los Angeles, the terminal point of steamer navigation, unless people preferred to keep on down to San Diego, and then cross the desert, via Fort Yuma, and on up the dusty valley of the Gila River to Tucson or Florence. The party of which I am now speaking was under the command of two gentlemen, one named Gatchell and the other Curtis, from the Comstock Mines in Nevada, and had reached and passed the picturesque little adobe town of Florence, on the Gila, and was progressing finely on the road toward Tucson, when “Cocheis,” the bold leader of the Chiricahuas, on his march up from Sonora to trade stolen horses and have a talk with the Pinals, swooped down upon them. It was the old, old Arizona story. No one suspected danger, because there had been no signs of Indians on the trip since leaving the villages of the peaceful Pimas, on the Gila, near Maricopa Wells.

It was a perfect duplication of the Kennedy-Israel affair, almost to the slightest details. Mr. Curtis received a bad wound in the lungs. Mr. Gatchell was also wounded, but how severely I cannot remember, for the very good reason that there was so much of that kind of thing going on during the period of my stay at Camp Grant that it is really impossible to avoid mixing up some of the minor details of the different incidents so closely resembling one another.

When this party reached the post of Camp Grant they could easily have demanded the first prize at a tramp show; they were not clothed in rags—they were not clothed in anything. When they escaped from the wagon-train they were wearing nothing but underclothing, on account of the excessive heat of the day; when they got into Camp Grant most of the underwear had disappeared, torn off by the cactus, palo verde, mesquite, mescal, and other thorny vegetation run against in their flight. Their feet evidenced the rough, stony nature of the ground over which they had tramped and bumped, and thorns stuck in their legs, feet, and arms. There was not much done for these poor wretches, all of whom seemed to be gentlemen of education and refinement. We shared the misery of the post with them, which was about all we could pretend to do. Vacant rooms were found for them in the Israel ranch, and there they stayed for a few days, just long enough for every one to catch the fever.

Before we start out in pursuit of the attacking Apaches, let me relate the story told all over southern Arizona about the spot where this Gatchell-Curtis train had been surprised. It was known as the scene of the ambuscade of the Miller-Tappan detail, and frontier tale-tellers used to while away the sultry hours immediately after the setting of the sun in relating how the soldiers under Carroll had been ambushed and scattered by the onslaught of the Apaches, their commander, Lieutenant Carroll, killed at the first fire. One of the survivors became separated from his comrades in their headlong flight into Camp Grant. What became of him was never fully known, but he had been seen to fall wounded in the head or face, and the soldiers and Mexicans seemed to be of but one opinion as to the direction in which he had strayed; so there was no difficulty in getting a band of expert trailers to go out with the troops from the camp, and after burying the dead, make search for the missing man. His foot-prints were plainly discernible for quite a distance in the hard sand and gravel, until they led to a spring or “water-hole,” where one could plainly read the “sign” that the wounded man had stopped, knelt down, drunk, washed his wound, torn off a small piece of his blouse, perhaps as a bandage, and written his name on a rock in his own blood.

So far, so good; the Mexicans who had been in the searching party did not object to telling that much, but anything beyond was told by a shrug of the shoulders and a “Quien sabe?”

One day it happened that José Maria was in a communicative mood, and I induced him to relate what he knew. His story amounted to just this: After leaving the “water-hole,” the wounded man had wandered aimlessly in different directions, and soon began to stagger from bush to bush; his strength was nearly gone, and with frequency he had taken a seat on the hard gravel under such shade as the mesquites afforded.

After a while other tracks came in on the trail alongside of those of the man—they were the tracks of an enormous mountain lion! The beast had run up and down along the trail for a short distance, and then bounded on in the direction taken by the wanderer. The last few bounds measured twenty-two feet, and then there were signs of a struggle, and of SOMETHING having been dragged off through the chapparal and over the rocks, and that was all.

Our men were ready for the scout, and so were those of the detachment of “K” Troop, First Cavalry, who were to form part of our expedition—a gallant troop and a fine regiment.

The quarters were all in bustle and confusion, and even at their best would have looked primitive and uncouth. They were made of unhewn logs set upright into the ground and chinked with mud, and roofed in the same early English style, with the addition of a ceiling of old pieces of canvas to keep the centipedes from dropping down.

On the walls were a couple of banjos, and there were intimations that the service of the troop had been of a decidedly active nature, in the spoils of Apache villages clustered against the cottonwood saplings. There were lances with tips of obsidian, and others armed with the blades of old cavalry sabres; quivers of coyote and mountain lion skin filled with arrows, said by the Mexican guides to be poisonous; and other relics of aboriginal ownership in raw-hide playing-cards, shields, and one or two of the century-plant fiddles.

The gloom of the long sleeping room was relieved by the bright colors of a few Navajo blankets, and there hung from the rafters large earthenware jars, called “ollas,” the manufacture of the peaceful Papagoes, in which gallons of water cooled by rapid evaporation.

There were no tin wash-basins, but a good substitute was found in the pretty Apache baskets, woven so tightly of grasses and roots that water could no more leak through them than it could through the better sort of the Navajo blankets. A half a dozen, maybe more, of the newspaper illustrations and cartoons of the day were pasted in spots where they would be most effective, and over in the coolest corner was the wicker cage of a pet mocking-bird. There were other pets by this time in the Apache children captured in the skirmishes already had with the natives. The two oldest of the lot—“Sunday” and “Dandy Jim”—were never given any dinner until they had each first shot an arrow into the neck of an olive-bottle inserted into one of the adobe walls of the quartermaster’s corral. The ease with which these youngsters not over nine or ten years old did this used to surprise me, but it seemed to make them regard the Americans as a very peculiar people for demanding such a slight task.

Out on the trail again, down the San Pedro and over the Gila, but keeping well to the west until we neared the Mineral Creek country; then up across the lofty Pinal Range, on whose summits the cool breezes were fragrant with the balsamic odors of the tall, straight pines, over into the beautiful little nook known as Mason’s Valley, in which there was refreshing grass for the animals and a trickling stream of pure water to slake their thirst. Then back to the eastward until we struck the waters of the Pinal Creek, and had followed it down to the “Wheat Fields,” and still no signs of Indians. The rainy season had set in, and every track was obliterated almost as soon as made.

One night we bivouacked at a spot not far from where the mining town of Globe now stands, and at a ledge of rocks which run across the valley of Pinal Creek, but part for a few feet to permit the feeble current to flow through. The sky was comparatively clear, a few clouds only flitting across the zenith. Back of us, hanging like a shroud over the tops of the Pinal, were heavy, black masses, from whose pendulous edges flashed the lightning, and from whose cavernous depths roared and growled the thunder.

“That looks very much like a cloud-burst coming,” said Cushing; “better be on the safe side, anyhow.” So he gave orders to move all the bedding and all the supplies of the pack-train higher up the side of the hill. The latter part of the order was obeyed first, and almost if not quite all the ammunition, bacon, coffee, and sugar had been carried out of reach of possible danger, and most of the blankets and carbines had been shifted—everything, in fact, but the hard tack—when we noticed that the volume of water in the creek had unaccountably increased, and the next moment came the warning cry: “Look out! Here she comes!” A solid wall of water—I do not care to say how many feet high—was rushing down the cañon, sweeping all before it, and crushing a path for itself over the line along which our blankets had been spread so short a time previously.

The water didn’t make very much noise. There was no sound but a SISH! That meant more than my pen can say. All that we had carried to the higher slopes of the cañon side was saved. All that we had not been able to move was swept away, but there was nothing of value to any one excepting a mule belonging to one of the guides, which was drowned, and a lot of harness or rigging from the pack-train, which, with the hard tack, found a watery grave.

Cushing, too, would have been swept off in the current had he not been seized in the strong grasp of Sergeant Warfield and “Big Dan Miller,” two of the most powerful men in the troop. The rain soaked through us all night, and we had to make the best of it until dawn, when we discovered to our great surprise and satisfaction that the stream, which had been gorged between the rocks at our camp, widened below, and this had allowed the current to expand and to slacken, dropping here and there in the valley most of the plunder which was of consequence to us, especially the hard bread.

All this meant an exasperating delay of twenty-four hours to dry our blankets upon the rocks, and to spread out our sodden food, and save as much of it as we could from mildew.

From there we made a detour over to Pinto Creek, where I may inform those of my readers who take an interest in such things, there are one or two exceptionally well-preserved cliff-dwellings, which we examined with much curiosity.

Not far from there we came upon the corn-fields of a band of Apaches, and destroyed them, eating as many of the roasting ears as we could, and feeding the rest to our stock.

Such were the military instructions of twenty and twenty-five years ago. As soldiers we had to obey, even if we could feel that these orders must have been issued under a misconception of the Indian character. The more the savage is attached to the soil by the ties of a remunerative husbandry, the more is he weaned from the evil impulses which idleness engenders. This proposition seems just as clear as that two and two make four, but some people learn quickly, and others learn slowly, and preachers, school-teachers, and military people most slowly of all.

Our presence was discovered by the Apache look-outs before we were able to effect a surprise, or, to be candid, we stumbled in upon the nook, or series of nooks, in which this planting was going on, and beyond exchanging a few shots and wounding, as we learned afterward, a couple of the young men, did not do much at that moment; but we did catch two squaws, from whom some information was extracted.

They agreed to lead us to where there was another “rancheria” a few miles off, in another cañon over toward Tonto Creek. We found the enemy, sure enough, but in such an inaccessible position, up among lofty hills covered with a dense jungle of scrub oak, that we could do nothing beyond firing shots in reply to those directed against us, and were so unfortunate as to lose our prisoners, who darted like jack-rabbits into the brush, and were out of sight in a flash. Why did we not catch them again? Oh, well, that is something that no one could do but the gentle reader. The gentle reader generally is able to do more than the actors on the ground, and he may as well be allowed a monopoly in the present case.

We growled and grumbled a good deal at our hard luck, and made our way to the Mesquite Springs, where the ranch of Archie MacIntosh has since been erected, and there went into camp for the night. Early the next morning we crossed the Salt River and ascended the Tonto Creek for a short distance, passing through a fertile valley, once well settled by a tribe whose stone houses now in ruins dotted the course of the stream, and whose pottery, stone axes, and other vestiges, in a condition more or less perfect, could be picked up in any quantity. We turned back, recrossed the Salt or Salado, and made a long march into the higher parts of the Sierra Apache, striking a fresh trail, and following it energetically until we had run it into the camp of a scouting party of the First Cavalry, from Camp MacDowell, under Colonel George B. Sanford, who had had a fight with these same Indians the previous day, and killed or captured most of them.

Sanford and his command treated us most kindly, and made us feel at home with them. They did not have much to offer beyond bacon and beans; but a generous, hospitable gentleman can offer these in a way that will make them taste like canvas-back and terrapin. When we left Sanford, we kept on in the direction of the Sombrero Butte and the mouth of Cherry Creek, to the east, and then headed for the extreme sources of the San Carlos River, a trifle to the south.

Here we had the good luck to come upon a village of Apaches, who abandoned all they possessed and fled to the rocks as soon as our rapid advance was announced in the shrill cries of their vedettes perched upon the higher peaks.

In this place the “medicine-men” had been engaged in some of their rites, and had drawn upon the ground half-completed figures of circles, crosses, and other lines which we had no time to examine. We looked through the village, whose “jacales” were of unusually large size, and while interested in this work the enemy began to gather in the higher hills, ready to pick off all who might become exposed to their aim. They had soon crawled down within very close proximity, and showed great daring in coming up to us. I may be pardoned for describing in something of detail what happened to the little party which stood with me looking down, or trying to look down, into a low valley or collection of swales beneath us. Absolutely nothing could be seen but the red clay soil, tufted here and there with the Spanish bayonet or the tremulous yucca. So well satisfied were we all that no Apaches were in the valley that I had already given the order to dismount and descend the steep flanks of the hill to the lower ground, but had hardly done so before there was a puff, a noise, and a tzit!—all at once, from the nearest clump of sacaton or yucca, not more than a hundred yards in front. The bullet whizzed ominously between our heads and struck my horse in the neck, ploughing a deep but not dangerous wound.

Our horses, being fresh “broncos,” became disturbed, and it was all we could do to keep them from breaking away. When we had quieted them a little, we saw two of the Apaches—stark naked, their heads bound up with yucca, and their bodies red with the clay along which they had crawled in order to fire the shot—scampering for their lives down the valley.

We got down the hill, leading our horses, and then took after the fugitives, all the time yelling to those of our comrades whom we could see in advance to head the Indians off. One of the savages, who seemed to be the younger of the two, doubled up a side ravine, but the other, either because he was run down or because he thought he could inflict some damage upon us and then escape, remained hidden behind a large mesquite. Our men made the grievous mistake of supposing that the Indian’s gun was not loaded. Only one gun had been seen in the possession of the two whom we had pursued, and this having been discharged, we were certain that the savage had not had time to reload it.

It is quite likely that each of the pair had had a rifle, and that the young boy, previous to running up the cañon to the left, had given his weapon to his elder, who had probably left his own on the ground after once firing it.

Be this as it may, we were greeted with another shot, which killed the blacksmith of “K” Troop, First Cavalry, and right behind the shot came the big Indian himself, using his rifle as a shillelah, beating Corporal Costello over the head with it and knocking him senseless, and then turning upon Sergeant Harrington and a soldier of the First Cavalry named Wolf, dealing each a blow on the skull, which would have ended them had not his strength begun to ebb away with his life-blood, now flowing freely from the death-wound through the body which we had succeeded in inflicting.

One horse laid up, three men knocked out, and another man killed was a pretty steep price to pay for the killing of this one Indian, but we consoled ourselves with the thought that the Apaches had met with a great loss in the death of so valiant a warrior. We had had other losses on that day, and the hostiles had left other dead; our pack-train was beginning to show signs of wear and tear from the fatigue of climbing up and down these stony, brush-covered, arid mountain-sides. One of the mules had broken its neck or broken its back by slipping off a steep trail, and all needed some rest and recuperation.

From every peak now curled the ominous signal smoke of the enemy, and no further surprises would be possible. Not all of the smokes were to be taken as signals; many of them might be signs of death, as the Apaches at that time adhered to the old custom of abandoning a village and setting it on fire the moment one of their number died, and as soon as this smoke was seen the adjacent villages would send up answers of sympathy.

Cushing thought that, under all the circumstances, it would be good policy to move over to some eligible position where we could hold our own against any concentration the enemy might be tempted to make against us, and there stay until the excitement occasioned by our presence in the country had abated.

The spring near the eastern base of the Pinal Mountains, where the “killing” of the early spring had taken place, suggested itself, and thither we marched as fast as our animals could make the trip. But we had counted without our host; the waters were so polluted with dead bodies, there were so many skulls in the spring itself, that no animal, much less man, would imbibe of the fluid. The ground was strewn with bones—ribs and arms and vertebræ—dragged about by the coyotes, and the smell was so vile that, tired as all were, no one felt any emotion but one of delight when Cushing gave the order to move on.

The Apaches had been there to bury their kinsfolk and bewail their loss, and in token of grief and rage had set fire to all the grass for several miles, and consequently it was to the direct benefit of all our command, two-footed or four-footed, to keep moving until we might find a better site for a bivouac.

We did not halt until we had struck the San Carlos, some thirty-five miles to the east, and about twelve or fourteen miles above its junction with the Gila. Here we made camp, intending to remain several days. A rope was stretched from one to the other of two stout sycamores, and to this each horse and mule was attached by its halter. Pickets were thrown out upon the neighboring eminences, and a detail from the old guard was promptly working at bringing in water and wood for the camp-fires. The grooming began, and ended almost as soon as the welcome cry of “Supper!” resounded. The coffee was boiling hot; the same could be said of the bacon; the hard tack had mildewed a little during the wet weather to which it had been exposed, but there was enough roasted mescal from the Indian villages to eke out our supplies.

The hoofs and back of every animal had been examined and cared for, and then blankets were spread out and all hands made ready to turn in. There were no tents, as no shelter was needed, but each veteran was wise enough to scratch a little semicircle in the ground around his head, to turn the rain should any fall during the night, and to erect a wind-brake to screen him from the chill breezes which sometimes blew about midnight.

Although there was not much danger of a night-attack from the Apaches, who almost invariably made their onset with the first twinkle of the coming dawn in the east, yet a careful watch was always kept, to frustrate their favorite game of crawling on hands and feet up to the horses, and sending an arrow into the herd or the sentinel, as might happen to be most convenient.

Not far from this camp I saw, for the first time, a fight between a tarantula and a “tarantula hawk.” Manuel Duran had always insisted that the gray tarantula could whip the black one, and that there was something that flew about in the evening that could and would make the quarrelsome gray tarantula seek safety in abject flight. It was what we used to call in my school-boy days “the devil’s darning-needle” which made its appearance, and seemed to worry the great spider very much. The tarantula stood up on its hind legs, and did its best to ward off impending fate, but it was no use. The “hawk” hit the tarantula in the back and apparently paralyzed him, and then seemed to be pulling at one of the hind legs. I have since been informed that there is some kind of a fluid injected into the back of the tarantula which acts as a stupefier, and at the same time the “hawk” deposits its eggs there, which, hatching, feed upon the spider. For all this I cannot vouch, as I did not care to venture too near those venomous reptiles and insects of that region, at least not until after I had acquired more confidence from greater familiarity with them.

We saw no more Indian “sign” on that trip, which had not been, however, devoid of all incident.

And no sooner had we arrived at Camp Grant than we were out again, this time guided by an Apache squaw, who had come into the post during our absence, and given to the commanding officer a very consistent story of ill-treatment at the hands of her people. She said that her husband was dead, killed in a fight with the troops, and that she and her baby had not been treated with the kindness which they had a right to expect. I do not remember in what this ill-treatment consisted, but most likely none of the brothers of the deceased had offered to marry the widow and care for her and her little one, as is the general custom, in which the Apaches resemble the Hebrews of ancient times. If the troops would follow her, she would guide them into a very bad country, where there was a “rancheria” which could be attacked and destroyed very readily.

So back we went, this time on foot, carrying our rations on our backs, crossing the Piñaleno to the south of the Aravaypa, and ascending until we reached the pine forest upon its summit; then down into the valley at the extreme head of the Aravaypa, and over into the broken country on the other side of the Gabilan, or Hawk Cañon.

Everything had happened exactly as the squaw had predicted it would, and she showed that she was familiar with the slightest details of the topography, and thus increased our confidence in what we had to expect to such an extent that she was put in the lead, and we followed on closely, obeying all her directions and instructions. Our men refrained from whistling, from talking—almost, I might say, from breathing—because she insisted upon such perfect silence while on the march. There were few instructions given, and these were passed from mouth to mouth in whispers. No one dared strike a match, lest the flash should alarm some of the enemy’s pickets. We had no pack-train, and that great source of noise—the shouting of packers to straying mules—was done away with. All our rations were on our own backs, and with the exception of one led mule, loaded with a couple of thousand rounds of extra ammunition, we had absolutely nothing to impede the most rapid march. We walked slowly over the high mountains, and down into deep ravines, passing through a country which seemed well adapted for the home of Indians. There were groves of acorn-bearing oaks, a considerable amount of mescal, Spanish bayonet, some mesquite, and a plenty of grasses whose seeds could be gathered by the squaws in their long, conical baskets, and then ground between two oblong, half-round stones into a meal which would make a pretty good mush.

It was very dark and quite chilly as dawn drew nigh, and every one was shivering with cold and hunger and general nervous excitement. The squaw whispered that we were close upon the site of the “rancheria,” which was in a little grassy amphitheatre a short distance in front. Slowly we drew nearer and nearer to the doomed village, and traversed the smooth, open place whereon the young bucks had been playing their great game of “mushka,” in which they roll a hoop and then throw lance staves to fall to the ground as the hoop ceases to roll. Very near this was a slippery-faced rock—either slate or basalt, the darkness did not permit a close examination—down which the children had been sliding to the grass, and, just within biscuit-throw, the “jacales” of saplings and branches.

Two of our party crawled up to the village, which preserved an ominous silence. There were no barking dogs, no signs of fire, no wail of babes to testify to the presence of human or animal life—in one word, the Apaches had taken the alarm and abandoned their habitation. But they did not leave us shivering long in doubt as to where they had gone, but at once opened from the peaks with rifles, and at the first fire wounded two of our men. It was entirely too dark for them to do much harm, and utterly beyond our power to do anything against them. Their position was an impregnable one on the crest of the surrounding ridges, and protected by a heavy natural _cheval de frise_ of the scrub oak and other thorny vegetation of the region.

Cushing ordered the command to fall back on the trail and take up position on the hill in the pass overlooking the site of the “rancheria.” This we did without difficulty and without loss. The Apaches continued their firing, and would have made us pay dear for our rashness in coming into their home had not our withdrawal been covered by a heavy fog, which screened the flanks of the mountains until quite a late hour in the morning, something very unusual in Arizona, which is remarkably free from mists at all seasons.

Indignation converged upon the wretched squaw who had induced us to come into what had all the appearance of a set ambuscade. The men had bound her securely, and a rope was now brought out—a lariat—and cries were heard on all sides to “hang her, hang her!” It is easy to see now that she may have been perfectly innocent in her intentions, and that it was not through collusion with the people in the village, but rather on account of her running away from them, that the Apaches had been on the look-out for an advance from the nearest military post; but on that cold, frosty morning, when all were cross and tired and vexed with disappointment, it looked rather ominous for the woman for a few minutes.

She was given the benefit of the doubt, and to do the men justice, they were more desirous of scaring than of killing her for her supposed treachery. She stuck to her story; she was dissatisfied with her people on account of bad treatment, and wanted to lead us to a surprise of their home. She did not pretend to say how it came about that they were ready for us, but said that some of their young men out hunting, or squaws out cutting and burning mescal, might have seen us coming up the mountain, or “cut” our trail the night previous, and given the alarm. She would stay with us as long as we chose to remain in those hills, but her opinion was that nothing could now be done with the people of that “rancheria,” because the whole country would be alarmed with signal smokes, and every mountain would have a picket on the look-out for us. Better return to the camp and wait until everything had quieted down, and then slip out again.

There was still a good deal of growling going on, and not all of the men were satisfied with her talk. They shot angry glances at her, and freely expressed their desire to do her bodily harm, which threats she could perfectly understand without needing the slightest knowledge of our language. To keep her from slipping off as the two other squaws had done a fortnight previously, she was wrapped from head to feet with rope, so that it was all she could do to breathe, much less think of escaping. Another rope fastened her to a palo verde close to the little fire at which our coffee was made, and alongside whose flickering embers the sentinel paced as night began to draw its curtains near. She lay like a log, making not the slightest noise or movement, but to all appearances perfectly reconciled to the situation, and, after a while, fell off into a profound sleep.

We had what was known as “a running guard,” which means that every man in the camp takes his turn at the duty of sentinel during the night. This made the men on post have about half to three-quarters of an hour’s duty each. Each of those posted near the prisoner gave a careful look at her as he began to pace up and down near her, and each found that she was sleeping calmly and soundly, until about eleven o’clock, or maybe a few minutes nearer midnight, a recruit, who had just taken his turn on post, felt his elbows pinioned fast behind him and his carbine almost wrenched from his grasp. He was very muscular, and made a good fight to retain his weapon and use it, but it fell to the ground, and the naked woman plunged down the side of the hill straight through the chapparal into the darkness profound.

Bang! bang! sounded his carbine just as soon as he could pick it up from the ground where it lay, and bang! bang! sounded others, as men half-asleep awakened to the belief that there was a night attack. This firing promptly ceased upon Cushing’s orders. There was not the slightest possible use in wasting ammunition, and in besides running the risk of hitting some of our own people. The squaw had escaped, and that was enough. There lay her clothing, and the cocoon-like bundle of rope which had bound her. She had wriggled out of her fastenings, and sprung upon the sentinel, who was no doubt the least vigilant of all whom she had observed, and had tried to snatch his weapon from him and thus prevent an alarm being given until she had reached the bottom of the hill. All the clothing she had on at the moment when she made her rush upon the sentinel was an old and threadbare cavalry cape which hardly covered her shoulders.

Cold and damp and weary, we started on our homeward trip, feeling as spiritless as a brood of half-drowned chickens. Even the Irish had become glum, and could see nothing ridiculous in our mishap—a very bad sign.

“Blessed are they that expect nothing.” We didn’t expect and we didn’t receive any mercy from our comrades upon getting back to the mess, and the sharp tongue of raillery lost none of its power when the squaw came in close upon our heels, saying that she could not leave her baby, that her breast cried for it. She had told the truth. If we did not believe her story, we could kill her, but let her see her baby again. Her desire was gratified, and no harm came to her. The ordinary stagnation of the post had been interrupted during our absence by the advent of an addition to the little circle of captives, and there was much curiosity to get a good look at the little black-eyed mite which lay cuddled up in the arms of its dusky mother.

I have purposely withheld mention of the only lady who shared the life of Camp Grant with us—Mrs. Dodds, the wife of Doctor Dodds, our post surgeon, or one of them, because we had two medical officers. She was of a very sweet, gentle disposition, and never once murmured or complained, but exerted herself to make the life of her husband as comfortable as possible.

Their quarters had a very cosey look, and one would find it hard to believe that those comfortable chairs were nothing but barrels sawed out to shape and cushioned and covered with chintz. That lounge was merely a few packing boxes concealed under blankets and mattresses. Everything else in the apartment was on the same scale and made of corresponding materials. There was a manifest determination to do much with little, and much had been done.

Mrs. Dodds wore her honors as the belle of the garrison with becoming graciousness and humility. She received in the kindest spirit the efforts made by all of the rougher sex to render her stay among them pleasant and, if possible, interesting. Not a day passed that did not find her the recipient of some token of regard. It might not always be the most appropriate sort of a thing, but that really made very little difference. She accepted everything and tried to look as if each gift had been the one for which she had been longing during her whole life. She had a rattlesnake belt, made from one of the biggest and most vicious reptiles ever seen in the vicinity. She had Apache baskets, war-clubs, playing-cards, flutes, fiddles, and enough truck of the same kind to load an army-wagon. The largest Gila monsters would have been laid at her feet had she not distinctly and emphatically drawn the line at Gila monsters. Tarantulas and centipedes, if properly bottled, were not objectionable, but the Gila monster was more than she could stand, and she so informed intending donors. She has been dead a number of years, but it is hardly likely that she ever forgot until she drew her last breath the days and weeks and months of her existence at Camp Grant.

Our own stay at the delightful summer resort had come to an end. Orders received from department headquarters transferred our troop to Tucson, as being a more central location and nearer supplies. Lieutenant Cushing was ordered to take the field and keep it until further orders, which meant that he was to be free to roam as he pleased over any and all sections of the territory infested by the Apaches, and to do the best he could against them.

To a soldier of Cushing’s temperament this meant a great deal, and it is needless to say that no better selection for such a duty could have been made.

We were packed up and out of the post in such quick time that I do not remember whether it was twelve hours or twenty-four. To be sure, we did not have an immense amount of plunder to pack. None the less did we work briskly to carry out orders and get away in the shortest time possible.

We had to leave one of our men in the hospital; he had accidentally shot himself in the leg, and was now convalescing from the amputation. But the rest were in the saddle and out on the road through the Santa Catalina Cañon before you could say Jack Robinson.

And not altogether without regret. There was a bright side to the old rookery, which shone all the more lustrously now that we were saying farewell.

We had never felt lonesome by any means. There was always something going on, always something to do, always something to see.

The sunrises were gorgeous to look upon at the hour for morning stables, when a golden and rosy flush bathed the purple peaks of the Pinaleño, and at eventide there were great banks of crimson and purple and golden clouds in the western horizon which no painter would have dared depict upon canvas.

There were opportunities for learning something about mineralogy in the “wash” of the cañons, botany on the hill-sides, and insect life and reptile life everywhere. Spanish could be picked up from Mexican guides and packers, and much that was quaint and interesting in savage life learned from an observation of the manners of the captives—representatives of that race which the Americans have so frequently fought, so generally mismanaged, and so completely failed to understand.

There was much rough work under the hardest of conditions, and the best school for learning how to care for men and animals in presence of a sleepless enemy, which no amount of “book l’arnin’” could supply.

The distance from Old Camp Grant to Tucson, Arizona, over the wagon-road, was fifty-five measured miles. The first half of the journey, the first day’s march—as far as the Cañon del Oro—has already been described. From the gloomy walls of the shady cañon, in which tradition says gold was found in abundance in the earliest days of occupation by the Caucasians, the wagons rolled rapidly over the Eight-mile Mesa, over some slightly hilly and sandy country, until after passing the Riito, when Tucson came in sight and the road became firmer. All the way, on both sides of the road, and as far as eye could reach, we had in sight the stately mescal, loaded with lovely velvety flowers; the white-plumed Spanish bayonet, the sickly green palo verde, without a leaf; the cholla, the nopal, the mesquite, whose “beans” were rapidly ripening in the sultry sun, and the majestic “pitahaya,” or candelabrum cactus, whose ruby fruit had long since been raided upon and carried off by flocks of bright-winged humming-birds, than which no fairer or more alert can be seen this side of Brazil. The “pitahaya” attains a great height in the vicinity of Grant, Tucson, and MacDowell, and one which we measured by its shadow was not far from fifty-five to sixty feet above the ground.

On this march the curious rider could see much to be remembered all the days of his life. Piles of loose stones heaped up by loving hands proclaimed where the Apaches had murdered their white enemies. The projection of a rude cross of mescal or Spanish bayonet stalks was evidence that the victim was a Mexican, and a son of Holy Mother Church. Its absence was no index of religious belief, but simply of the nationality being American.

Of the weird, blood-chilling tales that were narrated as each of these was passed I shall insert only one. It was the story, briefly told, of two young men whose train had been attacked, whose comrades had been put to flight, and who stood their ground resolutely until the arrows and bullets of the foe had ended the struggle. When found, one of the bodies was pierced with sixteen wounds, the other with fourteen.

On the left flank, or eastern side, the view was hemmed in for the whole distance by the lofty, pine-clad Sierra Santa Catalina; but to the north one could catch glimpses of the summit of the black Pinal; to the west there was a view over the low-lying Tortolita clear to the dim, azure outlines which, in the neighborhood of the Gila Bend, preserved in commemorative mesa-top the grim features of Montezuma, as Mexican myth fondly averred.

A little this side was the site of the “Casa Grande,” the old pile of adobe, which has been quite as curious a ruin in the contemplation of the irrepressible Yankee of modern days as it was to Coronado and his followers when they approached it under the name of “Chichilticale” more than three centuries and a half ago.

Still nearer was the “Picacho,” marking the line of the Great Southern Mail road; at its base the ranch of Charlie Shibell, where the stages changed teams and travellers stopped to take supper, the scene of as many encounters with the Apaches as any other spot in the whole Southwest. Follow along a little more to the left, and there comes the Santa Teresa Range, just back of Tucson, and credited by rumors as reliable as any ever brought by contraband during the war with being the repository of fabulous wealth in the precious metals; but no one has yet had the Aladdin’s lamp to rub and summon the obedient genii who would disclose the secret of its location.

Far off to the south rises the glistening cone of the Baboquivari, the sacred mountain in the centre of the country of the gentle Papagoes, and on the east, as we get down nearer to the Riito, the more massive outlines of the Santa Rita peak overshadowing the town of Tucson, and the white, glaring roof of the beautiful mission ruin of San Xavier del Bac.