Darkness had settled down upon the wide mesquite flat, smoothing off
all irregularities, hiding outlines until the tallest thickets were
but deeper shadows merging into the lesser shades of the open places.
Only one object showed, a Sibley tent glowing from the light within.
Under the flaming yellow stars it stood out luminous, marking the
exact center of an enormous circle; a circle roofed by the radiantly
flecked heavens, bounded by mountains which rose against the sky-line,
abrupt as a wall, black as ink. In the different segments of this
far-flung ring the peaks of the Chiracahuas, the Grahams, the
Dragoons, and the Galiuros betrayed their ranges by varying outlines.
But to the eye they all formed portions of one huge circumference,
whose center was a glowing point, the Sibley tent.
On the translucent walls of canvas there was a weird design of black
shadows, a design which was constantly shifting and taking on new
shapes. And as the shadows moved, sometimes with grotesque effect and
swiftly, sometimes slowly, voices filtered through the gleaming cloth
to mingle with the whispering of the night wind in the bear-grass, the
dull stamping of tethered horses, the intermittent jingling of
bitt-chains and the steady soft footfalls of two sentries.
The voices changed as often as the shadows on the tent-wall; now it
was the abrupt, clipping speech of a white man and now the deep,
inflectionless bass of an Indian. But most often it was the droning
monotone of the post interpreter, uttering his translations in English
or in the tongue of the Apache.
Of what was taking place within those luminous walls of canvas,
official records still exist; and of what followed there are whole
volumes of further records in Washington. Dry reading in themselves,
they hold the meat of a remarkable story, a story whose colorful
narration has been given by its own main characters and thus has come
down among the true chronicles of the old-timers.
On that evening in 1859 two groups of men faced one another, and the
lantern which hung on the center-pole of the Sibley tent shone down on
their faces, revealing the growing passion in their eyes. One of the
groups was composed of soldiers, wearing the blue uniforms, the queer
straight-visored caps, and the huge wide-topped boots which our
cavalry used during those times; a guard of sunburnt troopers under a
hard-bitten nom-com.; and standing a pace or so ahead of them, a young
second lieutenant fresh from West Point: Lieutenant Bascom, a stranger
in a strange, harsh land, just a little puzzled over the complications
which he saw arising here, but dead sure of himself and intolerant of
the men with whom he was treating. That intolerance showed in his
stare as he regarded them.
There were half a dozen of the Apaches, chiefs every one of them, a
ragged group clad in a mixture of their native garb and cast-off
clothes of the white man; frowzy hair hanging to their shoulders and
bound round at the brows by soiled thin turbans. But they stood erect
and there was a dignity in the way they held their heads back, a
dignity in their immobility of feature and in their slow, grave
speech. It was the dignity of men who knew that they were leaders of
their people; who felt themselves on entire equality with the leader
of the white man's warriors; who felt the gravity of this occasion
where they had been invited into conference with this blue-clad
representative of a mighty government. Their head man was Cochise.
Like Lieutenant Bascom, he stood a pace ahead of his followers, a lean
Apache, with a thinner face than most of his tribesmen and a
remarkably high forehead. And as he looked into the eyes of the young
man in blue who had just come from the far cities of the east coast
there began to come into his own eyes the shadow of suspicion. The
talk went on; the interpreter droned out one answer after another to
his speeches, and that shadow in the eyes of Cochise deepened.
In itself the matter at issue was a small one. A settler had lost a
cow and he had accused the Apaches of stealing the animal. Young
Lieutenant Bascom had summoned the chiefs to conference and they had
come--they said--to help him find the culprit. After the manner of the
Indian, of whose troubles the passing of time is the very least, they
talked slowly, listened to the interpreter's rendition of the
lieutenant's answers, and then talked more.
They did not know the man who had stolen the cow; that was the sum
and substance of their speeches. And Lieutenant Bascom, fretting with
the passage of the hours, looked on the ragged group in their dirty
nondescript garments and chafed with fresh intolerance.
Cochise read that intolerance in the eyes of the smooth-cheeked
officer and, being an Apache, managed to conceal the suspicion in his
own eyes. He did not want trouble with the white man. He had never yet
had trouble with soldier or settler. Ever since he had been a chief
among the Chiracahua Apaches he had held down the turbulent spirits in
his portion of the tribe; he had out-intrigued savage politicians and
had smoothed over more than one difficulty like this. As a matter of
fact he was assimilating some of the white man's ways; he was getting
into business; working a crew of his people at wood-cutting, selling
cord-wood to the stage company at the Stein's Pass station. He was
doing well, saving money, and saw ahead of him the time when he would
own many cattle, like some of the settlers.
All of this was very comfortable and to his taste, and because he
liked it he held a firm stand against the suasions of warring chiefs
from his and other tribes. He even came to cool terms with his
relative Mangus Colorado, the greatest leader the Apaches had ever
known. But while he was keeping to his position he had to listen to
many an argument and many a tale of the white man's treachery, and a
man cannot listen often without sometimes finding himself inclined to
believe.
Settler and soldier, so said Mangus Colorado and other men of parts
among his people, regarded their promises to the Indians as nothing;
they were forever trying to entice the Apaches into conference and
then taking advantage of them--sometimes by massacre. While he argued
slowly against the impatient utterances of Lieutenant Bascom, reading
the growing intolerance in the other's eyes, Cochise remembered some
of the stories which he had frowned down when his people told them.
That was the state of affairs when Lieutenant Bascom, with the
cocksureness of the young and the intolerance of the Easterner for
frowzy Indians, made a decision. To him it was evident that these
tattered savages were lying, they were a treacherous lot at the best,
and always thieves. So, now that he was getting sick of the whole
drawn-out business, he turned from the interpreter to his sergeant.
"Arrest 'em," he said.
Cochise heard him and slipped to the rear of the tent as the troopers
stepped forward. The other chiefs, who could understand no English,
did not need an interpreter to tell them the meaning of this movement.
At once the quiet of the Arizona night was shattered by the thud of
blows and savage outcries. The crowded space within the tent was
filled with struggling men.
And while that fight went on, Cochise, aflame with hatred, outraged by
this violation of the sacred custom of conference, believing now every
word that had been spoken to him by Mangus Colorado and the other
war-chiefs, whipped out his knife. The sound of the blade as it rent
the canvas was drowned by the other noises, and when Lieutenant Bascom
and his breathless troopers surveyed their bound captives Cochise was
in full flight across the darkened plain.
Now word was sent by courier to the agency, and government runners
went forth that night to all parts of the reservation, but they found
no Indians to receive their messages. The Chiracahua Apaches were
already riding toward their mountains where Mangus Colorado and the
renegade members of their tribe were biding on the heights, like
eagles resting on the rocky peaks before they take their next flight.
Like roosting eagles the warriors of Mangus Colorado scanned the wide
plains beneath the mountains. Their eyes went to the ragged summits of
the ranges beyond. Now as the day was creeping across the long, flat
reaches of the Sulphur Springs valley, tipping the scarred crests of
the Dragoons with light off to the west, touching the distant northern
pinnacles of the Grahams with throbbing radiance, one of these
lookouts beheld a thread of smoke unraveling against the bright
morning sky.
Under the newly-risen sun Cochise and his followers were traveling
hard away off there to the northward. The turbaned warriors came on
first, half-naked, armed some of them with lances, some with bows and
poisoned arrows, and a goodly number bearing rifles. Their lank brown
legs moved ceaselessly in rhythm with the trotting of the little
ponies; their moccasined heels thudded against the flanks of the
animals.
In the rear of the column the squaws rode with the children and the
scanty baggage. As they traveled thus, an outrider departed from the
column to leave his horse upon an arid slope and climb afoot among the
rocks above until he stood outlined against the clear hot sky,
kindling a wisp of flame. Now he bent over the fire, casting bits of
powdered resin upon the blaze, holding a square of tattered blanket
over it after the first puff of black smoke had risen, feeding it then
with a scattering of green leaves which in their turn gave forth a
cloud of white fumes.
And so the smoke thread unwound its length, showing itself in black
and white; spelling forth, by the same system of dot and dash which
the white man employs in his telegraph, the tidings of what had taken
place back there in the Sibley tent.
From his nook in the Chiracahuas the watching warrior read its
message. And long before the first faint haze of mounting dust
betrayed the approach of the fugitives, Mangus Colorado knew that his
nephew and his nephew's people had quit the reservation and the
rations of meat and flour to make their living henceforth, as their
savage forebears had made theirs as far back as the memory of the
oldest traditions went--by marauding. So he gathered all his forces
and welcomed Cochise into a council, where they planned their first
series of raids against the white men.
In this manner Cochise reverted to the customs of his ancestors;
customs which had come gradually to the Apaches when they wandered
down from Athabasca, passing southward through regions held by hostile
tribes snatching their sustenance from these enemies, fleeing before
superior forces of warriors, until they reached the flaming deserts
down by the Mexican border, past-masters of the arts of ambush and
raid and retreat, owning no longer any love of home or knowledge of
tepee building; nomads who made their lodges by spreading skins or
blankets over the tops of bushes which they had tied together; to whom
the long march had become an ingrained habit and all the arts of
bloody ambush an instinctive pleasure.
Now he devoted all his mind and bent his talents to these wiles of
Apache warfare; he directed his young men in making a living for the
rest of the tribe by theft and murder.
His uncle, Magnus Colorado, was the most skilful leader the Apaches
had ever known, a marvelously tall savage with an enormous head.
Cochise learned from him and in time surpassed him as a general. For
nearly a decade and a half he made a plunder ground of southeastern
Arizona and southwestern New Mexico, extending his forays away down
across the line into Sonora and Chihuahua until a remarkable man among
his white enemies came to him, and by a daring bit of frontier
diplomacy, put an end to the bloodiest outbreak in the history of the
Southwest.
But in the beginning there was neither diplomat nor general among the
white men. The days before the Civil War witnessed a withdrawal of the
troops from Arizona, and the Apaches had things very much their own
way. From their home in the Chiracahua Mountains they rode westward
across the wide reaches of the Sulphur Springs valley to the ridges of
the Catalinas away beyond the San Pedro, then turned southward, making
their way toward Mexico by the Whetstone and the Huachuca ranges.
Now, as they trekked along the heights, they paused at times to send
bands of warriors down into the flat lands which lie along the course
of the Santa Cruz. Here were ranches and a few small settlements. It
was the custom of the raiders to steal upon these places, always in
force superior to that of their enemies, camouflaging themselves by
bits of brush and handfuls of earth which they stuck among the folds
of their turbans and spread over their bare backs until one looking at
them from a distance of twenty-five yards would never suspect the
presence of lurking warriors.
In this manner they lay along the roadside biding the wagon-trains and
stages, or crept up on ranch-houses, or wormed their way toward
sleeping prospectors at the hour of dawn. And when they felt sure that
the issue was safely in their hands they opened fire.
During the Civil War times they put the Butterfield stage line out of
business and were an important factor in determining the northern
route for the carrying of the United States mails to California; they
wiped out the ranches of the valleys until cattle-raising and
agriculture ceased entirely; they raided the pueblo of Tubac until its
people finally fled for safety to Tucson and then they burned the
deserted buildings. They made a howling waste out of southeastern
Arizona.
Travel was suspended; there was no ranching and nearly every mine in
this portion of the territory was abandoned. Of northern Sonora they
made a source of supply for their horses and drove whole herds out of
Mexico, using the surplus animals for food, keeping the rest for
mounts until these knuckled under from hard treatment.
During the years that followed the Civil War those fat days came to an
end. Fresh troops were sent out from Washington. Mangus Colorado was
captured by a detachment of cavalry and, according to the story of one
present, was killed in his blankets by the troopers who guarded him.
White settlers, stung to reprisals by the barbarity of successive
massacres, hunted down several bands of the Apaches at their
rancherias and wiped them out in night attacks, men, women, and
children. Cochise found himself faced with a new set of conditions and
changed his tactics to meet them.
It was the habit of the Apaches to rest between the long forced
marches of their raids, choosing always a spot high in the mountains
where the mescal plant grew. Here they would gather the roots of the
thorny vegetable, bury them in the earth, kindle roaring fires over
them, and bake them. Thus they got the sugar which their wasted bodies
needed; and during the days at these camps they gained the rest which
their aching bones craved.
But the white man's cavalry, guided by scouts recruited from the Touto
Basin Apaches and from settlers who knew the country, began tracking
the renegades to their aerial refuges, and sometimes massacred whole
bands of them. Failing to steal upon them, the cavalry always managed
to get them on the run once more, and that meant scant rations when
full bellies were long overdue.
In this manner the soldiers and the settlers were making the
Chiracahuas too hot for Cochise and his people.
Then the war-chief led his tribe across the Sulphur Springs valley
to the northern end of the Dragoon Mountains where the peaks rise
straight from the mesquite flat lands, two thousand feet of sheer
walls whose summits command a view for many miles; whose pinnacles
and overhanging rocks give endless opportunity for hiding and
ambush. In this sanctuary they found rest between raids during the
early seventies; and the place is known to this day as Cochise's
Stronghold.
Here one time a force of several hundred soldiers made camp in the
lowlands, and strung a series of strong outposts through Middle Pass,
cutting off the northern part of the range from all the rest of the
world, holding it inside a ring of armed men. It was such a siege as
the warriors of the Middle Ages used to wage, starving their walled-in
enemies to surrender. For weeks the soldiers bided and sometimes got
glimpses of the turbaned heads of Apache warriors who were gazing down
on them from the rocks above.
Then, one dark night, Cochise took his entire tribe, numbering
somewhere between two and three hundred men, women, and children, down
the niches among the cliffs. Carrying their arms and their scanty
baggage, the Apaches wormed their way from the crest to the plain two
thousand feet below and crawled through the line of the besiegers. So
adroitly was the thing manoeuvered that no one cut their trail, and
two days passed before the escape was discovered. By that time the
whole band were raiding down along the headwaters of the San Pedro,
getting new horses from the herds of ranchers on the border.
In the old days this northern end of the Dragoon Mountains, which
towers above the flat lands of the Sulphur Springs valley on the one
side and the rolling plains of the San Pedro on the other, had been
known among the Apaches as the abode of the dead. Here, they said, the
departed spirits of their ancestors whispered among the granite caves
and pinnacles every evening with the coming of the night wind.
But from now on they forgot the tribal legends and looked upon the
place as their inviolable refuge.
Time after time the blue-clad troopers chased them as far as the base
of the cliffs, but never pressed them farther. For Cochise had
developed into a consummate strategist and, for the first time in
their history, the Apaches learned the art of making a stand against
superior forces.
To this day the rolling hills under those pinkish granite precipices
show traces of the camps which the troopers occupied during successive
sieges, only to abandon them on learning that their turbaned enemies
had stolen away in some other quarter to resume their raiding all
along the border.
In some of the canyons which lead up toward the ragged crests of naked
rock one can still pick up old brass cartridge-shells, the relics of
grim battles where the soldiers always found themselves at a
disadvantage, targets for the frowzy, naked savages who slipped and
squirmed among the granite masses above them like rattlesnakes.
Far to the southward the Sierra Madre reared its lofty crests toward
the flaring sky; and there Cochise established another sanctuary where
his people could rest and hunt when the chase became too hot in
Arizona. His breech-clouted scouts discovered some dry placer diggings
here, and he bade the squaws mine the dust which he exchanged with
crooked-souled white traders for ammunition.
And now, having mastered the art of flight as he had mastered the art
of raiding, the war-chief of the Chiracahua Apaches waged his vendetta
against the white men more remorselessly than any of his forefathers
had done in their time.
But few men are absolutely consistent and Cochise had some
idiosyncracies, which it is just as well to note in passing, for they
give an inkling of a side of his character that was instrumental in
bringing an end to the whole bloody business.
For one thing he could not enjoy torturing his prisoners. He tried
that once on a Mexican down Agua Prieta way. After the custom of his
nation he pegged out the luckless prisoner near an ant-hill, with his
mouth propped open by a wooden gag and a trail of honey leading into
it.
But when he settled down that night to enjoy the torments of the man,
he found that pleasure would not come to him; and during the long
hours that followed, the groans of the slowly dying Mexican became a
punishment to his savage captor, a punishment which endured for years
afterward, for in his sleep Cochise sometimes heard those moanings
when he was an old man, and hearing them sweated in agony of mind.
Another of his peculiarities was a love of the truth. He was no hand
at lying like the ordinary Indian. In an era when the white men were
careless with their compacts, an era when Washington set the fashion
in breaking treaties with the hostile Indians, he came out with the
reputation of always keeping his word.
"If you can not tell the truth," he said, "keep silent or avoid the
subject."
That was the way he put it to Captain Thomas Jonathan Jeffords, to
whom he also confessed the weakness which had overcome him in the case
of the tortured Mexican. And the knowledge of this side of Cochise's
character helped Captain Jeffords to pave the way for the wind-up of
the war-chief's maraudings. That knowledge came after a long strange
intimacy which began in a remarkable manner.
This Captain Thomas Jonathan Jeffords owned a wagon outfit and not
only contracted for government freighting in those times when teaming
was a perilous venture, but rode as an express messenger for various
military posts along the border. During the days when Cochise was
using the northern end of the Dragoon Mountains as his stronghold, the
days before these two men became acquainted, the lean brown warriors
made several attacks on Jeffords's wagon-trains and on more than one
occasion forced the old-timer himself to do some extremely hard
riding.
Finally when he had lost fourteen employees and property amounting to
thousands of dollars in ambuscades and raids, Jeffords decided that it
was high time to put an end to this sort of thing as far as he was
concerned. He had tried reprisals on his own account but although he
and his leather-skinned followers had managed to kill off numerous
Apaches, there were more warriors in the tribe than he could ever hope
to massacre.
He had worked with the soldiers as a scout but had found the cavalry
hampered by too many conflicting orders from Washington, and in some
cases too inefficiently officered in high places, to be very
formidable. Cochise was too much for them to handle and that was all
there was about it. Now he made up his mind to try a new scheme.
Captain Jeffords had mixed a great deal with Apaches of various
tribes, until he knew their customs as well as they did themselves. He
could speak their tongue and he knew the sign language which was the
lingua Franca of the western tribes. He could read smoke signals; he
had made friends among those of the renegades who sometimes took a
long chance and drifted down to the government posts in company with
peaceful Indians. Gradually he got such information as he could, and
as he got it he stored it away in his mind until he felt he was as
well equipped with knowledge as he could hope.
Then he set forth one day to pay a visit to Cochise in person. It was
a risky venture but the old-timers never balked at taking long
chances; else they would never have come west of the Rio Grande.
Jeffords induced an Apache who had been with Cochise to accompany him
part way on the journey; and before the Indian back-tracked for the
military post, he had him send up a smoke signal announcing the visit
and stating that its nature was peaceable.
When the last shreds of smoke vanished in the clear sky the native
departed and Jeffords resumed his journey toward the Dragoons. No
answering sign had come from those scarred granite peaks; and as he
rode on across the blazing plain they stood forth against the
cloudless sky, frowning, inscrutable. For all that the eye could see
they might have been deserted, without life among them since the
beginning of time; or they might be at this moment sheltering hundreds
of biding enemies. He had to wait until he got among those rocks
before he knew what they held in store for him.
He rode to the edge of the plain and from the lowlands up the first
slopes of talus at the mouth of a long, steep-walled canyon. He pressed
his horse on up the narrow gorge. On either side the cliffs loomed
above him; in places they were so close together that he could have
tossed a pebble from one to the other. There was no sign of life; no
sound, no movement.
But this tall lean rider knew that somewhere among those granite
pinnacles which stood out against the sky-line before him and on
either side, scores of venomous black eyes were watching him. He knew
that for every pair of eyes there was a rifle; and that many a crooked
brown finger was fairly itching to press the trigger.
Thus he rode his sweating pony up and up where the gorge wound toward
the summit, up and up until he reached the nests of enormous granite
boulders which hang seemingly poised between the heavens and the flat
plain beneath. And finally he saw before him the lodges made of bended
bushes with skins and blankets spread over their curved sides. He
reined in his horse, dismounted, and walked into the camp of the
renegades.
Cochise was sitting in his lodge, which was but a bare shelter from
the sun's rays--a number of bushes bound together at their tops formed
the ribs for a haphazard sort of tent made of outspread skins,--and
whether he was awaiting this visit no man knows. For the war-chief
showed no sign of surprise or of welcome when Captain Jeffords entered
the place. But when the tall white man had seated himself upon the
skins which covered the dry earth and announced his purpose, Cochise
betrayed astonishment.
"I have come here," Jeffords said with the deliberation which one
must use when he is talking with an Indian, "to see you, to know you
better, and to talk over certain matters with you. I will stay here
two days or maybe three; and while I remain--to show my good
faith--one of your squaws may keep my weapons." With which he laid
aside his rifle and revolver.
After a silence whose length would have been disconcerting to any
other than an old-timer owning a knowledge of the Indian ways, Cochise
called a squaw, who picked up the firearms at his bidding and took
them away with her. Then these two men of parts settled down to talk
business.
It took them two days and two nights, for Jeffords was careful not to
crowd matters in the slightest, hanging to the savage custom of long
silences and few words at a time between them. As the hours went on he
sat there patiently listening to the war-chief recounting at great
length his experiences with the white men, reciting the stories of bad
faith and broken compacts; and when these recitals were finished he
continued to sit in silence for long intervals, before he resumed his
own arguments.
Thus the talk went on in the little brush shelter during the hot days
and the cool evenings; and what it all came to was this:
Jeffords said that this war between Cochise and the soldiers was not
his war. It was, he maintained, no business of his excepting when the
officers who carried the authority of the great father in Washington,
bade him to do their bidding and act as a guide or scout. Otherwise,
why should he take up his good time and risk his life in fighting a
people against whom he held no personal grudge?
And why should that people bother their heads and risk their lives in
fighting him? He followed that question by reminding Cochise of the
reprisals which he had launched against the Chiracahua Apaches. They
had killed fourteen of his men and stolen much of his property; but he
and his men had killed several times fourteen of Cochise's warriors
and had wrought devastation in proportion. Did that pay the Apaches?
Well, then, why keep on with it? He knew good things of Cochise and
had respect for him. Cochise knew who he was and the sort of man he
was. No need for them to go on injuring each other and each other's
people. They could call it a draw and quit right now.
If the white soldiers demanded Jefford's services, all well and good;
he would go and serve them as scout or interpreter or guide, and do
what fighting one must do when he is on the war-path. And on such
occasions, if the warriors of Cochise could kill him or capture him,
all right; it was their privilege. But no more of this attacking each
other out of season. If Cochise would let his men and property alone,
he would no longer make any raids on Cochise's people.
That was the gist of it and it took a long time to say; a long time
during which Cochise told Jeffords many things and Jeffords spoke with
Cochise of many subjects outside the direct line of discussion. For
that was the Indian manner; they must feel each other out and satisfy
themselves each as to the other's personality.
In the end they shook hands on their bargain, and Captain Thomas
Jonathan Jeffords got back his weapons from the squaw, saddled up his
pony, and rode forth from the camp of the Apache war-chief, the party
of the first part to a compact such as never had been heard of up to
that time in the history of Indian warfare.
That compact stood. And there were times when its observance was a
delicate matter; times when Captain Jeffords had to draw fine lines
between his duty as a government scout and his obligations to Cochise.
But he managed to perform those duties and to keep the faith; and
although he went forth with the cavalry troopers on many an occasion,
serving them faithfully and well, he never fell out with the war-chief
of the Chiracahuas.
In fact their friendship grew as the years went by and they came to
regard each other as brothers. During such visits as he paid to the
stronghold in lulls of the border warfare, Jeffords got to know much
of Cochise's history, of his grievances, and of his point of view.
During these same years there came a change in the command, and
General George Crook, who is looked upon by the old-timers as perhaps
the greatest of our Indian-fighters, led the cavalry against the
Apaches. Crook's understanding of the Indian was perfect; and not only
was he able to beat the natives at their own game of ambuscade but he
thoroughly sympathized with their cause. He knew how Washington and
incompetent officers had blundered and lied to them.
It was therefore with the utmost willingness that he combined his
campaign of savage fighting with another and quieter campaign of
diplomacy which was being waged by General O. O. Howard.
The latter had been sent out by President Grant to get the Chiracahua
Apaches back on the reservation. And one day he made up his mind to
open negotiations with the war-chief in person.
He asked his scouts for a man who could find where Cochise was hiding
at the time and conduct him to the place, and they told him that there
was only one man in the territory of Arizona, who stood a chance of
doing this--Captain Jeffords.
General Howard sent for Jeffords and the two conferred in the presence
of a number of cavalry officers. And when the general had announced
his purpose a dispute arose; the officers advised him to take along a
strong escort of troops if he intended making this call. Jeffords
declared flatly that such an escort would need all the cavalry along
the border. No troops or else an army, was his way of putting it; and
if there were an army he did not purpose accompanying the expedition.
On the other hand he would willingly take General Howard alone. They
compromised by sending along a single aide, a captain.
Then these three men journeyed to the northern end of the Dragoon
Mountains; and as they crossed the wide plains toward the somber
range, they halted two or three times while Captain Jeffords built a
little fire. The general and his aide watched the old-timer standing
by the wisp of flame, sprinkling upon it now one sort of fuel and now
another, occasionally smothering the rising fumes with his saddle
blanket. And as they rode onward they saw the smoke of Apache
signal-fires rising from the ragged summits ahead of them. They saw
these things, and it is a fact that they thought but little of them.
So they marveled when Captain Jeffords chose his route into the
mountains without hesitation; and their wonder grew when he pointed to
a group of enormous boulders which topped the ridge ahead of them,
saying--
"We will find Cochise's people camped there to-day."
They rode on upward and came into the camp of the Apaches. Here and
there a ragged squaw peered out of a dirty lodge at them; they saw a
group of children scattering like frightened quail. There were no
warriors, only one or two old men.
"Where is Cochise?" General Howard asked.
"He will be here within an hour," Jeffords answered, "and when he
comes you will know him because you will see riding ahead of him the
ugliest-looking Apache in Arizona carrying a lance."
And because Jeffords had exchanged no word as yet with the Indians,
the two white men marveled again.
The old-timer led them to the chief's lodge, where they sat down and
waited.
Within the hour a group of Apaches came riding up the nearest gorge,
and at their head General Howard saw one whose sinister face conformed
to the description which Jeffords had given him. The warrior was
carrying a lance. And behind him rode the war-chief. Cochise
dismounted and entered his lodge. After the Mexican fashion he kissed
Jeffords on both cheeks embracing him warmly. Then--
"What is it these men want?" he asked.
Jeffords introduced General Howard and the aide, and stated the
former's motive in making this visit. Cochise sat silent for some
moments. At length, pointing to General Howard--
--"Will he keep his word if we exchange promises?" he demanded.
"I have advised him not to promise too much, as is the habit of many
white men," Jeffords answered, "and I believe he is honest."
The old war-chief fell silent again. Finally he turned to General
Howard.
"Some of my young men," he said slowly, "are away now. They are making
their living. They may come back at any time. And when they come back
there may be trouble. It would be better if you were not here then."
And General Howard knew enough about the Apaches and their habits to
be sure in what manner those young men were making their living; what
sort of trouble would probably follow their arrival in the camp. It
would be an awkward situation if he were to be in this place during a
battle between the savages and his fellow-soldiers. But he was not a
young man and the prospects of a long ride back to the nearest
military post were not alluring. He said as much.
"Four of my young men will take you to a good place," Cochise told
him, "and after the third day they will bring you back."
On the advice of Jeffords this course of action was agreed to; and
four Apaches took General Howard down into the valley as far as the
point where the Sulphur Springs ranch buildings now stand.
Jeffords and the aide bided here on the heights with the Indians. And
on the second day, true to Cochise's prophecy, a band of renegades
came riding hard up the gorge. The spot where the Indians were
encamped was a saddle at the summit, some hundreds of feet lower than
the adjoining ridges. Now as the fugitive warriors threw themselves
from their lathered ponies, announcing that two troops of cavalry were
close behind them, the aide of General Howard witnessed one of those
spectacles which are easier to tell than to believe.
With the announcement of this emergency, the camp moved. In the same
time that it takes to say the foregoing sentence, it moved--men,
women, children, and every bit of impedimenta. It was like one of
those magic transformations of which we used to read in fairy-tales
when we were children.
One moment the Apaches were squatting among their lodges; and in the
next moment people and goods and wickiups were gone; the place was
bare.
Every warrior and squaw and child seized what objects were nearest at
hand, overlooking none, and scampered off with them. Within a few
minutes of the arrival of the fugitives, the entire band was scattered
among the boulders and pinnacles on the higher portion of the ridge;
Cochise was disposing his warriors to the best advantage to repel the
attack.
But the cavalry made no advance beyond the canyon mouth, and there was
no fight. When General Howard returned at the end of the next day he
saw the manner in which the war-chief had deployed his men and was
struck with admiration. No general, he said in telling of the
incident afterward, no matter how highly schooled in the arts of
modern warfare, could have disposed of his forces to better advantage
than this savage had done.
Then General Howard, his aide, and Captain Jeffords were given one of
those primitive lodges and settled down here among the lofty heights
of Cochise's stronghold, isolated from all white men, surrounded by
the most bloodthirsty savages in America, rubbing elbows with naked
warriors who had spent the years of their manhood perfecting
themselves in the fine arts of ambush and murder.
Cochise saw to it that they were well supplied with robes and
blankets; by his orders they were feasted as became ambassadors; and
General Howard ate with a relish one evening a stew which he afterward
learned was made from the meat of a fat half-grown colt.
The conference went on at a leisurely rate; but at that it was
conducted much more swiftly than most discussions in which Indians
have taken part, for since the party had come to these heights they
had sent back no word of how they were faring, and they dared not drag
out the business to too great a length lest an expedition come after
them. Such a development would effectually stop the negotiations and,
in all probability, forever prevent their renewal.
General Howard told Cochise his purpose in coming to Arizona, and
dwelt with emphasis on the fact that President Grant had sent him. The
name of this famous warrior of the white men had weight with the
leader of the Chiracahuas. If the man who led the armies of the great
father to victory was behind this movement, he must at least respect
the overtures. Howard went on to say that all the President wanted was
peace with the Indians; to get them back on the reservation and to
treat them fairly.
Cochise replied with a long statement of his own grievances beginning
with the incident wherein Lieutenant Bascom was a main figure; he told
of other cases wherein the white man had not shown up well. Many
promises had been made to the Apaches but none had been kept. Still he
was willing to go on with this thing; President Grant was a mighty
warrior, and Captain Jeffords had vouched for his envoy's honesty.
Thus they sat within the rude shelter of boughs and skins, smoking and
talking while the naked braves passed outside eying them through the
doorway with sharp sidelong glances, and lean withered squaws cackled
all day long among the vermin-ridden lodges about them.
Then Cochise announced that he and his people would go back to live
upon a reservation and to eat the white man's rations--on certain
conditions. The reservation must be in their own country; he named a
portion of the Sulphur Springs valley and the adjoining Chiracahuas.
And the agent must be Captain Jeffords.
There was justice in these conditions. The tribe had always roved over
the country which Cochise named. As for the agent, it was a notorious
fact that about nine-tenths of the Indian troubles originated through
dishonesty of officials; either they were thieves or their friends
were, which amounted to the same thing. And Jeffords was honest.
When General Howard had heard out the war-chief, he at once accepted
the stipulations. President Grant had given him carte blanche in this
matter; he was sure that he could keep his promises. But Captain
Jeffords interposed an obstacle.
The last thing that he wanted was to be an Indian agent. The
government owed him about twenty thousand dollars and if he took the
office it would prevent his collecting the claims which were then
under adjudication in Washington. Besides he well knew the political
forces which were always working on an Indian agent, the strings which
were being pulled in Washington, the various grafts, big and petty, to
which one must shut his eyes if he wanted to remain in charge of a
reservation. He stated his position.
Cochise remained firm. No agent other than Jeffords. That was his
ultimatum. He would rather go on fighting until his people were
extinct than to take them back and have them robbed. General Howard
turned in appeal to the old-timer. And Captain Jeffords then
capitulated--under conditions.
He would give up the hope of collecting the money which the government
owed him and he would take charge of the new reservation. But if he
did these things he must be in complete control. His word must be law
and there must be no outside interference. If he gave the order, no
white man--not even the commander of the United States army--could
come within the boundaries of the district set apart for the Indians.
Beyond his judgment there could be no appeal. He did not purpose to
have matters taken to Washington over his head.
And, to make a long story short, General Howard not only consented to
all of this, but he saw to it that President Grant confirmed his
promises. He made a special trip to Washington and placed the matter
before the nation's chief executive, who issued the necessary orders.
And so late in 1872 Cochise and his people came back to the
reservation.
That was not all, either. They lived there, during the lifetime of
Cochise, in peace and quiet. There were thefts and there were cases of
whisky-peddling with their inevitable accompaniments in the way of
murder. There were times when the young men got restless; when passing
Apaches from the White Mountains tried to induce the tribe to rise and
leave the reservation with them, when medicine-men from these other
clans preached bloody war.
But Cochise and Captain Thomas Jonathan Jeffords attended to all of
these things as they came up. They ferreted out the criminals; they
hunted down the whisky-peddlers; they drove the recalcitrant spirits
from other tribes away and quelled the dissatisfaction which they had
stirred up.
And because there was no appeal beyond their judgment; because no
hungry politician could bring it about that his friends got the chance
to swindle the Apaches or to rob them of their rations--as was being
done with other Indians all over the West at the time--these two old
men were able to enforce their edicts and to keep at peace the most
warlike savages in the whole Southwest. They kept the faith with the
government, those two; and they kept the faith with each other; and
the friendship which had begun that day when Jeffords rode up into
Cochise's stronghold, grew closer and closer.
That friendship never wavered until the day of Cochise's death. And
when he knew that the end was coming he called for Jeffords, who was
brought to his bedside. It was about two hours before noon.
"To-morrow at this time in the morning," Cochise said, "I will die. I
want to say good-by to you."
They talked for some time over things that had happened in days gone
by. And finally Cochise asked the old-timer whether he believed in a
hereafter. Jeffords, like many another man, could only hope that there
might be such a thing.
"Well," Cochise told him finally, "I believe that after I am gone I
will see you again, my friend."
And those were their last words together. The next morning, at the
hour which he had named, Cochise breathed his last.