Apaches, at the Camp Apache reservation; and to invite the Chiricahuas,
also. He arrived safely at Camp Apache, and there added to his party
Chiefs Miguel of the one eye, Pedro and Es-ki-tis-tsla; but he failed
to find any Chiricahuas.
So he proceeded by wagon and mule, without them.
“I’d shorely like to see those Injuns’ faces when the hull party
strikes the railroad at Santy Fee!” chuckled Jack Long. “They’ll think
the Old Nick is to tow ’em with his tail up.”
For Santa Fe of New Mexico Territory was the nearest point east of Camp
Grant reached by a railroad.
“What does a railroad look like, Jeem?” queried little Francisco,
hearing the talk.
Jimmie himself had not seen a railroad for several years, but he
remembered, and he tried to explain.
“It’s two lines of iron, like wagon-wheel tracks, reaching miles and
miles, chico,” he said. “And on them roll fine wagons, joined together
and filled with people, and drawn by a――did you ever hear about boats,
chico? Those boats that sail up and down the Colorado River, and make a
big noise?”
Francisco eagerly nodded.
“My father has a brother who saw one.”
“Well, the thing that hauls the wagons is a steamboat on land. It runs
without horses; and it runs so fast that it could go from here to
Tucson, fifty-five miles, in two hours.”
Francisco crossed himself.
“I would be afraid, Jeem,” he quavered.
Poor little Francisco! He was to meet a sad fate.
But, first, June and July passed quietly at Camp Grant. From Fort
Whipple General Crook continued to keep scouting detachments and
pack-trains moving. The various posts were strengthened by troops and
supplies. The greater portion of the Fifth Cavalry was in Arizona, with
some troops of the First Cavalry, and part of the Twelfth Infantry and
of the Twenty-third Infantry――the general’s regiment. The Twenty-first
Infantry and most of the Third Cavalry had gone out.
The general was getting ready. According to the officers of the Fifth
Cavalry and the Twenty-third Infantry at Camp Grant, the President
had resolved that if the Peace Policy in Arizona did not persuade the
Indians to settle down within a year, General Crook should be ordered
to take matters over.
The year would be up this September.
Then, in August, things “broke wide open,” as Joe Felmer expressed it.
General Crook just escaped being assassinated by the Yavapais at Date
Creek, where he had gone for a talk. He had angered them by arresting
several of them for the murder of Engineer Loring and others, in the
Wickenburg stage massacre. He had been told that they were planning to
kill him, but he went anyway.
They did try to shoot him, in the council. Lieutenant Ross knocked up
the arm of the Indian who fired first, there was an all-round tussle,
Hank Hewitt the packer seized one Indian by both ears and broke his
head against a rock, a part of the Yavapais were killed or imprisoned,
and the rest fought their way into the mountains.
The Tonto Basin Apaches――Tontos and Yavapais both――were attacking
ranches and mines south of Prescott. Their worst chiefs were Chuntz,
and Delt-che (Delt-shay) or Red Ant (the Yavapais were known as Red Ant
people), and Cha-li-pun, the Buckskin-colored Hat.
And on the road only thirty miles south of Tucson the Chiricahuas
killed gallant young Lieutenant Reid Stewart, the “shave tail” who had
been out of West Point two months, and Corporal Black, while the two
were riding in a buck-board wagon up from Fort Crittenden, for Tucson.
“An’ I hear now they’ve got Bob Whitney, at last,” one day reported Joe
Felmer, on return from Tucson. “Yep; shot out his brains while he an’
Cap’n Gerald Russell o’ the Third were waterin’ their hosses in the
place called Cochise’s Stronghold of the Dragoon Mountains, between
Tucson an’ Bowie.”
Bob Whitney had been known as the handsomest guide and scout in Arizona.
“Anyhow,” pursued Joe, “this sort o’ thing won’t hang over, long. They
told me at Lowell (Camp Lowell, near Tucson, he meant) that orders have
been received from headquarters to be ready to take the trail on short
notice, an’ that the old man (who was General Crook) is puttin’ on his
war-paint and havin’ that mule ’Pache, o’ his, re-shod, four squar’.”
At the instant, while Joe was speaking in the ranch yard, a sudden high
chorus of shrill grief sounded, down the road to Camp Grant. Up the
course of the sandy San Pedro Valley wended a slow little procession,
of men and women afoot and on mules.
The grief immediately spread to the ranch, where the Mexican women
began to run wildly, and shriek, and tear their hair. Mrs. Vasquez, who
was Francisco’s mother, rushed by, to meet the procession.
“Mi niño! Ay, mi niño!” she wailed. “My little boy! Oh, my little boy!”
How did she know? Joe Felmer gaped, puzzled; and a cold fear seized
Jimmie’s thumping heart.
Upon the seat of a two-wheeled, creaking cart in the midst of the
procession Francisco’s father, Domingo Vasquez, was sitting and holding
in his arms something wrapped in a blanket. He held it very tightly.
Yes, it was poor little Francisco, killed by an Apache lance-thrust.
Joe Felmer scarcely could get the story, amid all that shrieking and
confusion; but finally he and Jimmie learned from Domingo what had
happened.
“I take him with me in my cart to Camp Grant this morning,” said
Domingo, in Mexican-Spanish, “while I cut wood along the Arivaipa, for
the fort. He visits with people I know, and I do not see him. When I
go to the fort to get him and come home, he is not there. They say he
has left to find me. We hunt a long time, and we call, and he does
not answer. And then, next, they tell me he is found, and I see them
bringing him. Just a little way off the trail up the Arivaipa from the
fort somebody had found him, behind a cactus there; and he was dead by
an Apache lance. Why should anybody kill my little boy――my niño, my
muchachito!――my little Francisco who never harmed?”
Why, indeed? Francisco was only a gay, innocent little Mexican boy,
alone, and too young to be an enemy. The murder had been done at a turn
of the trail within rifle-shot from the fort. A party of Chief Chuntz’s
Tontos and Yavapais had been sneaking around the post and the agency,
pretending that they were ready to come in. Old Santos insisted that
the murderer was a Chuntz warrior, if not Chuntz himself.
Santos was home again, after his trip east with General Howard. He was
filled with admiration of the ways of the white people. The general
had given him a New Testament, which he could not read, of course, but
which he placed under his head, every night, when he slept.
“Chuntz is bad,” sympathized Santos, to Jimmie. “He is bad and so are
his men. All those Tonto and Yavapai are bad at heart. To kill a boy
is not Christian. The only way to make those Tonto and Yavapai good is
to hunt them down. Cluke, the man with the brown clothes, must go out
after them, and after the Chiricahua, too. I have told the Arivaipa
what I have seen among the white men. The white men are many and very
rich, and we will live like them if they do not try to make us believe
that the earth is round. General Howard started to tell me that the
earth is round, but I answered that he and I are too great chiefs, to
be such fools as that!”
Little Francisco was laid away at the ranch. For some time Jimmie felt
sad and lonely. Francisco had been his chum. The end was cruel and
horrible.
So he was mighty glad when Joe sent him out with old Jack Long, to help
take a pack-train and bunch of cavalry horses clear to Camp Bowie, by
way of Tucson.
“An’, b’gosh, you’d better hustle back,” warned Joe. “That Chuntz is
a-goin’ to be made to pay for his boy killin’, as soon as thar’s snow
on the peaks. The old man’s only waitin’ till winter sets in.”
It seemed high time that something was done. In the past twelve months
of Peace Policy over forty Americans and Mexicans of Arizona had been
killed by the Apaches, sixteen wounded, and five hundred and fifty
cattle stolen.
X
ON THE TRAIL WITH THE PACK-TRAIN
John Cahill, the new blacksmith at Grant, went; but Joe had been
appointed a scout, and stayed at home.
Tucson, only fifty-five miles south, was easily made in two days, for
the loose horses and the Grant pack-mules traveled light. But Camp
Bowie, at the Apache Pass in the Chiricahua Mountains, was one hundred
and ten miles east from Tucson and Camp Lowell. That meant a real march
with thirty loaded mules, and a hundred remount cavalry horses, and the
cavalry escort commanded by Lieutenant Jacob Almy, and a riding-mule
for each man of the pack-train.
The packs were chiefly ammunition. Each mule carried three hundred
pounds.
“We’ll jest see what we can do, boys,” said Jack. “Regulations try to
make us think that a hundred and seventy pounds is all a mule’ll stand;
but the gin’ral knows more’n ary regulations issued by those folks
at Washington. I wouldn’t insult a good sound mule by puttin’ only a
hundred seventy on his back――not if he’s packed right. Pack him right,
so the load slings even, an’ he’ll carry his two hundred fifty an’
three hundred pounds at five miles an hour for twenty-five an’ thirty
miles a day, week in an’ week out.”
Old Jack was the pack-master or patron (pa-_trone_). Frank Monach was
assistant pack-master, or cargador (car-ga-_dore_). “Slim Shorty” was
cook or cencero (cen-_say_-ro). Frank Cahill was blacksmith. The
packers or arrieros were Jim O’Neill, “Chileno John,” “Long Jim” Cook
(six feet eight), Charley Hopkins, Sam Wisser the Pennsylvania German,
and Lauriano Gomez who sang Spanish songs.
The pack-train was called an atajo (ah-tah-ho); the packs were
“cargoes,” and the pack-saddles or aparejos, and such stuff, composed
the “riggings.”
Pack-train service had a language all its own. Yes, and an army train
as organized under General Crook had a discipline all its own, too, as
Jimmie soon found out.
The trail from Tucson to Bowie was the main Southern overland stage
road between the Rio Grande River in New Mexico and San Diego of the
Pacific. Therefore the traveling up hill and down was good.
It was Jimmie’s business to help herd the mules, in the evening and the
early morning, while the regular herders were eating; and to come in
and rouse the cook, at daybreak, and get him wood and water, if needed.
In half an hour after the cook was up, the men were wakened. While they
were folding their blankets (which were the pack-blankets) and taking
the canvas coverings off the “riggings” and “cargoes,” Jimmie brought
in the herd.
This was not difficult, because when he started the wise old bell
leader, all the mules followed; and so well had they been trained that
except for a few “shave tails” they took their own places, in a sort of
company front, each facing his pile of “rigging.” Every mule had his
own, individual “rigging,” adjusted to fit him perfectly.
The packers saddled their riding mules, and ate breakfast. After
breakfast they put the “riggings” and “cargoes” on the pack-mules.
They worked in pairs, and each pair attended to ten mules. A full
pack-train was composed of fifty mules; ten mules were assigned to a
troop or company of soldiers. The thirty mules in this train of Patron
Jack called for six packers.
Jimmie helped “Slim Shorty” the cook pack his kitchen stuff; and Jimmie
and the cook and John Cahill the blacksmith watched the loaded mules,
especially any “shave tails,” so that they should not ramble away or
try to lie down.
The packers worked like lightning, uttering scarcely a word except
signal words, for it was against regulations to talk much. The schedule
of breaking camp or “unparking” a train was as follows: Twenty minutes
for before-breakfast work, fifteen minutes for breakfast, twenty
minutes for putting on the “riggings,” twenty minutes for putting on
the “cargoes”; total, one hour and a quarter.
But “Chileno John” and Jim O’Neill, who were the prize pair of packers,
in an exhibition feat loaded their ten mules complete (“riggings” and
packs and all) in ten minutes!
The moment that the train was ready, Patron Jack, who had been eying
closely, called “Bell!” and “Slim Shorty” the cook rode the white bell
mare out upon the trail; in single file the pack-mules――“bell sharps”
and “shave tails” and slow “drag tails”――stepped after, usually of
their own accord.
The cavalry escort took the advance. Patron Jack and “Slim Shorty” led
the pack-train. The packers rode, one beside every fifth mule. Frank
Monach the assistant pack-master or “cargador” brought up the rear,
with John Cahill the blacksmith, whose business it was to look out for
dropped shoes and sore hoofs.
Jimmie rode behind, too. The long file of swaying, plodding mules,
under the canvas-covered packs, made a fascinating sight. So did the
sturdy packers or “arrieros,” in their broad hats and suspenders and
flannel shirts, and trousers tucked into heavy boots.
Jack aimed to start out by sun-up at the latest, so as to finish the
twenty-five or thirty miles at one stretch before mid-day heat and
dust. This was only a moderate march, in fairly level country. In rough
mountain country, fifteen miles a day, at a go-as-you-can gait, would
be enough.
To unload and make camp was called “parking.” The “riggings” and
“cargoes” were laid out in two neat parallel lines, and covered. Jack
and Frank Monach examined the mules, for sore backs caused by badly
fitting aparejos. The “bell” was hobbled and turned to pasture and the
mules followed.
“Riggings” were repaired, if necessary, and scraped clean of sweat and
dirt. The pack-blankets were opened, to air for sleeping blankets; from
their war-bags, or canvas clothing sacks, the men took out what stuff
they required.
But the pack-mules were the main thought. Nothing in the way of petting
and fancy trappings was too good for a pack-mule. Each mule had its
name, and knew that name. Nobody was permitted to strike a mule or
abuse it in any manner.
“You can abuse a dog an’ he’ll forgive you,” said old Jack. “But you
mistreat a mule, an’ he’ll never forget. You can change yore clothes,
but you can’t change yore smell――not to a mule!”
The bell horse or “cencero” (which is the Spanish for “bell”) had
the easiest time of any of the pack-train animals. It wasn’t packed.
All that the “bell” had to do was to tinkle along and set the pace,
while carrying the cook. The “bell” ought to be white, because mules
were supposed to be especially fond of white; the “bell” ought to be
a horse, because mules respected a horse more than they did another
mule; and if “he” was a white mare, as in this train, then so much the
better, because mules loved white mares.
The cook rode the “bell,” and therefore was nicknamed “cencero,”
himself.
Patron Jack expected to make Camp Bowie in five days easy, which would
bring the pack-train and the cavalry through in good condition. The
first two nights out, the mules were herded, to graze; but on the third
day the road crossed the Dragoon Mountains by way of Dragoon Pass.
This night the mules were tied along a stretched picket-rope, for the
Dragoon Mountains were Chiricahua country, and contained Cochise’s
Stronghold.
“He’s off yonder at this very minute, an’ mebbe lookin’ for us,”
declared Cargador Frank Monach. “I’ll bet a cooky those hills south’ard
are plumb full o’ Chiricahua.”
“That’s where they killed pore Bob Whitney, all right enough,” mused
Jim O’Neill. “Down at Dragoon Springs, in the Stronghold. Yes, an’
many another man has left his scalp there. That range westward is the
Whetstones, or Mustangs, where they got Cushing; and on west of the
Whetstones is Davidson’s Canyon south of Tucson, where Lieutenant
Stewart and Corporal Black went under. By ginger, a fellow doesn’t look
out on a very pleasant view, from up here!”
From the open Dragoon Pass of the stage road the Dragoon Mountains,
low and rolling but very rough, with much brush and stunted timber,
extended southward to the Mexican line; and separated from them by
yellow deserts, west and east and north rose other low ranges――all
chosen hiding-places of the fierce Chiricahuas.
“Anyhow,” remarked Jack Long, with a sly wink, “we got a young
chi-kis-n o’ theirs hyar――reg’lar member o’ the Cochise fam’ly――to talk
for us; an’ if ary Chiricahua appear we’ll send him in to ’em.”
Jimmie grinned and scratched his head; whether Cochise and Geronimo
would wait and listen to him, he wasn’t certain. But he’d rather like
to see Nah-che and Nah-da-ste, and explain why he had run away.
The stage and the mail riders had been attacked in this very pass.
However, nothing alarming happened, to-night. And the probable reason
why, they learned the next day.
Dragoon Pass was about half-way between Tucson and Bowie, so that Bowie
now lay some fifty miles east. The Chiricahua Mountains and their
Apache Pass might be seen, in the eastern horizon.
The Chiricahuas had been so bad during the last two months that the
stage road was being little traveled. And when, in the morning, on the
way down from the pass a cloud of dust was sighted before, everybody
stared, suspicious.
Horsemen! Injuns? No, cavalry! Good! A scouting detachment from Bowie,
as like as not; or from Crittenden or Lowell, behind. Lieutenant Almy
met them first, and both parties stopped, to talk. Patron Jack, at the
head of the pack-train, spread his two arms as signal for “Halt!” and
he trotted on, to join.
There was a lengthy confab.
“Wall, wonder what’s up?” drawled Frank Monach. “Reckon I’d better go
an’ see.”
“Send the boy, an’ save yore mule,” suggested Blacksmith John Cahill.
“He’s fairly itchin’ to sit in.”
So Jimmie somewhat importantly trotted forward, too, up the long line
of dozing, switching pack-mules, to bring back news if he heard any.
The party of riders from the east were several officers, and three or
four booted, flannel-shirted, whiskered civilians, wearing heavy Colt’s
six-shooters and carrying rifles. Yes, and somebody else――a young
Mexican, dark enough to be an Apache, clad in broad-brimmed black hat,
dirty cotton shirt, old trousers and moccasins.
Jimmie knew him in two looks. Maria Jilda Grijalba! That same Maria who
had been a captive in the Cochise camp, and who, Micky Free had said,
had escaped after Jimmie had escaped.
Jimmie gladly rode straight to him.
“Buenos dias, Maria (Good day, Maria).”
“Buenos dias, amigo (friend),” responded Maria, and they shook hands
heartily.
“I heard you had escaped from the Apaches. What are you doing here?”
“I have come out from Camp Bowie with these officers,” answered Maria.
“I work for the fort now. I am a scout and interpreter. We are going to
talk with Cochise, at the Dragoon Springs.”
“What, amigo!”
“Yes,” nodded Maria. “General Howard, the great man with the one arm,
is there, with Cochise, waiting. He has come from Washington again,
and has found Cochise. He has been in the Cochise camp for six days.
They have made peace. There will be a Chiricahua reservation, and
now General Howard has sent for the comandante at Bowie, so that the
comandante and Cochise shall know each other, and there will be no
mistake.”
Maria spoke in Spanish except when an Apache word seemed handier.
Jimmie understood. It was a great convenience to speak in two
languages, at once. As for Jimmie, he knew three languages.
“Would you like to go?” asked Maria. “You come with me, and we will see
Cochise, and Geronimo and Nah-che and all of them.”
“I’d like to go, but I don’t believe I can, Maria,” faltered Jimmie.
“I’ve got to stay with the atajo.”
“Are you an arriero? Who is your patron?” inquired Maria. “I will ask
him.”
But Patron Jack Long already had the matter on his tongue.
“Hyar’s a muchacho (boy) you can have, if you want him, cap’n,” Jack
was saying to the cavalry captain. “He lived with old Cochise a while
in these very diggin’s. Speaks ’Pache, an’ consider’ble Mex. Reckon we
can spar’ him from the pack outfit, if you’ll fetch him back to Bowie
’fore we leave thar.”
“Does he speak English, though?” demanded the captain. “I’ve got a
guide with me――Maria, there――who speaks Mexican and Apache.”
“Does he savvy Americano? Sure he does, bein’ that his name’s Jimmie
Dunn, an’ his folks were both ’Mericans ’fore the ’Paches got ’em, an’
he’s been brung up by Joe Felmer at Grant. Speak American? Speaks it
better’n I do, ’cause he had schoolin’ back East.”
“All right. I’ll take him, and much obliged to you,” said the captain.
“Lived with Cochise, did he? How was that?”
“’Cause he couldn’t help it. Thar warn’t any ‘how’ to it, ’cept the
‘how’ o’ stayin’ close an’ playin’ possum till he had a chance to skip
out. The Chiricahua jumped him an’ some o’ Pete Kitchen’s sheep south
o’ Tucson a couple o’ year ago, an’ tuk him along same time they tuk
yore Mexican. That Maria Jilda an’ him were captives together. He’s
chi-kis-n to Nah-che, old Cochise’s son. But he’s plumb American ag’in,
now. If you meet up with any ’Paches an’ want to talk with ’em, he’ll
interpret for you.”
“Hah!” exclaimed the cavalry captain, eying Jimmie, as did the other
men. “He’ll do finely, then. Come with us, boy. We’ll return you to
your outfit to-morrow. Let’s go on, gentlemen.”
“Wall, I don’t wish you any hard luck――or that Gin’ral Howard, either,”
called Jack, after――for Jack said whatever he chose. “But ’cordin’ to
my notion the peacefulest kind o’ Chiricahua is a dead Chiricahua, an’
you can tell Cochise Jack Long says so. Hey, Jimmie!” continued Jack.
“You tell yore chi-kis-n to tell his dad thar’s a gent in a canvas
suit, up at Whipple, who’s comin’ down hyar pronto (quick) with a
double-bar’l ‘peace policy’ guaranteed to turn wild ’Paches into tame
ones.”
They left Lieutenant Almy’s little detachment starting onward, and old
Jack grumbling as he signaled his pack train to “march.”
XI
IN THE STRONGHOLD OF COCHISE
Riding on beside Maria, Jimmie learned more about General Howard and
the Chiricahuas.
The general had returned as far as the Warm Spring reservation in New
Mexico, with Pedro and Miguel and Santos and the other delegates to
Washington. Then he had engaged two Warm Spring guides――young Chie, son
of Mangas Coloradas, and Ponce, son of another of Cochise’s old-time
friends; and with them, and Captain Sladen his aide, and Tom Jeffords,
a red-haired, red-bearded American trader whom the Chiricahuas never
harmed, he had proceeded right on west, into the mountains, to find
Cochise.
The rest of his party he had dismissed, to wait for word from him, at
Bowie.
It had been anxious waiting, for who might foretell what Cochise would
do? But suddenly, one day, the general had appeared again, at Bowie,
with only Chie as companion. He had met Cochise, in the Stronghold; had
talked with him, as man to man; and now he was here, in order that the
word should be sent out all along the line: “The Cochise Chiricahuas
have promised peace. Do not interfere with them.”
With that, he had immediately returned to the Stronghold; and now
Captain S. S. Sumner, commanding Camp Bowie, and several of his
officers and a few civilians, were outward bound, to be present at the
council.
“Do you think that the Chiricahua have quit forever, Maria?” asked
Jimmie, as they jogged along.
“Maybe yes, maybe no,” replied Maria, shrugging his shoulders. “If they
might believe all Americans like they believe that one-armed man――but
who knows? Anyway, he is not afraid, and he speaks truth. What kind of
a man is that other general, the comandante named Crook?”
“They can believe him, too,” asserted Jimmie. “He’s a fighting general,
and a peace general, both. He’ll carry war to those Apaches that stay
bad. He’s ready now to move against the Tonto.”
“Good,” grunted Maria.
The abandoned stage station of Dragoon Springs, on the west slope
of Dragoon Pass, had been appointed as the council place. No
Chiricahuas and no token of any council were sighted here; but a
stout, broad-shouldered officer with black hair and heavy “shoe-brush”
moustache met the Captain Sumner party in the road.
He was Captain Sladen, General Howard’s aide. He said that the
Chiricahuas had seen soldiers in the road, this very morning; therefore
Cochise insisted that the council be held off at one side, where the
Chiricahuas might protect themselves.