fust-class packer of you, an’ I will. You fetch yore war-bag an’ fall
in ready to help the cook’ an’ by the time we’re out o’ the Tonto Basin
with old Chuntz’s scalp mebbe you’ll get a second-class ratin’.”
Hurrah! It was only proper, too, for Chief Chuntz had murdered little
Francisco, and had not little Francisco been his, Jimmie’s, partner?
Everybody at Grant was particularly eager to kill or capture Chuntz.
“To-morrow we start,” remarked Micky. “Where is the Gray Fox, Cheemie?”
“Who is that, Micky?”
“Cluke. He is the Gray Fox, because of his smartness and his dirt-color
clothes. All the Indians are calling him the Gray Fox. Where is he?”
“I don’t know. He is visiting other forts, getting the soldiers ready.”
And that was true. General Crook was leaving nothing at loose ends, but
instead of issuing his orders from headquarters, was overseeing the
details in person. He never tired.
“I would rather follow him on the war trail,” continued Micky. “But if
he is not here I shall go with Big Mouth and Nan-ta-je and Lieutenant
Bourke, and you. It will mean fighting. We will find the Tonto and
Yavapai. That I know.”
“How do you know, Micky?” asked Jimmie curiously――for Micky spoke
assuredly.
“I know it from Nan-ta-je. Why he knows I cannot tell you now, but
you will see.” And with that, the mysterious red-headed Micky became
Indian, and refused to utter another word on the subject.
As far as Jimmie could learn from Joe Felmer and Jack Long and the talk
at the post, the plan for the campaign was as follows:
The troops and scouts at Camp Apache, under Major George M. Randall, of
the Twenty-third Infantry, were to work in toward the Tonto Basin from
the east. The Camp Grant column, under Brevet Major W. H. Brown, were
to work up from the south. From the far northwest, at Camp Hualpai,
Colonel Julius W. Mason (who had roundly threshed the Apache-Mohaves
that had conspired to assassinate General Crook at Date Creek, last
summer) was to march down with his Fifth Cavalry and some Hualpais.
From Date Creek to the southwest Captain George F. Price, of the Fifth
Cavalry, should come on; and from the west the Fort Whipple column,
under Major Alexander MacGregor, of the First Cavalry, and the Camp
Verde First Cavalry under Colonel C. C. C. Carr, and the Camp McDowell
Fifth Cavalry and Pimas and Maricopas under Captain “Jimmie” Burns,
were to complete the circle.
They all were to clean the country as they advanced, and close in on
the Tonto Basin.
Just before the Camp Grant column started, the general’s final orders
were read to all the soldiers and scouts, in line. It was to be a
fight to a finish. The Indians who would not surrender must be pursued
until killed or captured. Women and children should not be harmed,
if possible. Prisoners were to be well treated. Men prisoners should
be enlisted as scouts, when they were willing to serve; and full use
should be made of them, to discover the hiding-places of the other wild
Apaches. And――――
“The general commanding the Department wishes to state that no excuse
will be accepted for leaving a trail. If the horses become unfit
for service, the enemy must be followed on foot. He expects that no
sacrifice shall be left untried by officers and men, to make the
campaign short, sharp and decisive.”
Antonio Besias the interpreter and guide translated the orders for the
Apache scouts. At his first opportunity, Micky asked Jimmie to repeat
them. Nan-ta-je also listened attentively. He grunted satisfaction.
“That is good,” commented Micky. “It is straight talk. We will find
what we are looking for.”
The Major Brown column out of Camp Grant consisted of Companies L and
M of the Fifth Cavalry, commanded by Captain Alfred B. Taylor and
Lieutenant Jacob Almy, Lieutenant (Brevet Major) William J. Ross, of
the Twenty-first Infantry, who had won honors in the Civil War, and
Lieutenant John G. Bourke, of the Third Cavalry, who had been General
Crook’s aide-de-camp. They were all good fighting men. Then there
were thirty Sierra Blanca Apache scouts――Chief Big Mouth, Alchisé who
was called Alchisay, Nan-ta-je whom the soldiers nicknamed “Joe,”
Na-kay-do-klun-ni who was nicknamed “Bobby Do-klinny,” and the others,
managed by Joe Felmer, Archie MacIntosh and Antonio Besias. Then there
was the pack-train of fifty mules, in charge of Pack-Master Jack Long
and Assistant Frank Monach, and ten such first-class packers as Jim
O’Neill, Chileno John, “Long Jim” Cook and “Short Jim” Cook, Manuel
Lopez, old Sam Wisser the German, with Slim Shorty as cook and John
Cahill as blacksmith――men tried and true. Then there was Mr. James
Daily, General Crook’s brother-in-law who had come out to Whipple
last spring with his sister Mrs. Crook, and was “seeing the country”
with the cavalry; and Micky Free, who might be counted as a sort of
“detached” scout.
Altogether, Jimmie felt convinced, this was the best column in
the field. As Patron Jack asserted, it could “lick its weight in
wild-cats.”
XIII
HUNTING THE YAVAPAI
“Now Apache catch Apache,” announced Micky.
It was a sharply chill evening, December 27, this 1872, and under a
clouded sky the whole Major Brown command were encamped together in the
little canyon of Cottonwood Creek, about seventy-five miles northwest
of Camp Grant.
Not far west rose the long, high plateau of the Mazatzal or Four Peaks
Range, through which the Salt River cut a deep, crooked trail toward
Camp MacDowell on the other side.
But the seventy-five miles was only a small portion of the distance
that had been covered. The Major Brown column out of Grant had been
marching north, west, south, and north again, for more than a month;
sometimes in cactus and sunshine, sometimes in snow and storm, ever
trying to corral the Chuntz and Delt-che outlaws.
These were hard to find. In this rough canyon country they had made
their homes for years and years. They knew every inch of it. Only the
Sierra Blanca scouts, who were afoot, in silent moccasins, and kept
a day’s march ahead, had had any luck. Twice they had struck small
rancherias; and they had killed four or five warriors.
Micky hunted with the scouts, daytimes; and each night, when in camp,
he had great stories to tell. It all was a lark, to Micky the red-head.
He had captured a rifle, in one of the Chuntz jacals or huts, and now
was very happy. He seemed rather to pity Jimmie, who was held to the
plodding, scrambling pack-train, at the rear.
Still, duty was duty, and business was business; and the pack-train was
as important as the soldiers or the scouts. Without the pack-train,
then the expedition needs must quit or starve――and what would General
Crook say?
On Christmas Day forty men of Company G, Fifth Cavalry, commanded by
Captain “Jimmie” Burns and Lieutenant Earl D. Thomas, with pack-train
and almost one hundred Pima Indian scouts, all from Camp MacDowell, had
joined.
They’d had some luck. On the top of the Four Peaks they had surprised
a Yavapai rancheria (one of Delt-che’s, they thought), had killed six
Indians and captured a squaw and a little boy. They had brought the boy
along, because he could kill quail with stones and with bow and arrow.
His new name was “Mike.”
Only Nan-ta-je could understand much that Mike said. The Yavapai
language was different from straight Apache. And why Nan-ta-je
understood Yavapai, Jimmie presently found out.
This evening of December 27, two days after the Captain Burns column
had been met, something evidently was up. Patron Jack had received
orders from Major Brown to park his mules in close, along a picket
line, “in a place easy of defence.” That was one hint.
“‘Find heap Injuns, poco tiempo (in little while),’ those scouts keep
sayin’, do they?” grumbled Jack. “Humph! Looks like ‘heap Injuns’
might be goin’ to find _us_, mebbe!”
And now as Jimmie, having finished his duties for the evening, made way
through the early dusk to look up Micky and listen to the stories of
the scouts, he noted that Major Brown and the six officers and Chief
Guide Archie MacIntosh were in a group around a little fire, talking
low with one another.
The soldiers, wrapped in their cavalry overcoats, huddled also, in
messes, smoking and joking. They might have been waiting for the time
to roll in their blankets, but somehow they all seemed to be waiting
for something else.
A little apart from the cavalry camp was the scouts’ camp; Chief Big
Mouth’s White Mountains in one place, the Pimas in another. The Apaches
certainly knew how to make themselves comfortable. They stuffed their
moccasins with dry grass, to keep their feet warmer, and slept two or
three together in snug beds among the rocks.
This evening they were having an especially good time. They were
roasting and eating pieces of a mule that had died from poison. Micky
was squatting and tearing at a chunk, like the rest of them, near one
of their little fires.
With greasy mouth he grinned amiably as Jimmie approached to squat
beside him.
“Come and eat, Boy-who-sleeps,” he greeted, in Apache.
“I have eaten. I am full,” explained Jimmie. Poisoned mule was rather
more than he could stomach, although when with the Chiricahuas he had
eaten almost anything.
“It is well to be full,” said Micky, chewing hard. “We may not eat
again for a long time.”
“Why, Red-head?”
“Because,” asserted Micky, changing to Mexican-Spanish, “now Apache
catch Apache. We start soon. If you want to go, you had better be
getting ready.”
“Where are they? How do you know?” demanded Jimmie.
Micky swallowed a large mouthful of mule meat, and held his chunk in
the coals again, with a sharpened stick.
“I know,” he said. “Soon all the soldiers will know, so I will tell
you what I could not tell you before. Cluke knew, when we left Camp
Grant. He had talked with Bocon (which was Spanish for Big Mouth), and
with Nan-ta-je. Major Brown knew, too. But it has been a secret. We are
here to fight Delt-che’s Yavapai where they have hidden in the Four
Peaks above the Salt River. Nan-ta-je was brought up, there, when he
was a boy. It is a big cave, in the face of the canyon made by the Salt
River. It is reached by a secret trail from above. Nan-ta-je knows the
trail. He told Bocon and Bocon told the Gray Fox, and they arranged,
at Camp Grant. First we were to chase Chuntz, who had killed your
Francisco. That has been done, and he has got away. Now we will follow
Nan-ta-je to the cave of the Delt-che people.”
“How far, Micky?” breathlessly asked Jimmie.
Micky proceeded to gnaw his meat chunk, hot though it was.
“A night’s march, over the mountains along the Salt River. We start as
soon as a bright star rises over the hills in the east. The soldiers
must leave their horses, and all wear moccasins, to make no noise, and
must get there before daylight. If we are discovered on the trail,
we will be killed, every one of us. Nobody can escape, then. That is
what Bocon and Nan-ta-je say, and they know. It will be a fine fight,
anyway. The Yavapai will be in their cave, behind a rock wall across
its mouth, and we will be on a flat place outside, in front; and those
who fall off will land, in the river, far below. Yes. That is why I
came, to see. You must run off from your pack-mules and be there, too,
Cheemie.”
“No, I won’t run off, but I’ll ask, you bet!” exclaimed Jimmie, jumping
up.
“Inju (good)!” grunted Micky, gulping fast, to finish his chunk. “You
and I will stay with the White Mountains. They will fight. But I don’t
think much of these Pimas. Whenever one is killed, the rest stop
fighting and make medicine.”
Jimmie hustled back. He was all on fire to go. It sounded as though it
was to be a fight that a fellow would hate to miss.
A change had come over the camp. The cavalry detachments were astir.
The non-commissioned officers were passing among the squads, inspecting
equipment; in the glow of the fires the men were donning moccasins,
overhauling their stubby fifty-calibre Springfield carbines, and
stuffing their cartridge-belts, worn outside their blue overcoats,
with the brass cartridges distributed from the green ammunition-boxes
lugged by the pack-train.
The officers’ council had broken up; the captains and lieutenants were
with their companies; Archie MacIntosh and Joe Felmer strode briskly
through, for the scouts. Jimmie seized upon Joe.
“Joe! Can I go? I want to go!”
“Whar?”
“To see the fight at the cave!”
“What cave? How do you know about any cave? You must have been with
that pesky Micky Free ag’in. Wall, you keep yore mouth shut about a
cave. No, I don’t say you can go. You aren’t under my orders. You’re
with the pack outfit. Don’t bother me.”
And away hastened Joe, following Archie. Away hastened Jimmie,
likewise, to find Jack Long.
All the cavalry horses had been tied to a picket rope, near the mules,
against the canyon side. The riggings and the packs were being piled as
a breastwork――the task had been almost completed――old Jack and Frank
Monach and Jim O’Neill and Blacksmith John Cahill and even Slim Shorty
were standing armed and ready――evidently the packers were to join the
cavalrymen――hurrah, the pack men were to be in the fight!
“Say, whar you been?” accused Jack. “Now you stay――――”
“Oh, Jack, can I go? I want to go, Jack! Please can I go?” pleaded
Jimmie.
“Seems to me you’re alluz wantin’ to ‘go’ some’ers,” growled Jack. “You
ask Joe Felmer. He’s yore gardeen.”
“I did ask him and he said I wasn’t with him, I was with the pack
outfit; and the pack outfit’s going, isn’t it?” argued Jimmie.
“Best part of it,” admitted Jack. “Orders from the major are for every
able-bodied man to march out, an’ for those who can’t climb to guard
the animals an’ packs, hyar. Dunno which’ll be the dangerouser place,
in case the Injuns try a stampede.”
“Oh, let him go; he’s earned it, I reckon,” spoke up “Long Jim” Cook
gruffly. “He can stick beside o’ me. (Long Jim being six feet eight!)
Then all the bullets’ll fly so high he won’t even feel the wind of ’em.”
“I’ll be up in front with Micky Free. Micky and I can scout as well as
any Apache,” panted Jimmie. “We won’t be hurt.” He turned, to make off
again, but Jack sternly halted him.
“You do as the rest do, then: put on a blanket-roll an’ stick in some
grub, an’ change yore feet into moccasins.”
That took only a few moments, for a boy in a hurry. Slim Shorty the
cook good-naturedly supplied the moccasins; the blanket-roll was made
up in a jiffy, around a wad of bread and cold meat, and was slung over
Jimmie’s left shoulder――――
“If ’twasn’t Micky Free I wouldn’t let you go,” warned Jack. “But
nothin’ yet invented can harm _him_, so if you jest hang onto his
shirt-tail he’ll take you through!”
This time Jimmie got away, but none too soon, for the soldier column
was forming, to low commands. The fires had died down, darkness had
closed in, and he scurried fast, through the gloom. The scouts were
bunched――Apaches together, and Pimas together――standing, wrapped in
their blankets, waiting. Beyond them, somebody struck a match. The
flame lighted the face of Nan-ta-je and of Major Brown, who was looking
at his watch.
Jimmie, pausing and peering, felt a hand on his arm and heard Micky’s
voice, under breath. Micky could see in the dark.
“Inju. Star nearly up. Before sun is up, big fight.”
Nan-ta-je’s star must have appeared at that very moment, for Major
Brown struck another match, to show his hand raised as signal, he and
Nan-ta-je moved forward, the scouts moved, pressing in the wake of
Archie MacIntosh, and Joe, and Tony Besias, there were gruff orders,
half whispers, from the sergeants, to the soldiers; and amidst soft
shuffle of moccasins the whole long column followed the lead of the
major and Nan-ta-je, presently up out of the little canyon, for the
high mesa or table-land above.
Whew, but the December night was growing cold! The clouds had broken,
the stars were very bright, faintly illumining the dark winding column,
and the frosty breaths wafting from it. Scarce a sound, except the
scuff of the moccasins, could be heard. The United States cavalry in
Arizona did not carry sabers when scouting for Apaches; and to-night
even the canteens had been stowed in the blanket rolls, lest they
jingle.
According to the north star the course was westerly. Nan-ta-je and the
major led at a rapid pace, to keep the men warm. Jimmie stuck close by
Micky. He had no fear of not being able to hold his own. He trotted
loose-kneed, toeing in, head up, breathing through his nose, Apache way.
Trudge, trudge, scuff, scuff, hour after hour, as seemed, westward
across the high, rough mesa where the snow lay in patches and the Four
Peaks of the Mazatzal rose close on the right. To the left was the
canyon of the Salt River.
The Apache scouts forged ahead of the cavalry. Along after midnight,
from a little rise sign was seen away off, before. Lights! Major Brown
and Nan-ta-je had halted.
“Come! Quick!” hissed Micky, he and Jimmie trotting faster.
“Camp-fires. Maybe Yavapai.”
“Column, halt! Lie down, men,” sounded the low gruff order, behind.
Down flopped everybody, except Archie MacIntosh and Joe Felmer, and
half a dozen of the scouts with them, who continued on rapidly. Micky
slipped after, like a shadow; he did not intend to miss anything.
Jimmie had dropped in the van of the other scouts, near to the major
and Nan-ta-je. They and Chief Big Mouth and Bobby Do-klinny were
crouched under a blanket.
“Nan-ta-je step in track. Think it man track,” grunted, in Apache, the
Indian beside Jimmie. Queer how the Apaches seemed to know everything!
And Nan-ta-je had merely felt the track, through his moccasin sole!
Under the blanket the major――or somebody――struck another match. Just
the faint crackle told. The little group examined the track, there was
short muttering; then the crouchers relaxed and quit, and waited. Big
Mouth crept back.
“Shosh (Bear),” he informed.
Nan-ta-je had been fooled, but a bear track is very much like a
moccasin track.
Nobody spoke again. If anyone even coughed, from the cold air, he did
so with his mouth pressed against his blanket. Jimmie shivered with the
cold and the excitement.
Now here came Archie and Joe and their squad, trotting back from their
reconnoitering. Archie reported to Major Brown and Nan-ta-je.
“Yavapai fires,” whispered Micky, sinking beside Jimmie. “Pony herd,
too. Four wickyups. No Yavapai. Left wickyups and ponies, little while
ago. Maybe go to tell Delt-che.”
That looked bad.
“Huh!” grunted a White Mountain. “We go to surprise Yavapai. If Yavapai
know and surprise us, we all get killed, says Nan-ta-je.”
“What ponies?” asked somebody, of Micky.
“Pima and undah (white-man) ponies. Traveled far. Feet worn out.”
In their cavalry capes Captain Taylor and Lieutenant Bourke stole
forward, stooping. They had been sent for to consult with Major Brown,
Archie MacIntosh, and Nan-ta-je and Chief Big Mouth. Pretty soon they
went back. The march was resumed, toward the fires. The column had
spread out, ready to defend itself, but the White Mountain scouts kept
ahead. Chief Owl Ears’ Pimas were behind with the Captain Burns company.
The fires were still glowing at the Yavapai camp on the top of the
mesa, in a hollow where there were grass and water for the stolen
ponies. But save for the snorts of the ponies, all was silence. The
march had been made cautiously, and now the air had thinned; in the
east the sky had lightened. Morning was at hand.
“Yavapai cave near,” whispered Micky. The word had been passed along,
somehow. The march was halted again. Teeth chattered.
Next, Lieutenant Ross continued, with Archie and Joe and Nan-ta-je, a
dozen cavalrymen and the packers Jack Long, Jim O’Neill, Long Jim Cook,
Frank Monach, Slim Shorty――dead shots all, and fine Indian fighters.
Nan-ta-je led.
Captain Burns and Lieutenant Thomas, with their cavalrymen and most
of the Pimas, branched off on the back trail of the pony herd, to the
southeast. More Yavapai might be coming, from that direction, with
other booty.
The remainder of the column followed Lieutenant Ross. The White
Mountains had dropped their blankets about their waists, as if clearing
for action. Their faces were set alert, their nostrils flared, they
were straining every sense, to detect more “sign.” Micky pointed
downward; underfoot was a regular trail, disclosed in the gray light.
Their carbines and rifles at a trail, the Lieutenant Ross detachment,
led by Nan-ta-je, with Archie and Joe at his heels, had dipped out of
sight, as if over an edge. The last one of them disappeared. The faint
roar of rapid waters sounded.
“Canyon of Salt River there,” whispered Micky. “Yavapai cave, too.”
The crack of the canyon began to open――across were the opposite walls.
Cold mist was floating up. The trail conducted to the canyon, and down.
Major Brown and Captain Taylor and Lieutenant Bourke, with Tony Besias
the interpreter, Chief Big Mouth and others went forward to peer in. As
the column bunched, everybody tried to peer in. Micky craned forward,
with the scouts――he and Alchisé and Bobby Do-klinny; Jimmie edged on;
they all might look over the rim, for the officers were as curious as
the rest.
The roar of the waters rose louder. The river was far down, hundreds
of feet, at the bottom of a long crooked gorge with precipice walls.
Icicles hung from the crags. The trail entered, here, and clinging to
the niches and wearing away the sod of the few flat spots snaked at a
diagonal until, descending, it rounded a shoulder one hundred yards
below the rim, where the mists were wreathing.
It was as steep as the trail down which those Tontos had scampered,
into the Tonto Basin! Nobody was on it. The Ross party had gone.
“Mescal,” whispered Micky, sniffing. All the scouts were sniffing. A
sweetish scent was in the air, as if welling from below.
Apache mescal pits! Wood smoke, too! Smell it?
“Huh! Rancheria there,” grunted Bobby Do-klinny. “Close to Delt-che,
now. Where Nan-ta-je?”
Then――――
“Bang-g-g-g-g-g!”
The noise, echoing through the canyon depths and striking the faces
gazing in, fairly deafened. It sounded like a regiment, but it was only
a volley by the Lieutenant Ross party, unseen.
The little handful of advance guard had found the Yavapai!
XIV
THE BATTLE OF THE CAVE
The suddenness of the tremendous outburst paralyzed even Micky. As the
echoes rumbled and jarred, Jimmie’s heart beat in his ears. The hard,
quick voice of Major Brown broke in.
“Good heavens! What’s all that? Bourke, take the first forty
men――doesn’t matter who――support Ross as quick as you can, and wait for
the rest of the command. I’ll join you in short order. Hold your fire,
if possible, till I arrive. Tell Ross the same.”
“Yes, sir,” and the strong, active figure of Lieutenant Bourke sprang
to the trail. “Sergeant Turpin! Here!” Top Sergeant James Turpin was
the nearest to him. “Count off forty men, as they come, white or red,
and follow me. Quick, now!”
Chief Big Mouth yelped at his men in Apache; tossed away his blanket.
“Soldier-captain want men to fight Yavapai. Don’t let white men beat
you!”
There was a rush for the trail. Soldiers and Indians both were eager.
Sergeant Turpin had hard work. Jimmie saw no chance――――
“Sh! Come!” hissed Micky, at him.
Micky had slipped over the edge. Only his red head could be seen. His
feet were on a narrow ledge that, extending along, just held him.
Below, the canyon wall of stunted brush and rough gray rock and frozen
trickles fell sharply away, clear down to the cold river, a thousand
feet! It was a dizzy sight.
Clutching his rifle, planted as a brace to steady him while he half
kneeled, Micky twisted enough to beckon with his free hand.
“Come on. Leave your blanket.”
Micky’s blanket lay where he had peeled it. Without a thought of
hesitation Jimmie doffed his own roll, and squirming flat fumbled,
feet first, for the ledge; found it, and carefully lowered his body,
backward. Ticklish work, that was, for a fellow in a hurry――although
Micky apparently had done it as nimbly as a squirrel.
“Inju!” approved Micky, when Jimmie was safely settled. “Now wait.”