him. Geronimo’s face was blackened, as sign of mourning. The general
talked with them, again, at the same place as before.
“I am glad to see you, Cluke,” said Chihuahua. “I am now in your hands.
You may do as you please with me. I am going over to stay with you in
your camp.”
“What have you decided?” asked the general, of Geronimo.
“My people are afraid to go with you, for fear they will be punished.
They do not want to be punished. We will go with you if we are allowed
to live as before.”
“That is all nonsense,” retorted the general. “I do not trust you any
more. If you go with me, you must understand that you all will be put
in the guard-house until Washington tells me what to do with you.”
“How long will we be kept prisoners?”
“You will be sent away, like Ka-e-ten-na was. That cured Ka-e-ten-na
and made him good. It will make you good, because it will change your
hearts. You say that lies are told about you on the reservation. If you
are sent away, there will be no lies.”
“How long will we be sent away?”
“Maybe one year, maybe two years. You may take your families with you.
Only Nana shall stay; he is too old to make trouble.”
Geronimo shifted uneasily, and gazed appealingly around.
“I will talk no more,” stated the general. “To-morrow morning I shall
go back to Fort Bowie. If you decide to stay away, you will not be safe
anywhere in Mexico. You cannot hide from me. This you already know.”
“We will march to Fort Bowie, and there you may send us away, as
you say,” spoke Geronimo desperately. “But we must march freely, by
ourselves. I cannot make my men give up their guns, until they are in
the fort where you will protect them. There are bad people along the
way who would kill us. Your young soldier-captains might not be able
to control their scouts, and the scouts would kill us. I want you to
promise that we shall not be made prisoners until we arrive at Fort
Bowie. Otherwise, I cannot persuade my men, and there will be war.”
The general eyed him fixedly.
“It is agreed,” he said.
Geronimo was much relieved, and shook hands with him.
“Geronimo speaks the truth,” declared Ka-e-ten-na, that evening. “If
the general had not agreed, there would have been war. The Chiricahua
were ready to fight and run away. But they would rather be put in
prison a little while, and see such things as I have seen.”
Orders were given to be prepared to move in the morning. The general
was going on ahead, to Bowie, and get instructions from General
Sheridan at Washington; Lieutenant Maus was to follow, with the
Chiricahuas.
That night there seemed to be a wild time in the Geronimo camp, half
a mile distant. Gun shots could be heard, and shrill whoops. During
breakfast in the morning there were many rumors. Jimmie got the truth
from Micky.
“Much whiskey in the Chiricahua camp,” said Micky, with shrug of
shoulders. “Ranch man send it in, and sell at one dollar a gallon.
Geronimo drunk, many others drunk.”
The general, when he rode by, looked worried. But he had to reach the
telegraph at Fort Bowie as quickly as possible. It was understood that
he had ordered Lieutenant Maus to destroy all the whiskey that could be
found, and to hasten on with the Chiricahuas.
So the camp was broken, and moved on the back trail, with directions
to halt at ten miles, and wait. The lieutenant stayed behind with
Concepcion the interpreter, to wait for the Geronimo camp to move.
In the afternoon he arrived at the halting place. The Chiricahuas were
following, but Geronimo had told him not to hang around or he might be
killed by some of the drunken warriors.
Chihuahua sent for Chief of Scouts Horn, and asked that he and all his
band be put under guard.
“I don’t like that, Cheemie,” uttered Micky. “When Chihuahua does such
a thing, he sees ahead. He is afraid of what will happen if his people
get the whiskey, too.”
Geronimo made camp again about half a mile away, as before, and in a
strong position. Everybody was ordered to keep away from it, so as to
avoid trouble; but the lieutenant took Ka-e-ten-na and rode over.
When they returned, Ka-e-ten-na reported that Geronimo was still drunk,
and he and another chief were riding around on one mule; and that
Nah-che had shot his wife.
Now the ranch which had supplied the whiskey was near. Lieutenant Shipp
took a detail over, to search the ranch and destroy the liquor.
Tom Moore, the old frontiersman, swore vigorously.
“It’s sure a dog-gone shame that for a few dirty dollars any man will
throw the whole country open again to an Injun war. For that’s what it
means, if those Chiricahuas lose their heads. When whiskey gets in, the
brains go out.”
Concepcion said that the whiskey seller had been filling the
Chiricahuas with lies also: he had told them that they were to be
killed as soon as they reached Bowie. He did this, so that they would
stay out and he might sell them more whiskey.
However, the night quieted the Chiricahuas in their camp. The
lieutenant sent over, once, to investigate. The warriors were said to
be sleeping.
But in the morning, which was March 29, while Jimmie was pulling
on his boots before breakfast, he saw the lieutenant dash away,
with Ka-e-ten-na, in the direction of Geronimo’s camp. In about an
hour they returned. The lieutenant stopped here where Tom Moore was
overseeing the unpacking of the pack-trains, for the day’s march. He
looked oddly haggard, but spoke with a hard, quick accent.
“Geronimo, Nah-che and twenty men and thirteen women are gone. I’ll
require a pack-train and several of your best men, to follow them with.
You can report to Shipp. Faison will go on to Bowie.”
Tom’s jaw dropped, and for a moment he acted as if too full for
utterance. This, then, was the outcome of all those other bitter
pursuits――poor Captain Crawford’s death――the general’s painstaking
methods!
“That dog-gone liquor!” he growled.
Jimmie sprang forward, and saluted the lieutenant.
“I’d like to go with the packs, sir.”
“You would? Why? You’ve been once, and you know what it means?”
“Well, I’d like to try again, sir. I won’t get enough till Geronimo
gets enough.”
The lieutenant’s face lighted up.
“If that’s your spirit, there’s no man I’d rather have with me. So you
and Moore settle it between you.”
And he galloped on.
“Gosh, but this will break the general all up,” muttered Tom. “All
right,” he added. “You get your outfit together and go along with Maus.”
Chihuahua, Nana, and sixty or seventy others of the Chiricahuas
still remained. Lieutenant Faison was to take them on, up to Bowie.
Lieutenant Maus and Lieutenant Shipp, with a company of the scouts and
Jimmie’s pack-train, set out in the opposite direction.
But it was no use. Geronimo had been thoroughly frightened by the
stories told him. Now his party traveled afoot, over country where
horses and mules could not travel. In three days the trails had split
and had become impossible, and the scouts had to give up.
So the command turned back. When they arrived at Bowie on April 3, this
1886, they learned that General Crook was no longer the commander in
Arizona!
XXVIII
THE END OF THE TRAIL
That was a stunning blow to the Crook men. The general had been
relieved of his command on April 2, at his own request.
As far as might be learned by the rank and file, and the pack service,
the President had not approved of the terms upon which Geronimo had
surrendered; but by this time Geronimo had fled again. Then the
dispatches from General Sheridan, commanding the Army, to General
Crook, had somewhat questioned the wisdom of the general’s methods
in depending upon the scouts, and suggested that he now make no more
campaigns for a while, but try to protect the border with his troops.
The general had replied that he still believed his methods were the
best, under the conditions; that he had been using the troops, to
protect the border; and that it had been impossible to hold Geronimo as
a prisoner and not break the promise given him.
To attack Geronimo in camp had likewise been impossible of success.
“It may be, however, that I am too much wedded to my own views in this
matter,” the general was said to have added, “and as I have spent
nearly eight years of the hardest work of my life in this department, I
respectfully request that I may now be relieved from its command.”
The Apache medicine-men at Fort Bowie made more medicine, and insisted
that if Ka-e-ten-na and other runners were sent after Geronimo, as soon
as the whiskey left him he would keep his word and come in peaceably.
This was not done, because Brigadier General Nelson A. Miles, of the
Fifth Infantry, commanding at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, had been
directed to take command of the Department of Arizona. This of course
meant new methods, and a shake-up all ’round.
Not knowing exactly what was ahead, Jimmie left the pack service and
became a railroad telegraph operator.
At any rate, General Crook had not failed. Eighty of the Chiricahuas,
including Chihuahua and Nana, had been brought in. Only Geronimo and
Nah-che and their twenty men and boys and thirteen women, were out. And
the Mangas squad of six men, who had not been with Geronimo for almost
a year.
General Miles arrived at Fort Bowie on April 12. He immediately
organized things for a campaign with the regular troops. The War
Department did not favor trusting in the scouts as fighters――especially
in the scouts from the White Mountain and Chiricahua friendlies.
The General Crook scouts had been discharged, and so were many of the
interpreters. Tom Horn left. Yes, there was a decided shake-up.
But the new general seemed to be a good man, all right, and the Arizona
newspapers put much faith in him. He extended the heliograph service,
until a perfect network of stations had been established; and he
injected fresh vim into the officers.
Suspecting that they were to get no terms at all, now, and to show
that they despised the soldiers, Geronimo and Nah-che went thoroughly
bad. Perhaps General Crook’s methods might have been better; perhaps
not; but toward the last of April Geronimo and Nah-che led their few
warriors straight up past Tucson itself; the troops had not been able
to protect the border, and Nah-che penetrated clear to Fort Apache.
They lost only one man. He was a deserter, and volunteered to follow
them, as “Peaches” had. The troops did heroic work. Lieutenant Lloyd
Brett, of the Second Cavalry, marched twenty-six hours without a halt;
his troopers were forced to drink their own blood, to quench thirst.
Captain Henry W. Lawton, of the Fourth Cavalry, and Captain Leonard
Wood, assistant surgeon in the army, were selected to push the pursuit
through Mexico, with a picked command of the Eighth Infantry and Fourth
and Tenth Cavalry. Surgeon Wood was instructed to see if the men could
not outdo even the Apaches.
Tom Horn went in charge of some Tonto and Yuma trailers. The Lawton and
Wood column made terrific marches; altogether, fourteen hundred miles.
On July 13, three hundred miles into Mexico they surprised the Geronimo
and Nah-che camp, as Captain Crawford had surprised it, the January
before.
Nah-che had been wounded; he and Geronimo and their band barely
escaped. They sent word to a Mexican woman (the wife of the interpreter
José Maria Yaskes) that they desired to surrender.
It was a Crook man, after all――Lieutenant George Gatewood――who
performed the bravest act; and a General Crook method that clinched the
surrender. From Fort Apache the lieutenant, under orders by General
Miles, traveled down with only Kah-yee-ta, the deserter, and Martinez,
another Chiricahua, to find the hostile camp and talk with Geronimo.
This was done. Lieutenant Gatewood’s life hung by a hair; but his talk
had effect, for in the morning Geronimo, Nah-che, and their warriors
surrendered to Captain Lawton.
Lieutenant Gatewood had been instructed to offer them no terms
whatsoever, except that their lives would be spared; the captain
offered the same terms.
Geronimo agreed to march along with the column, just as before. He and
his men were still very suspicious, but he sent Porico up to General
Miles as a pledge of good faith.
The general met him at the border, on September 3. Geronimo did
not know that while he had been out, all the Chiricahuas upon the
reservation――Chato, Ka-e-ten-na, and all――had been moved, and were
started for Florida.
“This,” as Tom Moore explained to Jimmie, “took the sap out of him.
He had no base of trouble, any more. Nah-che hadn’t come in with him,
but he sent out after him, and the whole band――what there was left
of them――were packed aboard the cars on September 8, and now they’re
on their way, too. Let’s see――this is 1886. How long have you known
Geronimo, anyhow?”
“Sixteen years,” said Jimmie.
“Well, you’ll never see him again.”
And Jimmie never did.
He never saw General Crook again, either. The general had resumed
command of the Department of the Platte; and as major-general was
assigned to the command of the Division of the Missouri, with
headquarters in Chicago.
But he was not forgotten in Arizona. The Indians at the San Carlos and
the Fort Apache reservations continued to hold him in their hearts.
Jimmie happened to be at Fort Apache, on business, when in the spring
of 1890 the news of the general’s death was received.
The old men and women, and all the White Mountain scouts, “sat down
in a great circle, let down their hair, bent their heads forward upon
their bosoms, and wept and wailed like children.” And in the far north
the Sioux also lamented the passing of their conqueror but friend, the
Gray Fox.
Transcriber’s Notes:
――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
――Obvious printer’s, punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were
silently corrected.
――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.