Part 12

He was of powerful build, and stern-looking; apt to be of few words, right to the point; but he had a kind heart. He was now acting chief of scouts, from Whipple and Camp Verde.

Lieutenant Jacob Almy dead――murdered? That was shocking news. Everybody liked First Lieutenant Jacob Almy, of the Fifth Cavalry. Since he had been put in charge of the Indians at San Carlos, by his gentle but firmly just methods he had made many friends among them, also.

General Crook was energetic, as usual. He set out early the next morning, on “Apache” his mule, with a small escort including Lieutenant Bourke his chief aide, and Al Sieber. Jimmie and a Mexican herder accompanied, driving the bunch of remount horses.

The loose horses traveled well. The trip of two hundred and fifty miles through the roughest country in Arizona was accomplished in ten days.

There had not been much talk on the way over. The general acted grimly determined, and in a hurry. Camp Apache was found saddened and expectant.

Having turned his horses over to the post quartermaster, Jimmie saw Micky waiting for him, beside the corral here back of the parade-ground. Micky was sitting a spotted pony, and smiling broadly. He certainly had the knack of always being on hand.

“Hello, Boy-who-sleeps. Have you come over to fight?” greeted Micky.

“Has there been a fight yet, Micky?”

“Only a little one, when those Chuntz men ran away. But we are ready.”

“Where is Chuntz?”

“He and Long-ear and Cochinay are hiding in the canyon of the Gila. Tied Horse has been arrested. If we go after those others there will be good fighting. The canyon is deep and long and full of caves. Would you like another cave fight, Cheemie?”

“I’d like to get Chuntz and Long-ear,” vowed Jimmie.

“So would I. Come on. Pretty soon Sibi the Iron Man will talk with old Pedro, and you and I will want to hear what they say. Sibi can talk Apache, but he cannot talk as fast as Pedro, or as you and I. We will help.”

The general was in confab at the post headquarters with Major Randall and Al. There were fifteen hundred Pinals, Arivaipas, Yavapais, and Tontos at San Carlos――many of them now very restless under guard. Nobody might foretell just what was about to happen.

Soon after Jimmie had begun a sort of a reunion with Alchisé and Nan-ta-je and Bobby Do-klinny and others, at the Camp Apache agency building, Mr. Sieber came riding by.

“Jimmie,” he summoned, with crook of finger, “you ride along with me. I may have use for you. Bring Free, if you want to.”

“I’m going for a talk with Pedro,” he continued, in Spanish, so that Micky might understand. Micky knew no English. “If he talks too fast for me, I want one of you to explain. And the same way if I speak with words that he doesn’t know.”

“We will talk for you, Sibi,” answered Micky.

Old Chief Pedro of the White Mountain Apaches was, as everybody said, the wisest, most sensible chief among the tame Indians. They found him at home, sitting upon a blanket in the shade of a tree near his house. Since he had come back from Washington he had put up a board shanty, to live in instead of a brush wickyup. He was still wearing a white shirt――which was white no longer.

In spite of the soiled ragged shirt, a splendid old Indian he looked to be.

“You are well come, Sibi,” he remarked. “Sit down and we will talk. But who is this boy with one leg shorter than the other? I do not know him.”

“He is a friend of mine, and of Micky Free,” replied Al. “He was captured by Geronimo, and lived with Cochise and Geronimo. He was a soldier at the cave fight when the Yavapai were destroyed. He is a brave boy. The leg was made short by a wound. We may speak freely before him.”

“That is good,” answered Pedro. “I know you, and I know this wild Red-head. Now I know this other. I remember who he is. What have you come to say, Sibi? Did Cluke send you?”

They all sat down: Al beside Pedro, but Jimmie and Micky a little way apart from them, as was correct when in the company of chiefs.

“The Gray Fox is talking with Major Randall,” said Al. “That was bad work at San Carlos, Pedro. You are a wise chief, and you know Apaches. General Crook wishes to do what is right by all the Apaches. He wishes peace, so that we may all live together and prosper. No one prospers long in war. What is the best course to follow with these bad Indians? Can they be made good?”

“Let us talk in Mexican, Sibi,” spoke Chief Pedro. “And if you or I use words that are not understood, the Red-head or maybe the short-leg boy will explain. This talk must be very clear. Now, there is no way to make those bad Apaches good, except to kill them. The bad Indians do not know what I know; they have not been to the cities of the Great White Father and seen how powerful he is. I will give Cluke one hundred and fifty of my warriors, smart fighters all. Let Cluke send them into the Gila Canyon. The Gray Fox is brave, and his white soldiers are brave, but the Chuntz people will go where his soldiers cannot follow; this is summer, and they know every spot in the canyon, and will hide.

“But my Apaches will find them, and kill some of them. Then my men will come home, and rest a while, and go out and kill more. By winter time there will be fewer of the mean Apaches; and if they do not all die during the winter, in the spring we will kill the rest of them. But if Cluke waits till winter, before that time the bad Indians will have made much more trouble at San Carlos, and perhaps among my White Mountains, and perhaps among the Chiricahua.”

“I will think on what you have said,” responded Al.

“It will be no use to send you or any other person into the canyon, to spend words on those people,” proceeded Pedro. “They will burn him, and will send back an old woman to tell Cluke to give them more of his men, to burn. Now I am done, Man of Iron. I cannot read from paper, but I can look at the actions of a bad Indian, and can read how he feels and what he will do.”

“Humph!” mused Al, as with Jimmie and Micky he rode away. “I believe old Pedro is right.”

The next afternoon the general held a talk at the San Carlos agency with Es-kim-en-zin, of the Arivaipas, and with those Tonto and Yavapai chiefs who had not joined Chuntz.

The San Carlos agency was seventy miles southwest from Camp Apache, where the San Carlos River emptied into the Gila. This San Carlos reservation was really an addition to the southern boundary of the White Mountain reservation. It was sixty miles wide and extended clear to the New Mexico line, one hundred and twenty miles. The eastern half was rough and mountainous, but the western half, along the Gila River, was flatter and more open――especially around the agency, where the Indians were supposed to live.

The majority of the Apaches did not like it. They said that it was low, hot and unhealthful.

“I am sorry to hear that there are bad hearts at work among you,” spoke the general. Concepcion Equierre translated. “They have deceived you into believing that the white people might be killed, and that the Apaches might be free to rob and murder again. Now the innocent have suffered. Lieutenant Almy, one of your best friends, has been killed, and you all are prevented from going about on hunts and visits.

“I want you all to live as free as the white men. I do not expect you to stop being red men. I want your women to gather mescal and seeds and roots, and your men to hunt deer and turkeys without fear; for these things are good to eat. But you cannot do this without fear, when there is war.

“Now about these Chuntz and Long-ear bad men. I have thousands of soldiers, and many Apache scouts, and they are enough to give the bad Apaches no rest. But I want you to punish your own bad people. You must send out your own warriors, and keep sending them out until Chuntz and Long-ear and Cochinay are killed or captured, and their people surrender. It is not right that a few bad men should work so much harm to everybody. I hope that you will consider what I have said. I am done.”

All that summer of 1873 and into the next summer the San Carlos and White Mountain police, assisted by cavalry and infantry detachments patrolling the hills, harassed the outlaws. Wherever the Chuntz people moved, in the Canyon of the Gila, the reservation Apaches were ferreting them out.

Some of the outlaws sent in word that they were ready to surrender. They were told that they might come in if they brought Chuntz, Long-ear and Cochinay. Finally the outlaws were hunting their chiefs.

Cochinay was killed on May 26, 1874; Long-ear was killed on June 12; Chuntz the villain was killed on July 25. A whole sackful of heads was spilled by the Apache police upon the ground in front of Major John B. Babcock’s headquarters, at San Carlos, to prove that “peace” was being made!

Over at Verde, Delt-che had broken out and had been killed, in July.

So by mid-summer of 1874 the bad-hearted chiefs seemed all out of the way, at last. Old Cochise, also, had died, in June, on the Chiricahua reservation, and Taza was the head chief. He could be depended upon, for peace.

Meanwhile Jimmie was helping to run the first telegraph lines in Arizona, connecting military post with military post. He stayed in telegraph work some years――during which a number of things happened.

XVIII

“CLUKE” GOES AWAY

The general’s plans had apparently worked out all right, when for no especial reason, as far as Arizona could understand, the management of the reservations was changed from the Military Department of Arizona to the civilian agents appointed by the Indian Bureau at Washington. The soldiers were to be retained only as guards and not as instructors.

The Indian Bureau started in to move the Apaches about. That had been tried two years before, when in New Mexico Chief Victorio’s Warm Spring Apaches had been ordered from the Cañada Alamosa to the hated Tularosa tract. But General Howard had obtained from the President permission for them to live again at their beloved Cottonwood Canyon.

In the summer of 1874 it was reported that the Camp Verde Indians were to be taken over to the San Carlos reservation. The Camp Verde lands were desired by the white people.

General Crook had much opposed this scheme. He was powerless, but he sent a protest to the War Department, saying:

There are now on the Verde reservation about fifteen hundred Indians; they have been among the worst in Arizona; but if the Government keeps its promise to them that it shall be their home for all time, there will be no difficulty in keeping them at peace, and engaged in peaceful pursuits. I sincerely hope that the interests that are now at work to deprive these Indians of this reservation will be defeated; but if they succeed, the responsibility of turning these fifteen hundred Apaches loose upon the settlers of Arizona should rest where it belongs.

All that winter of 1874–1875 the general (who had given his word) and Chief Chalipun strove against the threatened change to the San Carlos reservation. But it was of no avail.

In the spring of 1875 the general had been transferred to the Department of the Platte, with headquarters at Omaha, Nebraska. He had pacified the Snakes in the Northwest and the Apaches in the Southwest; now he was needed to subdue the bold-riding Sioux and Cheyennes of the great northern plains.

He took with him Lieutenant John G. Bourke, chief of staff, and other officers whom Jimmie so well knew. Tom Moore, chief packer, was to follow with the best of the pack-trains. The Third Cavalry already was in the north; and the Fifth Cavalry was soon to go.

“Cluke has been sent away. The Apaches have lost their best friend,” mourned Chief Chalipun; and submitted to being removed. So the Yavapais and the Apache-Yumas at Camp Verde left their ditch and fields, and went to a strange region――that of San Carlos.

Young Second Lieutenant George O. Eaton, of the Fifth Cavalry, was the only man whom they would trust, to take them over. Even at that, on the way they had a fight among themselves, and eighteen were killed and fifty wounded.

The White Mountains were moved, next, down to the San Carlos. Their reservation was to be closed.

Whatever the reasons of the Indian Bureau, Chiefs Pedro, Pi-to-ne and others objected bitterly.

“These are our lands,” asserted Chief Pedro. “They were promised to us by the great one-armed soldier-captain, Howard. When I went to Washington, our White Father there told me again that if we were good, these should be our lands forever. We have been good. We have done as we were asked to do. We have raised more crops than all the other Apaches put together. We have helped the soldiers fight our brothers. We are contented here. But we are mountain Indians and we cannot live down there in the low country where the water is bad and the air is hot. The Pinals and the Arivaipas are not friendly to us, and the Yavapai ways are not our ways.”

Finally eighteen hundred of them were herded down to the San Carlos. Some hid out, and after a time many stole back from the San Carlos. The soldiers at Camp Apache permitted them to stay.

The next year, 1876, the Chiricahua reservation was broken up. It had no soldiers and no Indian police, and was too near the border. Whiskey-sellers and outlaw Apaches sneaked in, but Taza said that if the American government would help him he could keep the bad people out.

“Why does Washington punish good people on account of bad people?” he asked, when told that the Chiricahuas must go.

At last, with about three hundred of his Chiricahuas, he went to the San Carlos. Geronimo agreed to go, too; but he and Chief Whoa, who had come in from Mexico, and old Nana, and Nah-che, and four hundred others, ran off into Mexico.

The next spring they returned to visit Victorio’s Warm Spring band at the Cottonwood Canyon reservation. Because of this, Chiefs Victorio and Geronimo were arrested, and all the Indians were started, under guard, for the San Carlos.

On the way Chief Victorio escaped, with forty warriors. After this he made war on the Americans until he was killed in 1880. He claimed that he had done no wrong, and that he never could trust the Americans again.

“The policy of concentration,” was what the Indian Bureau called its scheme to place all the Apaches upon the San Carlos reservation. “A policy of concentrated trouble,” Al Sieber said.

And that proved true.

Soon the San Carlos reservation contained about five thousand Indians, good and bad; some working, some lazy. There were Yavapais, Tontos, Coyotes, Apache-Yumas, Chiricahuas, Pinals, Arivaipas, Sierra Blanca (White Mountains), and even a few Hualpais. They had different habits. The Indian Bureau seemed to think that one Apache was just like another Apache, but General Crook had known better.

Whiskey was being smuggled in or manufactured; white miners and ranchers and prospectors were trespassing, and large sections of the reservation had been lopped off for other uses; the agents were accused of selling the Indians’ supplies outside, instead of distributing them properly or storing them; the Indians quarreled among themselves, and even some of the White Mountains had revolted.

So in the early morning of April, 1882, Jimmie Dunn, riding telegraph line up along the Gila River from Camp Thomas, had plenty to think about. Jimmie was a young man, now, with a limp (an honorable limp) but with a good hard head.

Camp Thomas had been established just at the southeast corner of the San Carlos reservation, or thirty-two miles up the Gila from the agency quarters. Jimmie’s business as line-man was to ride between Thomas and the second Camp Grant, and to see that the line was in order.

There was still constant trouble at San Carlos. The Apaches there had no faith in the Government. The good ones saw little reason in remaining good. Their only reward had been San Carlos, and they hated San Carlos. The Chiricahuas especially were restive. A long time ago Taza had died, while in Washington trying to talk for his people. Geronimo was head chief, and Nah-che was his partner in everything.

Parties frequently broke away from the reservation, for Mexico. At this very moment Chief Whoa and Nah-che were out again, with a band. They had fled to join old Nana, who at almost ninety years was living wild!

Geronimo and two hundred of his Chiricahuas, and Loco and the Warm Spring Apaches, were at the San Carlos, but likely enough they would run away, too, whenever they took the notion. They despised the Taza people as “squaws” and cowards; the other Indians, in turn, despised them as trouble-makers.

General Crook was in the north. He had conquered the Sioux and the Cheyennes, and was busy keeping them at peace.

General O. B. Willcox, of the Twelfth Infantry, commanded in Arizona. The Sixth Cavalry had replaced the Fifth Cavalry. But there were not enough soldiers, most of the white interpreters and scouts had been discharged, and the Apache police were supposed to maintain order upon the reservation.

The military telegraph had connected all the army posts. There was a civil telegraph, also――for the railroad had arrived.

The Southern Pacific Railroad crossed the southern part of the Territory, about by the old stage route. Through the northern part of the Territory the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad was crossing the great Mogollon Plateau, where General Crook had broken a trail in the campaign of ten years ago.

The telegraph line had puzzled the Apaches very much, as “big medicine.” They called it “pesh-bi-yal-ti”――“the talking wire.” But they were learning to interfere with it by cutting it, and inserting a little piece of rubber. Then the wire quit “talking.”

A sharp eye was required to see such a break, which usually was near a pole or tree up which the Indians had shinned. Jimmie had the eye. Also, he was not afraid. He was accustomed to the country, and to the Apaches.

Sometimes he saw parties of them. If they were running away, they were in too much of a hurry to stop. If they were hunting, they were friendly. However, the run-aways did not cross hereabouts. They took another route, further east, along the New Mexico western border.

As a rule, Jimmie rode with a partner; but to-day his partner was ill. Jimmie felt capable of repairing any break by himself, whether the Indians had made it, or whether the limb of a tree had fallen. The line had to be ridden, anyway.

The military road was very quiet. It stretched on, up hill and down, through timber and open parks, with the Gila River on the left, and far on the right, or the south, the dark Pinaleno Mountains, beyond which lay Camp Grant. Pretty soon the telegraph line would head down there. He would ride on until he met another rider, coming from Grant.

The San Carlos reservation was behind, to the northwest, on the other side of the Gila; and away in the north, beyond a high ridge, was the White Mountain reservation, with old Camp Apache that was now Fort Apache.

He was about ten miles out of Camp Thomas, and jogging easily. The only moving things that he had sighted were rabbits and squirrels, and once or twice a deer. But now when from a rise he looked across the Gila, he saw, in the distance to the north, a great cloud of dust.

That froze him. It appeared mighty suspicious. Many people, and horses or cattle, would stir up such a dust. In that case, Indians! This was not white man’s country.

If they were Indians, they were moving very fast, and striking east, like run-aways from San Carlos. Or was it cavalry, riding hard? But if it was cavalry, that meant Indians, too.

Well, he’d soon find out. The Gila, running bank full, was some distance below; the country beyond, approached by the dust, was open and rolling. He had a fine view. So sitting his horse, Jimmie whipped off his field-glasses and leveled them. Ash Flats sprang into the field; and here surged the brown dust, and under it, into the clear of a little swale, streamed a mass of hastily scurrying figures.

Indians, sure!

XIX

JIMMIE SENDS THE ALARM

First there were fifteen or twenty mounted warriors, as an advance guard. Then there followed about one hundred and fifty other warriors, all with rifles, and stripped and painted to fight. Then there trooped and jostled a large procession of squaws and children, mostly afoot, herding a tremendous bunch of loose horses and mules, and packing camp stuff.

There must have been five hundred squaws and children, and six or seven thousand animals, not counting dogs! A small guard of warriors were riding the rear flanks of the march. It certainly was a big outbreak of the San Carlos Chiricahuas, and they were hot-footing for Mexico!

Whew! Where were the police and the soldiers, then? Jimmie swept the landscape for sign of them, and saw nothing. He clapped his glasses closed. His eyes leaped to the nearest telegraph pole. His duty was clear. He ought to send word at once to Camp Thomas.

Just as he was about to swing down, tie his horse, and climb the pole, he sighted, with a last glance of his eye, four Indians swimming the river below, with their ponies. Either he had been seen, or else they were coming to cut the wire. Maybe both.

Already the foremost was urging his pony up out of the water’s edge, to the bank on this side. Of course they had seen him, as he sat! But he still had a chance to race back, to the fort, and give the alarm. No; that would lose an hour, or more. Likely enough the wire from San Carlos to the fort had been cut; at the rate that those Chiricahuas were traveling, every minute was precious if they were to be headed off.

He ought to climb the pole and tap the wire. If he could not raise Thomas in the one direction, he might raise Grant, in the other. But he’d have to work fast. Lives were at stake, for no settler could stop those bronc’s.

Jimmie resolutely tumbled off his horse, in a jiffy strapped on his climbing irons, left his horse, and his rifle in scabbard (a rifle would be of no use up there), and ran for the pole. And this was a brave act, for he might easily have run, horseback, in another direction――back to Camp Thomas, or to hide in the farther timber until the Indians had gone after cutting the wire.

At top speed he shinned up the pole, and digging in, rapidly unshipped his line-man’s little sending kit, in order to break in on the wire and call the Camp Thomas operator. He did not dare to watch the movements of those four Indians.

No doubt the four were coming full tilt, up from the river and through the brush; but if he tried to watch them he would be nervous and make false motions. The thing for him to do was to clamp on to that line, and _get there first_. That required swift, sure work, and all his attention. So he endeavored not to think of the four Indians.

Never had he felt so high in the air, and so much exposed. Almost any other pole would have been better, but none had been as near and convenient. He made a splendid mark, like a hawk roosting in a dead tree.

“Ping!” A bullet! They were shooting at him! “Pung!” That was the report, following. “Whing!” “Pung!” But he must not mind the warning. He needed only a minute more. As he worked rapidly his fingers seemed all thumbs. He did not dare to take his eyes off them. “Thud-bang!” The bullet shook the pole, and the report was so close that the shooter could not be far away. He heard shrill yells, somewhere below――――

“Whack-bang!” A heavy hammer fell on the top of his shoulder, and well nigh knocked him from his perch. He clung desperately, wrapping himself tighter――his shoulder stung and was oddly warm――but it was his left shoulder, he was on the wire at last, and was sending with his right hand.

“D,” “D,” “D,” he called Camp Thomas.