Part 4

He began to poke out his head, gradually, around a corner of the rock on his side. Jimmie gently wriggled, crawling flat, until he was under an over-hang on his side, and might see straight before, with his head just raised from the ground. Right up over the edge of the mighty basin figures were popping, and scuttling for the timber: a file of them, Apaches!

They crossed not more than thirty yards away. They were naked of body and limbs, their hair was black and long and straggly, they were daubed with deer blood and mescal juice, they carried strung bows and quivers, they were the fiercest, most hideous Apaches that Jimmie had ever seen.

The low sun shone full against them, showing them plainly. They scarcely glanced aside as they hurried; and if they did chance to note Micky’s head or Jimmie’s head, they thought them to be two motionless tufts of weed, like other tufts growing here and there.

Tontos! Jimmie counted seventeen, all springing out of the depths of the earth as suddenly as jacks-in-the-box, darting across, and in among the pines. Then there were two more, who dropped among the rocks under the trees.

After the last had passed and vanished, Micky kicked Jimmie’s leg, and Jimmie drew back to face him behind the boulders. Micky’s blue eye fairly sparkled; even his freckles glowed, he was so excited. He certainly loved danger. He was not American enough to say “Hurrah!” but he looked it!

“The Tonto are ready,” he whispered. “We’ll see the fight. Good! Quick! The soldiers are coming.”

He crawled around the boulders, craned and peered, crept swiftly, with Jimmie in his tracks, to a better place, and wormed his way until they both might lie in a warm niche half filled with washed-in soil and screened with brush. From here they could see much better into the timber beyond the cross trail of the Tontos.

Jimmie felt a wild desire to warn the soldiers of the ambush by the Tontos; but the Tontos were cutting him off and he had no time for making a circuit. No, none at all. The soldiers were in sight――the head of their column had appeared, riding on, up an aisle through the towering pines, a short way back from the edge of the basin.

The first, by themselves, were five, riding leisurely almost knee to knee, and apparently enjoying the scenery. Their voices might be heard, as they chatted. One, a small, sun-dried man, wore an old slouch hat and grayish flannel shirt and dark trousers and cowhide boots. He was Tom Moore, a government packer. Jimmie knew him――had seen him at Camp Grant and in Tucson. Hah! And three were officers, in cavalry fatigue――there was Lieutenant John Bourke, of Camp Grant! Yes, sir! And Lieutenant William Ross! And another. But the man in the middle, on a mule, Jimmie did not know at all.

If he was riding there he ought to be an officer, but he seemed to be wearing a brown canvas suit, a sort of brown canvas round-brimmed hat, and carried a shot-gun across the pommel of his saddle, the muzzle of course pointing ahead. Perhaps he was some sportsman from the East, on a hunting trip, with the cavalry.

Micky lay perfectly still, intent to see with his one eye what would happen, but Jimmie trembled. His soldier friends were riding into an ambush and evidently had no suspicion of danger. Neither did their horses. The timber, with the sunshine streaming through the long aisles, stretched fragrant and peaceful. The air was so quiet that the riders’ voices, the occasional blowing of the horses, the scuff of hoofs and the creak of saddles, could be heard plainly.

The cavalry column itself was to be seen, behind, a short distance, winding on among the trees, and the tinkle of the pack bells sounded, again. Jimmie caught his breath. Micky was tense, beside him. The advance squad apparently had reached the Tontos――were within short bow-shot, anyway. Why didn’t――――? Ah, look out!

“Twang! Whiz!” “Twang-twang! Whiz-whiz!” “Twang-twang-twang!” And “Whiz! Thud! Thud-thud!” The Tontos were whooping and screeching and shooting; their daubed faces and flying hair and naked bodies could be glimpsed gyrating among the trees; their arrows whizzed and glanced and hummed and thudded, to the twanging of the bows. They were mainly behind the advance squad, trying to stampede the cavalry column. Up half-rose Jimmie, up half-rose Micky, the better to see. Had the first volley killed anybody? Didn’t look so, for not one of the squad was in sight; the animals were rearing and snorting, but every rider had instantly plunged from the saddle and dived for a tree, gun in one hand and reins in the other.

That had been quick and smart work. Lieutenant Bourke and Lieutenant Ross and Tom Moore were no fools; and that sinewy man in the canvas suit was no fool, either.

“Inju! Bueno! (Good! Good!)” chattered Micky, in Apache and Spanish both. “Huh! Tonto run already! Cowards!”

“Hurrah! There come the other soldiers!” babbled Jimmie.

The carbines were banging, as the first troop began to fight――officers shouted, the man in the canvas suit jumped out, yelled orders and pointed, and leveled his shot-gun――“Bang!” The first troop, dismounted to the notes of a bugle, deployed on, firing, another troop was spurring in at a gallop――and the Tontos were scampering off through the timber.

Jimmie was just about to spring upright, glad, when Micky nudged him hard, in warning. Not all the Tontos had gone. The two who had dropped into ambush among the rocks at the timber edge had been cut off by the cavalry, and were now running back, and dancing and dodging, their heads turned.

“Don’t shoot them!” shouted the canvas suit man, in a loud voice. “We have them!”

He was running, too――and his officers――and the foremost of the men――from tree to tree, after them, to surround them at the edge of the basin. The two Tontos had crouched, again, behind a large boulder. Jimmie might have tossed a stone and struck them; they were close in front of him and Micky, and fully exposed, against the boulder. But the soldiers had formed a half circle, hemming them in against the basin’s edge. Up straightened the two Tontos, behind their rock, drew their bows to the arrows’ heads, and stood, at bay, aiming now here, now there, threatening their enemies.

“Don’t shoot them!” the canvas suit man kept shouting. “Take them alive.” And he called to the Tontos: “Friends! Friends!”

However, the two Tontos would have none of _that_. They stood braced, with bended bows, glaring from tangled hair, as defiant and menacing as a coiled rattle-snake. On a sudden――“Twang!”――they had loosed their arrows, and with a single backward spring and another bound had disappeared over the edge! Evidently they preferred death to capture――they certainly had killed themselves, for the basin looked to be a sheer drop of over a thousand feet.

Out bolted Jimmie and ran, the better to see. Forward ran the canvas suit man and his officers and the soldiers. And there were the two Tontos, alive and running, themselves. They were leaping and bounding like rabbits, from rock to rock and landing-place to landing-place of the merest trail zigzagging them almost straight up and down! that must have been the trail which all the Tontos had climbed.

For a moment everybody was too astonished to shoot. Then――“Bang!” The canvas suit man had thrown his gun to his shoulder, lightning-quick, and aimed and pulled trigger.

The second of the two Tontos leaped aside, one arm fell limp, and was dyed red. But he did not slacken. Now “Bang! Bang! Bang-bang!” The soldiers and the officers also shot as fast as they could, so that even the basin echoed. They were excited, and shooting down-hill, the Tontos were leaping and dodging and looked very small, not much larger than coyotes; and as far as anybody might see, not a bullet touched them.

Pretty soon they had plunged into the brush and scrub-oak chaparral almost at the bottom of the precipice; they had got away.

Jimmie drew a long breath. In the excitement he had forgotten all about himself. Now he came to, and discovered that he was standing out here, alone, on a curve of the basin rim; and that the soldiers, the nearest only a few paces away, holding their smoking carbines were surveying him keenly. Some had begun to steal around, to head him off.

Naturally they took him for an Apache.

The canvas suit man had seen as quickly as any of the soldiers.

“No cuidado, muchacho! Ven’ aqui! (Don’t be afraid, boy! Come here!),” he called, in Spanish, to Jimmie. And added, in English, to the soldiers: “Bring that boy in.”

Jimmie did not wait to be brought in. He raised his hand in the “peace sign,” and ran forward, crying:

“I’m not Apache. I’m American. I’m Jimmie Dunn, Lieutenant Bourke! Hello, Tom Moore! Don’t you know me?”

V

JIMMIE REPORTS FOR DUTY

“Well, for goodness’ sake!”

Bronzed Lieutenant Bourke stared: runty Packer Tom Moore gaped amidst his wrinkles; everybody stood stock-still, amazed. Jimmie’s shrill announcement, as he ran in, created a sensation.

Now Lieutenant Bourke hastened to him; so did Tom Moore; so did Lieutenant Ross: all the officers and men within hearing pressed around him.

“By gracious, boy, we thought you were a bleached-out Tonto!” exclaimed Tom.

“What are you doing here?” demanded Lieutenant Bourke. “Pete Kitchen said the Chiricahuas had you.”

“They did,” answered Jimmie, so glad to speak English again. He found the words a little stiff on his tongue, but he had not forgotten. “I ran away.”

“Those were Tontos, weren’t they? How came you among the Tontos?”

“I wasn’t among ’em. They didn’t have me.”

“Are you here alone?”

Huh! Jimmie looked around an instant; he was so happy that he was a-tremble. He did not sight Micky; the soldiers were covering the very spot where he and Micky had been hiding, but Micky was not with them. He had mysteriously vanished. Jimmie had promised not to betray him, and must keep his word.

“Yes, sir.” So far as he knew now, that was true.

“How long have you been traveling?”

“Nearly a week, I guess.”

“Well if that ain’t the limit!” exploded weazened Tom Moore.

“You’d better report to the general, Jimmie,” bade Lieutenant Bourke kindly. “General George Crook――that man in the canvas suit. He’s our department commander now, so don’t omit to salute him. Come along.”

Scanned by curious eyes, Jimmie followed First Lieutenant John Bourke to where the man in the canvas suit was standing expectant, his shot-gun at an order.

The lieutenant saluted, and Jimmie saluted. That was regulations.

“This boy is Jimmie Dunn, sir,” reported the lieutenant. “He was taken by the Chiricahuas about a year ago, while herding sheep on the Kitchen ranch south of Tucson. He says that he has run away from them, and,” added the lieutenant, with a quizzical laugh, “he doesn’t want to go back.”

Jimmie stood at attention, while General Crook eyed him. This, then, was the new “comandante” of whom Micky had spoken. He was a straight, square-shouldered, active-looking man, as strong on his feet as any Apache. Yes, he was of a tall, muscular build like Geronimo. He was of light complexion, with sandy hair and thin sandy moustache, and high forehead, and from between two very keen, gray-blue eyes a large sharp nose jutted down to a firm mouth set over a longish, firm chin. He needed shaving. The hands upon his shot-gun were brown and sinewy.

Now he queried abruptly, military fashion but not gruff; merely as though he required a short direct answer.

“What band of Chiricahua?”

“Cochise’s band.”

“Where are they now?”

“I don’t know, sir. They’re traveling around.”

“Where were they when you left them?”

“They were in the north part of the Chiricahua Mountains, I think. They were moving to a new camp, because of the soldiers.”

“Hah! Was Cochise there?”

“No, sir. He was out and so was Geronimo. It was just the old men and the squaws. Most of the chiefs were in Mexico, on raids.”

“Who is Geronimo?”

“He’s Go-yath-lay, the war chief.”

“How long ago did you run away?”

“Five days, I think.”

“How did you happen to get up here? Did the Tonto have you?”

“No, sir. I was trying to go to Camp Apache.”

“You answer like a soldier, boy. Are you a soldier’s son?”

“No, sir. My mother and father were killed by the Apaches, but I lived with Joe Felmer. He’s post blacksmith for Camp Grant.”

“Lieutenant Ross and Moore and I have seen him there often, general,” put in Lieutenant Bourke. “He calls Joe Felmer uncle, but they’re not relations, as I understand.”

“No, sir; we’re not,” said Jimmie. “Joe is mighty good to me, though.”

“Did the Chiricahua treat you well?” asked the general.

“Yes, sir; but I don’t like them.”

“Why not?” And General Crook slightly smiled. When he smiled his face was kind and fatherly.

“Because they wanted to make me an Apache, so I’d help them kill Americans and Mexicans and steal cattle. They torture people. And they killed Lieutenant Cushing, too!”

“How do you know that?” sharply queried the general.

“They did, didn’t they, sir? I saw his shirt. Taza was wearing it.”

“Hum!” mused the general. “Could you guide us to the Cochise camp, do you think?”

“N-no, sir,” faltered Jimmie. “You see, they have their own names for places, and sometimes I was in Mexico and sometimes I was in Arizona, and I got all mixed up.”

“I see,” admitted the general. “You say you were trying to reach Camp Apache. Don’t you know that this is a long way west of Camp Apache? How did you happen to be off here?”

“Yes, sir; I know it,” replied Jimmie. “The Chiricahua might think I was starting for Camp Apache, so I tried to fool them. Then I saw the Tonto trail, and then I saw the soldiers’ trail, and I was hurrying to catch you as soon as the Tonto did, when the Tonto jumped out of the basin, and I couldn’t do anything but hide and watch. I knew the soldiers would whip ’em, though. Did――did anybody get killed?”

“No,” said the general grimly. “That will do,” he continued. “We’ve been at Camp Apache, and can’t take you back there; but we may be able to send you down to Camp Grant. Turn him over to Mr. Moore, if you please, lieutenant, and see that he’s outfitted more like a white boy and less like an Indian.”

“Yes, sir.” Lieutenant Bourke saluted; Jimmie rigidly saluted. “Come with me, Jimmie.” And they looked up Tom Moore.

There were two troops of cavalry and twenty pack-mules. Tom Moore was busy, just now, attending to the pack-train; and having been left with him Jimmie might gaze about and listen.

None of the soldiers had even been wounded, but those Tontos certainly had shot hard. The general and party were examining a pine-trunk into which a Tonto arrow had buried itself clear to the feathers! In several other tree trunks there were arrows that could not be pulled out. As far as might be discovered, no Tontos had been wounded, except the one shot by the general. It had been a sharp skirmish, nevertheless.

Micky Free had disappeared. Not a trace of him was noted. Jimmie loyally said not a word about him, and did not see him again for some months.

“All right,” presently spoke Tom Moore. “Now, boy, you can ride behind me, on my hoss, and I’ll fix you out after we get to camp. Haven’t time here.”

For the sun was setting in a range of mountains across the big basin; the basin itself was growing dark, while the high plateau was still bathed in the last rays; and the general had given the order to march and make a camping-place.

With Jimmie behind his saddle, Tom rode in the advance party. This was composed of the general, and Lieutenant Bourke his aide, Captain Brent and Lieutenant Ross and Guide Archie MacIntosh. Mr. MacIntosh was a new man from the Hudson’s Bay country of the Far North――a fine scout but not yet acquainted with this part of Arizona. In fact, even Tom Moore had never been through here. So Tom was acting as pack-master and assistant guide, both.

At camp that evening Jimmie was awarded an old flannel shirt and pair of cotton trousers. The shirt belonged to Lieutenant Ross; the trousers belonged to “Chileno John,” one of the packers. The suit didn’t fit very well, but Jimmie now felt more like a white boy again.

Because he was in charge of Tom Moore, his place was with the packers. They were a merry set, around their fires after supper: Charley Hopkins and old Jack Long, of Tucson; and “Hank ’n Yank”――who were Hank Hewitt and Yank Bartlett; and “Long” Jim Cook (who had a brother “Short” Jim Cook); and Jim O’Neill, and “Chileno John,” and José de Leon, and Lauriano Gomez who sang Spanish songs; and others. They looked rather rough and they talked rather rough――but such stories they had to tell, of their adventures in California and Arizona and Mexico, and up in British Columbia!

The soldiers strolled over, to sit and listen and swap yarns. The general and officers listened, too, now and then, and laughed. Altogether it was a much more pleasant camp than a Chiricahua rancheria.

According to soldiers’ and packers’ talk this General George Crook had made a hit. He had suddenly arrived, last June, in Tucson by stage from San Francisco, to take command of the new Department of Arizona. His regular rank was lieutenant-colonel in the Twenty-third Infantry, but as he had been brevetted or given honorary rank of major-general for gallant service in the Civil War, he of course was called “General.”

Up in the far Northwest, where he had commanded the Department of the Columbia, he had done such good work against the Shoshones or Snakes that the Government had now sent him down to see what he could do with the Apaches.

He had set right to work. “A powerful active sort of man,” he was, declared Tom Moore. After having questioned all the post commanders and many scouts, about the trails and other conditions, he had started out from Tucson with five companies of cavalry and a company of scouts, both white and red, and a great pack-train, to make a big circle of some six hundred miles: east one hundred and ten miles to Camp Bowie at Apache Pass in the Chiricahua Mountains, thence north two hundred miles across the mountains to Camp Apache and the White Mountain reservation, thence west two hundred and fifty or three hundred miles to Fort Whipple at the town of Prescott, which was the department headquarters.

Lieutenant Bourke’s Troop F of the Third Cavalry it was which had surprised the Geronimo and Nah-che band and made them leave their meat; and there had been other skirmishes. At Camp Apache the general had talked to the White Mountain Apaches.

“That man,” asserted Tom Moore, “he cert’inly knows Injun. He said he’d nothin’ against the ’Paches; he wasn’t out to war on ’em, but to get ’em to live peaceably. They could see for themselves that the white people were crowdin’ into the country, and that pretty soon there wouldn’t be enough game to live on. So the ’Pache’d better decide to settle down and go to farmin’ on the land that was given him. He’d be protected from his enemies, and wouldn’t need to steal. The ’Paches who came in peaceful wouldn’t be punished; they’d be treated same as white people; but the bad ones who hung out would make trouble for the good ones, and he’d expect the good ’Paches to help him run down the bad ’Paches. That sounded like sense, and Pedro and the rest of ’em agreed.”

“He’s shorely got some pecul’ar idees,” commented old Jack Long. “For one thing, he says an’ Injun’s as good as a white man an’ some white men are wuss’n Injuns, ’cause they know better. But I reckon when he says ‘peace’ he means peace, an’ when he says ‘fight’ he means fight. He wanted mightily to ketch those two Tonto an’ talk with ’em――an’ when they threw arrers at him an’ skadoodled, blamed if he didn’t up an’ shoot ’em himself! Got the olive-branch in one hand an’ sword in t’other, _he_ has.”

However, with only these two companies of cavalry and a small pack-train the general was now on his way to Fort Whipple, there to wait and plan; for when with all his force he had arrived at Camp Apache, he had received dispatches from the War Department directing him to quit until the Government Peace Commission had tried.

This Peace Commission had been formed in 1867, for the purpose of seeing that the Indians were being honestly treated, and of persuading them to live upon reservations. President U. S. Grant was much in favor of such a scheme. The Indians of Arizona never had been talked with, so the President was sending a Mr. Vincent Colyer, a patriotic and large-hearted New Yorker, to represent the Commission in the Southwest.

“That thar peace plan may work with some o’ those Eastern Injuns, but ’twon’t work with ’Paches,” grumbled old Jack Long. “They got too much country to travel ’round in, an’ war is meat an’ drink to ’em. They ain’t been licked yet, an’ till they’re licked they’ll think the whites are ’fraid of ’em. They won’t understand civilian peace talk, by a stranger. Some big white chief ought to do the talkin’. An’ now the soldiers an’ settlers got to sit back an’ be perlite, so’s not to stir up trouble, an’ Gin’ral Crook can’t make his words good an’ go get the bad lots. ’Pache’ll see ’tain’t any use to stay on a reservation if he can have more fun in the hills.”

Jimmie rather believed, himself, that Mr. Colyer or any stranger from the East, who was not used to Indians, would have hard times “catching” the Chiricahuas.

During the next few days General Crook proved to be a most remarkable man indeed. At first sight, nobody would take him for a general in the United States army. He wore no uniform――just a plain canvas suit; he rode a mule, and he preferred a shot-gun to a rifle. He was not above talking to anybody, as he chose. Only when you saw how straight and decisive he was, would you suspect him to be a soldier and an officer.

Nothing was too small for him to notice, and nothing too hard for him to do. He could talk in the sign language and he could read a trail. He could speak Snake and Spanish and some Apache; and he knew almost as much about Arizona as Tom Moore or Jack Long did. He was up in the morning, even by two o’clock, as soon as the cooks. All day, as he rode in the advance, he constantly asked the names of trees and bushes and flowers, and mountains and streams――and he never forgot. He was a tremendous hunter, and could stuff the beasts and birds that he killed, and he had studied wild animals until he could tell many curious things about them. He liked to explore by himself, with gun and fishing-rod, and never was lost. He drank only cold water――no tea or coffee. He could do without drinking at all, and without eating, either. In fact, Tom Moore and Archie MacIntosh agreed, he could “out-Injun the Injuns”!

The pack-train was his particular hobby.

“He fetched a lot o’ notions down from Idyho an’ Californy,” explained old Jack, with wag of head; “an’ by jinks, he began to tear things loose as soon as he struck Tooson. Nothin’s too good for the pack-train. Consequence is, now we’ve got critters an’ men who’ll go anywhar a dog’ll go, an’ be fresh for an’ arly start next mornin’. He’s sort o’ pack-train daddy, I reckon.”

Jimmie did not ride clear through to Fort Whipple at Prescott. At Camp Verde, the post fifty miles this side of Whipple, the general sent off dispatches for some of the posts south, and told Jimmie that this was a good chance to reach Camp Grant, where he belonged.

“But if you do fight the Apaches, can I help?” ventured Jimmie.

He loved the bronzed, lean, untiring, wise General Crook, so brief of speech, so kind in manner, so fatherly and yet so soldierly; who quickly learned whatever he didn’t happen to know already, and who somehow got things done without any loud orders.