Part 5

“I didn’t come in here to fight them,” smiled the general. “I came in to make peace. But those who won’t make peace and keep it, I’ll fight very hard――they may depend on that also. I promised the White Mountain Apaches that I’d protect the good Indians and punish the bad ones; and the only way to control Indians is to do exactly what you promise to do. Now we’ll all have to wait until Mr. Colyer of the Peace Commission has tried. He’ll give them an opportunity to gather upon reservations and learn to support themselves without murdering and stealing. A great deal of the fighting between the Indians and the whites has been unnecessary, because there are white men who don’t believe in good Indians. You go to your friends at Camp Grant. Learn all you can about pack-mules and soldier duties, too, and don’t forget Apache. I haven’t any doubt that some day you can help the Government very much.”

When at last Jimmie was delivered at Camp Grant, and set out for Joe Felmer’s little ranch, above, to surprise Joe, he met him coming in, mule back. As a result, Joe opened his whiskered mouth widely, and almost fell off his mule: for here was Jimmie Dunn, who had been captured by the Apaches in mid-summer of 1870, and now it was the close of August, 1871.

“Hello, black-beard white man,” greeted Jimmie, in his best Apache.

VI

THE PEACE COMMISSION TRIES

“Wall, ’xpec’ you want to hear all the news yourself,” proposed “Uncle” Joe, that evening, at the ranch, after Jimmie had told his own story in every detail.

“Yes, if you please,” answered Jimmie.

“Wall,” mused Joe Felmer, stroking his shaggy full beard, “lemme see. ‘Six-toed’ Hutton’s been kicked in the jaw by a mule, an’ he’s like to go under. The kick busted his heart, same time it busted his jaw, ’cause he ought to’ve known better than to get in the way.”

“Six-toed” Hutton’s real name was Oscar Hutton. He had six toes on either foot, and was one of the bravest scouts at Camp Grant. To be killed by a mule kick did indeed seem an untimely end for a scout.

“’Paches have been awful bad all ’long the line,” continued Joe. “Chiricahuas an’ Tontos an’ Pinals been raidin’ the stage road out o’ Tucson, both ways. Forty-seven whites an’ Mexicans have been killed down thar’bouts, an’ ten thousand dollars’ wuth o’ property burned or stolen. Up ’round Prescott the Hualpais an’ Apache-Mohaves have corraled the mail rider an’ run ranchers an’ miners off. An’ a passel o’ blamed rascals lit out with an old mule from my very pasture――three of ’em at once on her back, in broad day!”

The recollection of this evidently made “Uncle” Joe very angry again. He paused to mumble.

“Thar’s a band o’ Es-kim-en-zin’s Pinals an’ Arivaipas farmin’ on the creek ’bout a mile from Grant,” he resumed. “Gathered thar ag’in after that massacre last spring, when those whites an’ Mexicans an’ Papagos from Tucson way came up an’ wiped out ’most their women an’ old men an’ stole their children. Yessir, killed over seventy squaws an’ only eight bucks, some of ’em while asleep, an’ carried off thirty children. Sold ’em ’mongst the Mexicans an’ Papagos, they did. Now I hear tell that the Government’s sendin’ what it calls a ‘peace commissioner,’ from New Yawk, to fetch in other ’Paches an’ feed ’em an’ treat ’em nice. Wall, reckon he’ll have his hands full.”

Although Joe and others, soldiers and civilians both, at Camp Grant, insisted that there could be no good excuse for attacking Indians who had surrendered themselves, the Tucson papers and people declared that these very Pinals and Arivaipas had recently been murdering Americans and Mexicans, and stealing stock, and deserved Indian punishment instead of white protection. It would teach the Apaches a lesson.

Of course, when one’s father and mother and brothers and sisters have been tortured and killed only because they were white, it is hard to feel at all kindly toward the race that did it. Jimmie knew how that was. White persons’ clothing――the clothing of the very ones who had been murdered――was found in the Pinal and Arivaipa camp. Still, for the white people to act like Indians, set a bad example, if the Indians were to be shown that the white way of living was the better way.

The Camp Grant massacre aroused a great cry in the East. The East sided with the Apaches. But when he had arrived, Commissioner Colyer seemed to be going about with very odd notions. He was reported as thinking that the Apaches were only a poor ignorant race, who had been robbed of their lands and forced into war by the whites, and that they ought to be met with kindness alone. Then they would be peaceable. The Tucson _Citizen_ asserted that he advised the Arizona people to avoid trouble by getting out of the Indians’ way. And the _Citizen_ and the Prescott _Miner_ published hot, sarcastic articles about him and the Peace Policy. The Apaches were being referred to as “Colyer’s babes” and “Colyer’s pets.”

“What’s that?” growled Joe. “Thinks the Chiricahuas an’ Tontos don’t know any better’n to hang folks up by their heels over a slow fire, does he? An’ that we ought to call off the troops an’ get off our ranches, so we won’t be irritatin’ the Injuns? Then they’d come in of themselves, to be civilized! Jest why the ’Paches who can live by fightin’ an’ stealin’ as they please will want to live by ploughin’, I’d like to hear. This is part o’ the United States, an’ the white people are jest as much entitled to protection as the ’Paches are.”

Camp Grant was a four- or five-company post located here in a desert basin where the valley of the Arivaipa Creek, from the east, and of the San Pedro River, from the south, joined. The San Pedro was supposed to flow on north, for a few miles, to the Gila River; but it and the Arivaipa were only dry sand-beds during the greater part of the year.

Camp Grant was not a pretty place; it was only a hollow square of clay or log huts and ragged tents, shaded in front by brush porches or _ramadas_.

Against it beat the sand-storms in the spring and the blazing sun throughout nine months of the year――temperature, one hundred and twenty in the shade! The giant cactuses, instead of trees, were many and extra large――and so were the rattle-snakes, scorpions and centipedes. And the Apache had always been extra bold.

One never might foresee what was about to occur, at Camp Grant. On some days it would be perfectly quiet, with only the sentries walking their hot beats, and the tame Indians squatting out of the sun; and again there would be a sudden running to and fro, and away would trot the cavalry, to rescue (if possible) a wagon train, and pursue the hostiles.

In a few days, at best, but likely enough not until after a week or more, back the troopers would come, maybe with wounded, maybe with prisoners, but in any case all fagged out, both men and horses.

Joe Felmer’s little ranch lay three miles south, up the San Pedro. As Joe was post blacksmith, and also sold ranch stuff to the quartermaster, Jimmie felt as though he belonged to the post, himself. He knew all the officers, and old Sergeants Warfield and John Mott, and others of the men; and “Six-toed,” and Antonio Besias the former Mexican captive of the Apaches, and Concepcion Equierre the half-Apache interpreter, and old Santos the short-legged Arivaipa ex-chief who was Chief Es-kim-en-zin’s father-in-law; and many more.

When he had left, last year, Grant had been occupied by some of the First and the Third Cavalry; but they had been transferred, Lieutenant Cushing’s and Lieutenant Bourke’s Troop K of the Third had been sent down to Camp Lowell near Tucson, and now the Fifth Cavalry was here.

It was in October when Commissioner Colyer, on his rounds, appeared at Camp Grant. Jimmie was lucky enough to drive down there, with Joe and a wagon-load of pumpkins, just in time to be present at some of the “doings.”

Mr. Colyer had arrived in a six-mule army ambulance (a black, covered spring wagon with high driver’s seat, and two bench-like seats inside, facing each other), escorted by a squad of cavalry from Fort Whipple, under Lieutenant Ross.

He was a square-set, benevolent-looking gentleman, in dusty black broadcloth, and white shirt and broad black hat. Attended by Colonel F. W. Crittenden, the post commander, and by other officers, he had been talking, through Concepcion the interpreter, to the tame Apaches at the post, and he was about to go out to Chief Es-kim-en-zin’s rancheria, where the surrendered Pinals and Arivaipas were farming.

“They are the same people who were so barbarously attacked last spring, I understand,” he remarked.

“Yes, sir,” replied Lieutenant Royal Whitman.

“You were in charge of the post then, were you not?”

“I was. But before I could reach their camp the deed had been done. I think you will see by my report upon the matter, to the Department, how I feel about it. It was a thorough outrage, and the members of the attacking party ought to be arrested, tried and punished.”

“Quite true,” uttered Mr. Colyer. “A shocking state of affairs exists through the whole Territory. All the Indians with whom I have talked declare that they would gladly gather upon reservations, accept the Government’s aid, and live at peace with mankind, if the soldiery and white citizens would only cease hunting them down. Some of the bands are so frightened and timid that they won’t confer even with me, their friend. I’ve tried in vain to meet Chief Cochise, of the Chiricahuas. You can see, my brothers,” he continued, addressing the group of soldiers and scouts and tame Apaches, “what an injustice has been done these simple savages. Our duty is not to punish them for defending their homes, but to gain their good-will by patience and kindness, until they are won to the benefits of civilization. That is why the President and the Society of Friends have delegated me to visit among you, and bring this bad feeling between the white men and the red men to an end.”

“‘Simple savages,’ are they?” afterwards commented Joe. “If thar’s anybody smarter’n an Apache in sizin’ things up, I’ve yet to find him. At present this hyar Quaker strikes me as bein’ ’bout the simplest pusson in Arizony. The ’Paches can understand straight talk, like that Gen’ral Crook gave ’em, an’ they can understand war; but they don’t understand coaxin’. When you coax a ’Pache he laughs in his insides an’ reckons he’ll do as he pleases as long as he can. Once you coax him, then he thinks you’re ’fraid of him, ’cause that’s Injun way.”

Mr. Colyer was driven out to the Chief Es-kim-en-zin camp, where he talked with old Santos and the chief, and others of the Pinals and Arivaipas. He informed them that the Great White Father at Washington would see to it that they were no longer ill-treated by the white men. All the Apaches might come in and live on the lands that the Government was giving them. They should have plenty to eat, and the white men who interfered should be punished.

When he returned to the post he acted much satisfied. He arranged to have a regular reservation set off, and said that an agent and teacher would be appointed, by the Society of Friends. Soon he left, with his escort, to continue his tour.

While nobody might doubt that Mr. Colyer was a very good and honest man, nobody put much faith in his methods. After having fought and raided all summer, many of the wild Apaches would be only too willing to be fed and protected upon the reservations, all winter.

Now the Indians of Arizona seemed to be provided for――except that Commissioner Colyer had not been able to find any Chiricahuas. He had sent word to them, but they had hidden from him. And when in western New Mexico he had stopped at the Cañada Alamosa, or Cottonwood Canyon, where Chief Victorio’s friendly Mimbres and Warm Spring Apaches were living, the most of them had run from his soldier escort. They liked their Cottonwood Canyon, and feared that they were to be removed.

VII

JIMMIE TAKES A LESSON

“Micky Free!”

Jimmie almost shouted it, he was so astonished. He was again at the post, on an errand for Joe Felmer, after Commissioner Colyer had been gone about a week; and who should come trotting across the hot gravelly parade ground but Micky Free himself, in single file with two strange Indians!

Micky’s one quick eye sighted Jimmie, standing agape, and he fell out of line and pattered over, grinning.

“How do you do, Boy-who-sleeps?” he said, in Apache.

“How do you do, Red-head?” answered Jimmie. “I am glad to see you.”

Micky wore a loose, whitish cotton shirt with its tails outside ragged cotton trousers, and on his feet Apache moccasins. A white cloth band was around his red head, his one blue eye beamed alertly, and his freckled face was streaked with perspiration and dust. All that he carried was an Apache fiddle made from a bent rib of a yucca, strung with deer sinews.

The two Indians with him were stripped to breech-clout aprons, and moccasins, and red flannel head-bands; one of them had rawhide shield and long lance, the other, bow and quiver. They had continued on and now had been stopped before the adjutant’s office by the orderly.

“Let us sit down and talk, Cheemie,” laughed Micky.

So he and Jimmie squatted.

“What are you doing, Micky?”

“I have come over from Camp Apache with two White Mountain runners. They bring messages from that fort to this one. We came through in one day and two nights. It is more than one hundred miles. Have you heard the news, Cheemie?”

“What news, Micky?”

“Cochise says he wants peace. He has gone on the Ojo Caliente (Warm Spring) place, in the Cañada Alamosa, where Chief Victorio is.”

“How do you know?” exclaimed Jimmie. This was great news.

“I got it from Maria Jilda, the Mexican who was captured when you were captured. He came up to Camp Apache from the Apache Pass where Camp Bowie is. He escaped from the Chiricahua, and now he is an interpreter at Camp Bowie. Yes, Cheemie; Cochise and Geronimo and all that band have gone to live with their brothers the Warm Springs and the Mimbreños at the Cañada Alamosa on the Rio Grande River in New Mexico. But,” added Micky, wisely, “they will not stay.”

“Don’t they want peace?” queried Jimmie. “Did they listen to the words of the white peace man?”

“That white peace man in the black clothes?” demanded Micky scornfully. “No. The Apaches laugh at that white peace man. It is easy to lie to him. The wild Apache think he promises so much because the Americans are afraid of them. The Cochise people are hungry and winter is near and the soldiers have been fighting them hard. They hear that Victorio is being fed and has plenty of clothes and guns. They can rest there until they are ready to take the trail again. What are you doing, Cheemie? Do you like the new American general? I saw him shoot that Tonto. He is a good shot. Afterwards I found the Tonto. He was dead. Then I went to the White Mountains, at Camp Apache.”

“I am living with Joe Felmer, on his ranch. He is a scout, and he works at the post, too,” informed Jimmie. “The general sent me home, but he told me to learn all the soldier ways I could, and not to forget Apache talk. If I’m not old enough to be a scout, I can help with the pack-trains.”

“I shall be a scout,” nodded Micky. “That is why I have come out with the runners: to learn the country. He is a great general, that man Crook. Chief Pedro and old Miguel liked his talk. It is true that if some of the Apaches stay bad, the good Apaches will suffer by it. They will be watched closely and cannot do things they would do if all the Apaches were trusted. So Chief Pedro and the White Mountains will help the new general who talks straight. It is this way, Cheemie――I have heard Pedro and old Miguel and Pi-to-ne and all, say so: As long as there are any wild Chiricahua and Tonto, there will be trouble between the red men and the white men, in Arizona. We must kill the bad Apaches. Then the good Apaches can live at peace and get rich. In the spring the new general must begin to fight, because by then the Chiricahua will be rested up.”

The two Apache runners or dispatch-bearers came back from the adjutant’s office. Their names, as told by Micky, were Alchisé (Alchisay) and Nah-kay-do-klunni. They both were Sierra Blanca――White Mountain Apaches. They and Micky were taken by Antonio Besias the interpreter to be given coffee and bread; and as there was nothing more to be said, Jimmie went about his own business. He knew that he would see Micky Free again, somewhere. Micky was that kind.

Although Chief Cochise and War-Captain Geronimo had moved with their band of Chiricahuas upon the Cottonwood Canyon reservation near Fort Craig in southwestern New Mexico, and Commissioner Colyer had been so confident that all _his_ Indians were about to gather upon _their_ reservations, the white people of Arizona had no faith in this peace policy.

Almost every copy of the Tucson _Citizen_ and the Prescott _Miner_ received by Joe Felmer or at Camp Grant contained accounts of Apache attacks upon settlers and miners and soldiers, by the Tontos and the Apache-Mohaves, and the Chiricahuas raiding up from Mexico.

The _Miner_ published a list of three hundred Americans and Mexicans who had been killed by the Apaches from 1864 to the present time, October 14, 1871.

Toward the end of November the worst news yet, arrived. A band of “Colyer’s babes,” thought to be Apache-Mohaves, had attacked the stage near Wickenburg, south of Prescott, and murdered the driver and five passengers. Three of these passengers were members of the Government surveying expedition which, under Lieutenant George Wheeler, of the U. S. Engineers, had been exploring through Nevada and Arizona, getting facts upon the mines and the country. The name of one was Fred Loring――a well-educated, especially fine young surveyor, from Washington.

This attack, said the papers, ought to convince the Government that the Apaches of Arizona were far from “civilized.” These very Indians had been living “peaceably” upon one of Commissioner Colyer’s tracts, where they were protected.

Lieutenant Wheeler and his main party commanded by Lieutenant David A. Lyle of the Second Artillery, with an escort of the Third Cavalry (Company I), supplied by the Department of California, rode into Camp Grant only a few days after the word of the Wickenburg Massacre had been received.

They were on their way from Camp Apache to Tucson; had been exploring since the middle of May, and were pretty well worn out. They had found many of the Indians met to be rude and insolent, but――――

“No, they never attacked us,” said Lieutenant Lyle. “And now, to think that they’ve killed poor Loring, when he was all through and was going home! He had his hair cut very short, on his road out, and laughed when he claimed that the Apaches would never be able to take _his_ scalp.”

“One drop of that fine young man’s blood was worth more to the United States than the whole Apache race is,” declared Lieutenant Wheeler. “In my opinion, the peace policy of forbidding a military campaign that shall drive the Apaches in upon the reservations is encouraging them to commit such outrages. The Indian question in Arizona will never be settled until the campaigns of an energetic officer shall thoroughly whip and subdue them.”

“And Crook’s that man,” asserted Chief Packer Tom Moore, who was over from Fort Whipple, on a trip around to inspect pack-train outfits. “We’ve had other gen’rals in Arizony. Some of ’em did too much――took ev’ry scalp they could ketch. Some of ’em did too little――reg’lar coffee-coolers. But this Gen’ral Crook, gentlemen, he’s goin’ to know for himself whether a ’Pache’s good or bad. The good ones he’ll treat square, and the bad ones he’ll trail down till he has their tongues hangin’ out. Now he’s just lyin’ low, till the Government’s got plumb sick o’ these ‘Colyer’s babes,’ and he has orders. If I don’t miss my guess, next spring the Arizony hills’ll be full o’ soldiers and pack-trains, and tame ’Paches fightin’ wild ’Paches, and Crook bossin’ us all from the saddle.”

Tom Moore and others from Fort Whipple brought word that General Crook kept very active. He seemed to have no idea of resting. He was constantly traveling, by mule and buck-board wagon, over the roads and trails of northern Arizona, learning them as he had learned the trails of southern Arizona. Usually he traveled with only Lieutenant Bourke, who was his aide-de-camp, and a cook and a packer, for he did not wish to use officers and men who should be ready for scouting expeditions. He issued orders that the pack-train outfits should be prepared at top notch. It was plain to be seen that he expected to go upon a hard campaign as soon as the Peace Policy had been tried and had failed.

Jimmie decided that his best chance of taking the trail with this active General Crook lay with the pack-trains; even a boy might be useful in the pack-trains; he could catch mules and pull on ropes and help the cook――and if he spoke Apache, like Jimmie did, and knew lots of Apache tricks, he might be valuable as an interpreter, sometimes. Besides, Joe Felmer was a scout and a horse-shoer both, and he surely would be ordered out. Jimmie intended not to be left at home.

Luckily, he had plenty of opportunity this fall and winter to learn pack-train wrinkles. For the practice that it gave the men, as well as because it was the better method, the general distributed the supplies to all the posts by means of pack-mules.

Before he had assumed command, the supplies out of Tucson and Prescott had been hauled largely by wagons in charge of “bull whackers” and “mule skinners,” and operated by civilian contractors, who made freighting their business. Of course, pack-mules had been necessary, too, with scouting columns and between out-of-the-way posts; and the miners, and the Mexican merchants and traders from Sonora of Mexico, employed pack-mules.

But in his campaigns against the Indians, in Idaho and Oregon and Northern California, the general had depended entirely upon pack-mule trains, which kept right up with the marches, no matter how rough the country, and were always on hand. According to the say of old Jack Long, “he had got pack-mule wise.” He had persuaded the War Department to buy three full pack-trains from their civilian owners who had hired them out to the Government; and these he had brought to Arizona with him.

“He’s the daddy o’ the army mule, I reckon,” again declared Jack. “Yes, siree! Those thar mules ain’t nary sore-backed Sonora rats, an’ they ain’t bags o’ bones so high up you have to use a ladder to put a pack on with. They’re picked stock; an’ every other mule’s got to measure up to same standard. Gosh durn it, I b’lieve the gin’ral thinks as much of his mules as he does of his men! He looks as close arter glanders as he does arter measles!”

However, the general looked after the men pretty close, too. The packers themselves had to measure up to standard. Those who were drunken, or lazy, or cruel to the mules, were discharged, and better men enlisted. Henceforward the pack-train service was to be known as “Pack Transportation, Q. M. D. (Quartermaster’s Department), U. S. Army,” and to belong to it would be an honor.

Yes, a responsibility, also; for as old Jack explained: “When you get up in the mountings ’mongst the ’Paches, an’ you’re out o’ ammunition an’ the pack-train’s got busted somewhars in the next county, then what’s your scalp wuth? Nothin’!”

Jimmie might think himself lucky in having old Jack Long at Camp Grant, to give him pointers. Joe Felmer was a scout and rancher; he did not claim to be an expert mule packer. But old Jack had been a Forty-niner in California, and had mined and packed all through California and Oregon and Idaho and Nevada and Arizona. So he knew a great deal.