Part 7

“The good Mr. Cook, of the Pimas, agrees with me that the children ought to be returned to their own people,” he said. “Some of them are being brought up as slaves and servants, and they all were carried off by force, which is not right. But the district attorney from Tucson, and the governor, and other honest persons, think differently, and I should listen to their words, also. So we will take the matter to Washington. I will appeal to my chief, who is the Secretary of the Interior; and the district attorney may appeal to his chief, who is the Attorney General of the United States. And these chiefs will appeal to President Grant, who is the greatest chief of all.

“While the President is deciding, the children shall stay here at the agency with a good Christian white woman whom I have engaged. They will be well cared for, at government expense. Their relatives and friends from the Arivaipas may visit them often, and their Mexican friends may visit them often; and our Great Father at Washington shall say who may keep them.”

A cheer started, but the district attorney sprang to his feet.

“We wish to keep the children until the President decides. We will guarantee to do whatever he directs.”

“No guarantee is needed, from either side,” severely answered General Howard. “Here is General Crook. With his army and his authority he will see to it that justice is done exactly as I have outlined!”

“Good!”

“Bueno, bueno!”

“Inju!”

The word was repeated in a perfect storm of languages. The gathering was all excitement and relief. Everybody seemed to approve of what the general had said; that is, everybody except the district attorney and a few scouts and ranchers who did not believe in yielding peace terms to any Apaches whatsoever.

The Arivaipa-Pinals and the Papagos and the Pimas and the Apache-Mohaves and the Tontos hugged one another; some of the Mexicans hugged some of the Indians; General Crook and the officers laughed. It was a happy solution of a serious problem.

“Kinder like a love-feast, after all, warn’t it!” remarked Joe Felmer. “Huh! Wall, I reckon the gen’ral knows how the President’ll decide.”

Probably General Howard did, for in due time the children were given over to the Es-kim-en-zin band, by orders from Washington, and Es-kim-en-zin always remained at peace.

Amidst the hurly-burly of excitement Jimmie found himself close to General Crook, who was talking earnestly with Joe Felmer and old Jack Long. That was his style; he did not go much on red tape, but spoke direct to officers and enlisted men alike.

Here in his travel-stained canvas suit without any mark of rank on it, he scarcely would be taken, again, for a general commanding all the big Territory of Arizona. He was thinner than when Jimmie had last seen him, before; his face was lined, and he looked as though he had been working hard, and worrying too.

His eyes, glancing aside, fell upon Jimmie, and recognized him. To the beck of the general’s finger Jimmie stepped forward and stood at attention.

“This is your boy, is he, Felmer?” The general seemed to remember everything.

“Yessir, that’s what I call him.”

“He’s wearing rather more clothes than when I first met him,” commented the general drily. “What are you going to make of him?”

“Wall, he’s ondecided ’twixt scout an’ packer,” drawled Joe. “He’s a leetle small yet, but he’s growin’.”

“Yes, an’ he’ll have plenty time to grow while we’re all standin’ ’round waitin’ on the Government’s Arizony pets to come in to their feed canvas when they’re called!” grumbled old Jack. “He’s liable to die of old age, if he ain’t sculped fust.”

“Tut, tut!” sharply reproved the general. “General Howard’s doing good work. He’s the right man. But this is not saying that there won’t be use for the army. As for you, my boy,” he continued, to Jimmie, “keep on learning to the best of your ability, so that you’ll be ready for whatever comes.”

“Yes, sir,” promised Jimmie.

IX

THE HORRID DEED OF CHUNTZ

General Crook had ridden back to Fort Whipple, on his mule “Apache,” and General Howard had left in the ambulance driven by “Dismal Jeems,” for Camp Apache and the White Mountain reservation.

He had another good scheme. He was collecting Indians from among the tribes, to take them with him to Washington and the Great White Father, that they might understand how many and powerful the white people were.

Old Santos had agreed to go, for the Arivaipas. The Pimas were sending their teacher, the Reverend Mr. Cook, and Louis the interpreter, and the young chief Antonito. The Papagos were sending their chief, Ascencion. The Date Creek Apache-Mohaves or Yavapais were sending Charlie and José.

Concepcion Equierre went from the Arivaipa agency, to translate Apache.

The general expected to get some of the Sierra Blanca or White Mountain Apaches, at the Camp Apache reservation; and to invite the Chiricahuas, also. He arrived safely at Camp Apache, and there added to his party Chiefs Miguel of the one eye, Pedro and Es-ki-tis-tsla; but he failed to find any Chiricahuas.

So he proceeded by wagon and mule, without them.

“I’d shorely like to see those Injuns’ faces when the hull party strikes the railroad at Santy Fee!” chuckled Jack Long. “They’ll think the Old Nick is to tow ’em with his tail up.”

For Santa Fe of New Mexico Territory was the nearest point east of Camp Grant reached by a railroad.

“What does a railroad look like, Jeem?” queried little Francisco, hearing the talk.

Jimmie himself had not seen a railroad for several years, but he remembered, and he tried to explain.

“It’s two lines of iron, like wagon-wheel tracks, reaching miles and miles, chico,” he said. “And on them roll fine wagons, joined together and filled with people, and drawn by a――did you ever hear about boats, chico? Those boats that sail up and down the Colorado River, and make a big noise?”

Francisco eagerly nodded.

“My father has a brother who saw one.”

“Well, the thing that hauls the wagons is a steamboat on land. It runs without horses; and it runs so fast that it could go from here to Tucson, fifty-five miles, in two hours.”

Francisco crossed himself.

“I would be afraid, Jeem,” he quavered.

Poor little Francisco! He was to meet a sad fate.

But, first, June and July passed quietly at Camp Grant. From Fort Whipple General Crook continued to keep scouting detachments and pack-trains moving. The various posts were strengthened by troops and supplies. The greater portion of the Fifth Cavalry was in Arizona, with some troops of the First Cavalry, and part of the Twelfth Infantry and of the Twenty-third Infantry――the general’s regiment. The Twenty-first Infantry and most of the Third Cavalry had gone out.

The general was getting ready. According to the officers of the Fifth Cavalry and the Twenty-third Infantry at Camp Grant, the President had resolved that if the Peace Policy in Arizona did not persuade the Indians to settle down within a year, General Crook should be ordered to take matters over.

The year would be up this September.

Then, in August, things “broke wide open,” as Joe Felmer expressed it.

General Crook just escaped being assassinated by the Yavapais at Date Creek, where he had gone for a talk. He had angered them by arresting several of them for the murder of Engineer Loring and others, in the Wickenburg stage massacre. He had been told that they were planning to kill him, but he went anyway.

They did try to shoot him, in the council. Lieutenant Ross knocked up the arm of the Indian who fired first, there was an all-round tussle, Hank Hewitt the packer seized one Indian by both ears and broke his head against a rock, a part of the Yavapais were killed or imprisoned, and the rest fought their way into the mountains.

The Tonto Basin Apaches――Tontos and Yavapais both――were attacking ranches and mines south of Prescott. Their worst chiefs were Chuntz, and Delt-che (Delt-shay) or Red Ant (the Yavapais were known as Red Ant people), and Cha-li-pun, the Buckskin-colored Hat.

And on the road only thirty miles south of Tucson the Chiricahuas killed gallant young Lieutenant Reid Stewart, the “shave tail” who had been out of West Point two months, and Corporal Black, while the two were riding in a buck-board wagon up from Fort Crittenden, for Tucson.

“An’ I hear now they’ve got Bob Whitney, at last,” one day reported Joe Felmer, on return from Tucson. “Yep; shot out his brains while he an’ Cap’n Gerald Russell o’ the Third were waterin’ their hosses in the place called Cochise’s Stronghold of the Dragoon Mountains, between Tucson an’ Bowie.”

Bob Whitney had been known as the handsomest guide and scout in Arizona.

“Anyhow,” pursued Joe, “this sort o’ thing won’t hang over, long. They told me at Lowell (Camp Lowell, near Tucson, he meant) that orders have been received from headquarters to be ready to take the trail on short notice, an’ that the old man (who was General Crook) is puttin’ on his war-paint and havin’ that mule ’Pache, o’ his, re-shod, four squar’.”

At the instant, while Joe was speaking in the ranch yard, a sudden high chorus of shrill grief sounded, down the road to Camp Grant. Up the course of the sandy San Pedro Valley wended a slow little procession, of men and women afoot and on mules.

The grief immediately spread to the ranch, where the Mexican women began to run wildly, and shriek, and tear their hair. Mrs. Vasquez, who was Francisco’s mother, rushed by, to meet the procession.

“Mi niño! Ay, mi niño!” she wailed. “My little boy! Oh, my little boy!”

How did she know? Joe Felmer gaped, puzzled; and a cold fear seized Jimmie’s thumping heart.

Upon the seat of a two-wheeled, creaking cart in the midst of the procession Francisco’s father, Domingo Vasquez, was sitting and holding in his arms something wrapped in a blanket. He held it very tightly.

Yes, it was poor little Francisco, killed by an Apache lance-thrust. Joe Felmer scarcely could get the story, amid all that shrieking and confusion; but finally he and Jimmie learned from Domingo what had happened.

“I take him with me in my cart to Camp Grant this morning,” said Domingo, in Mexican-Spanish, “while I cut wood along the Arivaipa, for the fort. He visits with people I know, and I do not see him. When I go to the fort to get him and come home, he is not there. They say he has left to find me. We hunt a long time, and we call, and he does not answer. And then, next, they tell me he is found, and I see them bringing him. Just a little way off the trail up the Arivaipa from the fort somebody had found him, behind a cactus there; and he was dead by an Apache lance. Why should anybody kill my little boy――my niño, my muchachito!――my little Francisco who never harmed?”

Why, indeed? Francisco was only a gay, innocent little Mexican boy, alone, and too young to be an enemy. The murder had been done at a turn of the trail within rifle-shot from the fort. A party of Chief Chuntz’s Tontos and Yavapais had been sneaking around the post and the agency, pretending that they were ready to come in. Old Santos insisted that the murderer was a Chuntz warrior, if not Chuntz himself.

Santos was home again, after his trip east with General Howard. He was filled with admiration of the ways of the white people. The general had given him a New Testament, which he could not read, of course, but which he placed under his head, every night, when he slept.

“Chuntz is bad,” sympathized Santos, to Jimmie. “He is bad and so are his men. All those Tonto and Yavapai are bad at heart. To kill a boy is not Christian. The only way to make those Tonto and Yavapai good is to hunt them down. Cluke, the man with the brown clothes, must go out after them, and after the Chiricahua, too. I have told the Arivaipa what I have seen among the white men. The white men are many and very rich, and we will live like them if they do not try to make us believe that the earth is round. General Howard started to tell me that the earth is round, but I answered that he and I are too great chiefs, to be such fools as that!”

Little Francisco was laid away at the ranch. For some time Jimmie felt sad and lonely. Francisco had been his chum. The end was cruel and horrible.

So he was mighty glad when Joe sent him out with old Jack Long, to help take a pack-train and bunch of cavalry horses clear to Camp Bowie, by way of Tucson.

“An’, b’gosh, you’d better hustle back,” warned Joe. “That Chuntz is a-goin’ to be made to pay for his boy killin’, as soon as thar’s snow on the peaks. The old man’s only waitin’ till winter sets in.”

It seemed high time that something was done. In the past twelve months of Peace Policy over forty Americans and Mexicans of Arizona had been killed by the Apaches, sixteen wounded, and five hundred and fifty cattle stolen.

X

ON THE TRAIL WITH THE PACK-TRAIN

John Cahill, the new blacksmith at Grant, went; but Joe had been appointed a scout, and stayed at home.

Tucson, only fifty-five miles south, was easily made in two days, for the loose horses and the Grant pack-mules traveled light. But Camp Bowie, at the Apache Pass in the Chiricahua Mountains, was one hundred and ten miles east from Tucson and Camp Lowell. That meant a real march with thirty loaded mules, and a hundred remount cavalry horses, and the cavalry escort commanded by Lieutenant Jacob Almy, and a riding-mule for each man of the pack-train.

The packs were chiefly ammunition. Each mule carried three hundred pounds.

“We’ll jest see what we can do, boys,” said Jack. “Regulations try to make us think that a hundred and seventy pounds is all a mule’ll stand; but the gin’ral knows more’n ary regulations issued by those folks at Washington. I wouldn’t insult a good sound mule by puttin’ only a hundred seventy on his back――not if he’s packed right. Pack him right, so the load slings even, an’ he’ll carry his two hundred fifty an’ three hundred pounds at five miles an hour for twenty-five an’ thirty miles a day, week in an’ week out.”

Old Jack was the pack-master or patron (pa-_trone_). Frank Monach was assistant pack-master, or cargador (car-ga-_dore_). “Slim Shorty” was cook or cencero (cen-_say_-ro). Frank Cahill was blacksmith. The packers or arrieros were Jim O’Neill, “Chileno John,” “Long Jim” Cook (six feet eight), Charley Hopkins, Sam Wisser the Pennsylvania German, and Lauriano Gomez who sang Spanish songs.

The pack-train was called an atajo (ah-tah-ho); the packs were “cargoes,” and the pack-saddles or aparejos, and such stuff, composed the “riggings.”

Pack-train service had a language all its own. Yes, and an army train as organized under General Crook had a discipline all its own, too, as Jimmie soon found out.

The trail from Tucson to Bowie was the main Southern overland stage road between the Rio Grande River in New Mexico and San Diego of the Pacific. Therefore the traveling up hill and down was good.

It was Jimmie’s business to help herd the mules, in the evening and the early morning, while the regular herders were eating; and to come in and rouse the cook, at daybreak, and get him wood and water, if needed.

In half an hour after the cook was up, the men were wakened. While they were folding their blankets (which were the pack-blankets) and taking the canvas coverings off the “riggings” and “cargoes,” Jimmie brought in the herd.

This was not difficult, because when he started the wise old bell leader, all the mules followed; and so well had they been trained that except for a few “shave tails” they took their own places, in a sort of company front, each facing his pile of “rigging.” Every mule had his own, individual “rigging,” adjusted to fit him perfectly.

The packers saddled their riding mules, and ate breakfast. After breakfast they put the “riggings” and “cargoes” on the pack-mules.

They worked in pairs, and each pair attended to ten mules. A full pack-train was composed of fifty mules; ten mules were assigned to a troop or company of soldiers. The thirty mules in this train of Patron Jack called for six packers.

Jimmie helped “Slim Shorty” the cook pack his kitchen stuff; and Jimmie and the cook and John Cahill the blacksmith watched the loaded mules, especially any “shave tails,” so that they should not ramble away or try to lie down.

The packers worked like lightning, uttering scarcely a word except signal words, for it was against regulations to talk much. The schedule of breaking camp or “unparking” a train was as follows: Twenty minutes for before-breakfast work, fifteen minutes for breakfast, twenty minutes for putting on the “riggings,” twenty minutes for putting on the “cargoes”; total, one hour and a quarter.

But “Chileno John” and Jim O’Neill, who were the prize pair of packers, in an exhibition feat loaded their ten mules complete (“riggings” and packs and all) in ten minutes!

The moment that the train was ready, Patron Jack, who had been eying closely, called “Bell!” and “Slim Shorty” the cook rode the white bell mare out upon the trail; in single file the pack-mules――“bell sharps” and “shave tails” and slow “drag tails”――stepped after, usually of their own accord.

The cavalry escort took the advance. Patron Jack and “Slim Shorty” led the pack-train. The packers rode, one beside every fifth mule. Frank Monach the assistant pack-master or “cargador” brought up the rear, with John Cahill the blacksmith, whose business it was to look out for dropped shoes and sore hoofs.

Jimmie rode behind, too. The long file of swaying, plodding mules, under the canvas-covered packs, made a fascinating sight. So did the sturdy packers or “arrieros,” in their broad hats and suspenders and flannel shirts, and trousers tucked into heavy boots.

Jack aimed to start out by sun-up at the latest, so as to finish the twenty-five or thirty miles at one stretch before mid-day heat and dust. This was only a moderate march, in fairly level country. In rough mountain country, fifteen miles a day, at a go-as-you-can gait, would be enough.

To unload and make camp was called “parking.” The “riggings” and “cargoes” were laid out in two neat parallel lines, and covered. Jack and Frank Monach examined the mules, for sore backs caused by badly fitting aparejos. The “bell” was hobbled and turned to pasture and the mules followed.

“Riggings” were repaired, if necessary, and scraped clean of sweat and dirt. The pack-blankets were opened, to air for sleeping blankets; from their war-bags, or canvas clothing sacks, the men took out what stuff they required.

But the pack-mules were the main thought. Nothing in the way of petting and fancy trappings was too good for a pack-mule. Each mule had its name, and knew that name. Nobody was permitted to strike a mule or abuse it in any manner.

“You can abuse a dog an’ he’ll forgive you,” said old Jack. “But you mistreat a mule, an’ he’ll never forget. You can change yore clothes, but you can’t change yore smell――not to a mule!”

The bell horse or “cencero” (which is the Spanish for “bell”) had the easiest time of any of the pack-train animals. It wasn’t packed. All that the “bell” had to do was to tinkle along and set the pace, while carrying the cook. The “bell” ought to be white, because mules were supposed to be especially fond of white; the “bell” ought to be a horse, because mules respected a horse more than they did another mule; and if “he” was a white mare, as in this train, then so much the better, because mules loved white mares.

The cook rode the “bell,” and therefore was nicknamed “cencero,” himself.

Patron Jack expected to make Camp Bowie in five days easy, which would bring the pack-train and the cavalry through in good condition. The first two nights out, the mules were herded, to graze; but on the third day the road crossed the Dragoon Mountains by way of Dragoon Pass. This night the mules were tied along a stretched picket-rope, for the Dragoon Mountains were Chiricahua country, and contained Cochise’s Stronghold.

“He’s off yonder at this very minute, an’ mebbe lookin’ for us,” declared Cargador Frank Monach. “I’ll bet a cooky those hills south’ard are plumb full o’ Chiricahua.”

“That’s where they killed pore Bob Whitney, all right enough,” mused Jim O’Neill. “Down at Dragoon Springs, in the Stronghold. Yes, an’ many another man has left his scalp there. That range westward is the Whetstones, or Mustangs, where they got Cushing; and on west of the Whetstones is Davidson’s Canyon south of Tucson, where Lieutenant Stewart and Corporal Black went under. By ginger, a fellow doesn’t look out on a very pleasant view, from up here!”

From the open Dragoon Pass of the stage road the Dragoon Mountains, low and rolling but very rough, with much brush and stunted timber, extended southward to the Mexican line; and separated from them by yellow deserts, west and east and north rose other low ranges――all chosen hiding-places of the fierce Chiricahuas.

“Anyhow,” remarked Jack Long, with a sly wink, “we got a young chi-kis-n o’ theirs hyar――reg’lar member o’ the Cochise fam’ly――to talk for us; an’ if ary Chiricahua appear we’ll send him in to ’em.”

Jimmie grinned and scratched his head; whether Cochise and Geronimo would wait and listen to him, he wasn’t certain. But he’d rather like to see Nah-che and Nah-da-ste, and explain why he had run away.

The stage and the mail riders had been attacked in this very pass. However, nothing alarming happened, to-night. And the probable reason why, they learned the next day.

Dragoon Pass was about half-way between Tucson and Bowie, so that Bowie now lay some fifty miles east. The Chiricahua Mountains and their Apache Pass might be seen, in the eastern horizon.

The Chiricahuas had been so bad during the last two months that the stage road was being little traveled. And when, in the morning, on the way down from the pass a cloud of dust was sighted before, everybody stared, suspicious.

Horsemen! Injuns? No, cavalry! Good! A scouting detachment from Bowie, as like as not; or from Crittenden or Lowell, behind. Lieutenant Almy met them first, and both parties stopped, to talk. Patron Jack, at the head of the pack-train, spread his two arms as signal for “Halt!” and he trotted on, to join.

There was a lengthy confab.

“Wall, wonder what’s up?” drawled Frank Monach. “Reckon I’d better go an’ see.”

“Send the boy, an’ save yore mule,” suggested Blacksmith John Cahill. “He’s fairly itchin’ to sit in.”

So Jimmie somewhat importantly trotted forward, too, up the long line of dozing, switching pack-mules, to bring back news if he heard any.

The party of riders from the east were several officers, and three or four booted, flannel-shirted, whiskered civilians, wearing heavy Colt’s six-shooters and carrying rifles. Yes, and somebody else――a young Mexican, dark enough to be an Apache, clad in broad-brimmed black hat, dirty cotton shirt, old trousers and moccasins.

Jimmie knew him in two looks. Maria Jilda Grijalba! That same Maria who had been a captive in the Cochise camp, and who, Micky Free had said, had escaped after Jimmie had escaped.

Jimmie gladly rode straight to him.

“Buenos dias, Maria (Good day, Maria).”

“Buenos dias, amigo (friend),” responded Maria, and they shook hands heartily.

“I heard you had escaped from the Apaches. What are you doing here?”

“I have come out from Camp Bowie with these officers,” answered Maria. “I work for the fort now. I am a scout and interpreter. We are going to talk with Cochise, at the Dragoon Springs.”

“What, amigo!”

“Yes,” nodded Maria. “General Howard, the great man with the one arm, is there, with Cochise, waiting. He has come from Washington again, and has found Cochise. He has been in the Cochise camp for six days. They have made peace. There will be a Chiricahua reservation, and now General Howard has sent for the comandante at Bowie, so that the comandante and Cochise shall know each other, and there will be no mistake.”