Part 9

“No, I didn’t come to work; I came to fight the Tonto,” laughed Micky. “But the rest of you had better work, or I’ll be the only one to get to Camp Grant.”

Amidst the hurly-burly of stumbling mules and perspiring packers Jimmie lost him, and did not sight him again until long after sunrise the next morning, when at last the command was out of the canyons and the wearied pack-train followed the cavalry into camp.

Micky was already there, ahead, squatting beside Alchisé. He arose and came back to where Jimmie was helping Slim Shorty, the cook.

“Alchisé says there will be some good fights, Cheemie,” remarked Micky. “Now I want you to take me to your general, so that he will know who I am.”

“Aw, pshaw, Micky!” protested Jimmie. And in Apache: “I can’t. I’m busy. The general wants to eat and sleep, and so do I.”

“Who is this one-eye?” asked Slim Shorty. “Where’s he from an’ what’s his trouble?”

“His name’s Micky Free. He was with the Pedro band and helped me get away from the Chiricahua. He asks me to take him to the general.”

“What! Tell him to chase himself. ’Tain’t any time for payin’ social visits,” growled Slim Shorty. “It’s grub time an’ sleep time, an’ you’re workin’ for me. Savvy that?” Slim Shorty was cross, like everyone else. Twenty-six hours straight had they been climbing and threshing about.

“Here comes your general now,” prompted Micky. “He doesn’t eat or sleep. You can take me to him when he passes, Cheemie.”

Sure enough, General Crook, on the faithful mule “Apache,” was ambling slowly from group to group, through the camp; in his stained canvas suit, his shot gun across his saddle! He seemed to be on a tour of inspection, with particular regard for the pack-mules.

As he passed, the men stiffened to their feet, and stood at attention. He dropped a word here and there, and halted briefly at Slim Shorty’s fire. Slim stood at attention, so did Jimmie, but Micky only waited, red-headed, lightly clad, grinning amiably.

“Feed your men well, cook,” bade the general. “They’ve earned double rations. I see you’ve got a good supply of beans. That’s right. Always set your beans to cook the night before, and they’ll be much more wholesome.”

“Yes, sir,” answered Slim Shorty. “But these hyar beans won’t be done till noon. There warn’t any ‘night before,’ this last trip. Got plenty bread, bacon an’ coffee, though.”

“Oh, in that case――――,” smiled the general. His face was a little drawn, but he didn’t look especially tired, and neither did Apache. “How are you, my lad?” he queried, of Jimmie, and his eyes fell upon Micky. “Who’s this? I didn’t know he was with the column. I’ve seen him at Camp Apache. His name is Micky Free.”

“Yes, sir,” answered Jimmie. “He lives with Chief Pedro’s band of Sierra Blanca. He helped me get away from the Chiricahua camp, that time.”

“He’s not Apache?”

“No, sir. He’s half Mexican and half Irish.”

“What’s he doing here? Is he enlisted with the scouts?”

“I don’t think so, sir,” faltered Jimmie. “Not with the Apache scouts. He isn’t Indian. He followed us. He asked me to tell you that he wants to fight the Tonto, though.”

“Well, well. That’s all right, but I haven’t time to tend to that now, my boy,” replied the general. “I’m going after some breakfast. Let him report to Lieutenant Bourke. Bourke has charge of the scouts. When we get to Grant we’ll give him a chance to fight.” And the general rode on. He kept going, until he disappeared around a shoulder in some low ground. He did not return for two hours, and then he brought back a load of reed birds, for the officers’ mess. What a man!

“What did he say?” inquired Micky, who spoke no English, of Jimmie.

“He said to have you report to Lieutenant Bourke, and when we got to Grant you would be shown fighting.”

“That is good,” approved Micky. “I don’t care anything about your Lieutenant Bourke, but the general has promised me fighting and I like him. I will go to Grant, and then we will chase the Tonto with the general, Cheemie; you and I.”

So saying, Micky strolled away, to eat with Alchisé. Throughout the remainder of the march to Camp Grant he did about as he pleased: sometimes he rode in advance, with Alchisé and Archie MacIntosh; and sometimes he rode with Jimmie, at the rear; and sometimes he vanished, to explore on his own hook. But he always turned up at meal times!

With his ragged clothes, and his red head and his smudgy reddish upper lip and his one bright blue eye, Micky was a privileged character.

Camp Grant was reached exactly on time, and for the next three days of this first week in November it was a busy place. Dispatch bearers came and went; Chief Packer Tom Moore was here, from Whipple; one hundred White Mountain scouts arrived, under Chief Es-qui-nos-quiz-n or Big Mouth; Pima and Maricopa chiefs were waiting, to talk with “Cluke” and find out what he wanted; word came that the Hualpais were ready, for they also hated the Apaches, as the Pimas and Maricopas did. But Chief Es-kim-en-zin refused to let any of his young men enlist; the Arivaipas had friends among the outlaw Pinals who ranged near the Tonto Basin.

Every officer and enlisted man and pack-mule that could be spared from the various posts, and every Indian who could be trusted off the reservations, was called into service. Jimmie felt certain that he ought to be included; he had done his level best, on the trip around by Bowie and Apache――nobody had worked harder. So he anxiously consulted Joe Felmer.

“Wall, you see it’s this way,” said Joe: “I’m goin’ as scout――Archie MacIntosh, Tony Besias, an’ me, ’long with the Major Brown column. That keeps us in advance, an’ ’twon’t be any place for a boy. This is war. So you stick ’round old Jack; he’ll boss the pack-train, an’ I happen to know that he thinks purty well o’ you. He says you tended strictly to bus’ness, an’ obeyed orders.”

Jimmie looked up Patron Jack.

“Shore thing, muchacho,” answered Jack. “I told you I’d make a fust-class packer of you, an’ I will. You fetch yore war-bag an’ fall in ready to help the cook’ an’ by the time we’re out o’ the Tonto Basin with old Chuntz’s scalp mebbe you’ll get a second-class ratin’.”

Hurrah! It was only proper, too, for Chief Chuntz had murdered little Francisco, and had not little Francisco been his, Jimmie’s, partner? Everybody at Grant was particularly eager to kill or capture Chuntz.

“To-morrow we start,” remarked Micky. “Where is the Gray Fox, Cheemie?”

“Who is that, Micky?”

“Cluke. He is the Gray Fox, because of his smartness and his dirt-color clothes. All the Indians are calling him the Gray Fox. Where is he?”

“I don’t know. He is visiting other forts, getting the soldiers ready.”

And that was true. General Crook was leaving nothing at loose ends, but instead of issuing his orders from headquarters, was overseeing the details in person. He never tired.

“I would rather follow him on the war trail,” continued Micky. “But if he is not here I shall go with Big Mouth and Nan-ta-je and Lieutenant Bourke, and you. It will mean fighting. We will find the Tonto and Yavapai. That I know.”

“How do you know, Micky?” asked Jimmie curiously――for Micky spoke assuredly.

“I know it from Nan-ta-je. Why he knows I cannot tell you now, but you will see.” And with that, the mysterious red-headed Micky became Indian, and refused to utter another word on the subject.

As far as Jimmie could learn from Joe Felmer and Jack Long and the talk at the post, the plan for the campaign was as follows:

The troops and scouts at Camp Apache, under Major George M. Randall, of the Twenty-third Infantry, were to work in toward the Tonto Basin from the east. The Camp Grant column, under Brevet Major W. H. Brown, were to work up from the south. From the far northwest, at Camp Hualpai, Colonel Julius W. Mason (who had roundly threshed the Apache-Mohaves that had conspired to assassinate General Crook at Date Creek, last summer) was to march down with his Fifth Cavalry and some Hualpais. From Date Creek to the southwest Captain George F. Price, of the Fifth Cavalry, should come on; and from the west the Fort Whipple column, under Major Alexander MacGregor, of the First Cavalry, and the Camp Verde First Cavalry under Colonel C. C. C. Carr, and the Camp McDowell Fifth Cavalry and Pimas and Maricopas under Captain “Jimmie” Burns, were to complete the circle.

They all were to clean the country as they advanced, and close in on the Tonto Basin.

Just before the Camp Grant column started, the general’s final orders were read to all the soldiers and scouts, in line. It was to be a fight to a finish. The Indians who would not surrender must be pursued until killed or captured. Women and children should not be harmed, if possible. Prisoners were to be well treated. Men prisoners should be enlisted as scouts, when they were willing to serve; and full use should be made of them, to discover the hiding-places of the other wild Apaches. And――――

“The general commanding the Department wishes to state that no excuse will be accepted for leaving a trail. If the horses become unfit for service, the enemy must be followed on foot. He expects that no sacrifice shall be left untried by officers and men, to make the campaign short, sharp and decisive.”

Antonio Besias the interpreter and guide translated the orders for the Apache scouts. At his first opportunity, Micky asked Jimmie to repeat them. Nan-ta-je also listened attentively. He grunted satisfaction.

“That is good,” commented Micky. “It is straight talk. We will find what we are looking for.”

The Major Brown column out of Camp Grant consisted of Companies L and M of the Fifth Cavalry, commanded by Captain Alfred B. Taylor and Lieutenant Jacob Almy, Lieutenant (Brevet Major) William J. Ross, of the Twenty-first Infantry, who had won honors in the Civil War, and Lieutenant John G. Bourke, of the Third Cavalry, who had been General Crook’s aide-de-camp. They were all good fighting men. Then there were thirty Sierra Blanca Apache scouts――Chief Big Mouth, Alchisé who was called Alchisay, Nan-ta-je whom the soldiers nicknamed “Joe,” Na-kay-do-klun-ni who was nicknamed “Bobby Do-klinny,” and the others, managed by Joe Felmer, Archie MacIntosh and Antonio Besias. Then there was the pack-train of fifty mules, in charge of Pack-Master Jack Long and Assistant Frank Monach, and ten such first-class packers as Jim O’Neill, Chileno John, “Long Jim” Cook and “Short Jim” Cook, Manuel Lopez, old Sam Wisser the German, with Slim Shorty as cook and John Cahill as blacksmith――men tried and true. Then there was Mr. James Daily, General Crook’s brother-in-law who had come out to Whipple last spring with his sister Mrs. Crook, and was “seeing the country” with the cavalry; and Micky Free, who might be counted as a sort of “detached” scout.

Altogether, Jimmie felt convinced, this was the best column in the field. As Patron Jack asserted, it could “lick its weight in wild-cats.”

XIII

HUNTING THE YAVAPAI

“Now Apache catch Apache,” announced Micky.

It was a sharply chill evening, December 27, this 1872, and under a clouded sky the whole Major Brown command were encamped together in the little canyon of Cottonwood Creek, about seventy-five miles northwest of Camp Grant.

Not far west rose the long, high plateau of the Mazatzal or Four Peaks Range, through which the Salt River cut a deep, crooked trail toward Camp MacDowell on the other side.

But the seventy-five miles was only a small portion of the distance that had been covered. The Major Brown column out of Grant had been marching north, west, south, and north again, for more than a month; sometimes in cactus and sunshine, sometimes in snow and storm, ever trying to corral the Chuntz and Delt-che outlaws.

These were hard to find. In this rough canyon country they had made their homes for years and years. They knew every inch of it. Only the Sierra Blanca scouts, who were afoot, in silent moccasins, and kept a day’s march ahead, had had any luck. Twice they had struck small rancherias; and they had killed four or five warriors.

Micky hunted with the scouts, daytimes; and each night, when in camp, he had great stories to tell. It all was a lark, to Micky the red-head. He had captured a rifle, in one of the Chuntz jacals or huts, and now was very happy. He seemed rather to pity Jimmie, who was held to the plodding, scrambling pack-train, at the rear.

Still, duty was duty, and business was business; and the pack-train was as important as the soldiers or the scouts. Without the pack-train, then the expedition needs must quit or starve――and what would General Crook say?

On Christmas Day forty men of Company G, Fifth Cavalry, commanded by Captain “Jimmie” Burns and Lieutenant Earl D. Thomas, with pack-train and almost one hundred Pima Indian scouts, all from Camp MacDowell, had joined.

They’d had some luck. On the top of the Four Peaks they had surprised a Yavapai rancheria (one of Delt-che’s, they thought), had killed six Indians and captured a squaw and a little boy. They had brought the boy along, because he could kill quail with stones and with bow and arrow. His new name was “Mike.”

Only Nan-ta-je could understand much that Mike said. The Yavapai language was different from straight Apache. And why Nan-ta-je understood Yavapai, Jimmie presently found out.

This evening of December 27, two days after the Captain Burns column had been met, something evidently was up. Patron Jack had received orders from Major Brown to park his mules in close, along a picket line, “in a place easy of defence.” That was one hint.

“‘Find heap Injuns, poco tiempo (in little while),’ those scouts keep sayin’, do they?” grumbled Jack. “Humph! Looks like ‘heap Injuns’ might be goin’ to find _us_, mebbe!”

And now as Jimmie, having finished his duties for the evening, made way through the early dusk to look up Micky and listen to the stories of the scouts, he noted that Major Brown and the six officers and Chief Guide Archie MacIntosh were in a group around a little fire, talking low with one another.

The soldiers, wrapped in their cavalry overcoats, huddled also, in messes, smoking and joking. They might have been waiting for the time to roll in their blankets, but somehow they all seemed to be waiting for something else.

A little apart from the cavalry camp was the scouts’ camp; Chief Big Mouth’s White Mountains in one place, the Pimas in another. The Apaches certainly knew how to make themselves comfortable. They stuffed their moccasins with dry grass, to keep their feet warmer, and slept two or three together in snug beds among the rocks.

This evening they were having an especially good time. They were roasting and eating pieces of a mule that had died from poison. Micky was squatting and tearing at a chunk, like the rest of them, near one of their little fires.

With greasy mouth he grinned amiably as Jimmie approached to squat beside him.

“Come and eat, Boy-who-sleeps,” he greeted, in Apache.

“I have eaten. I am full,” explained Jimmie. Poisoned mule was rather more than he could stomach, although when with the Chiricahuas he had eaten almost anything.

“It is well to be full,” said Micky, chewing hard. “We may not eat again for a long time.”

“Why, Red-head?”

“Because,” asserted Micky, changing to Mexican-Spanish, “now Apache catch Apache. We start soon. If you want to go, you had better be getting ready.”

“Where are they? How do you know?” demanded Jimmie.

Micky swallowed a large mouthful of mule meat, and held his chunk in the coals again, with a sharpened stick.

“I know,” he said. “Soon all the soldiers will know, so I will tell you what I could not tell you before. Cluke knew, when we left Camp Grant. He had talked with Bocon (which was Spanish for Big Mouth), and with Nan-ta-je. Major Brown knew, too. But it has been a secret. We are here to fight Delt-che’s Yavapai where they have hidden in the Four Peaks above the Salt River. Nan-ta-je was brought up, there, when he was a boy. It is a big cave, in the face of the canyon made by the Salt River. It is reached by a secret trail from above. Nan-ta-je knows the trail. He told Bocon and Bocon told the Gray Fox, and they arranged, at Camp Grant. First we were to chase Chuntz, who had killed your Francisco. That has been done, and he has got away. Now we will follow Nan-ta-je to the cave of the Delt-che people.”

“How far, Micky?” breathlessly asked Jimmie.

Micky proceeded to gnaw his meat chunk, hot though it was.

“A night’s march, over the mountains along the Salt River. We start as soon as a bright star rises over the hills in the east. The soldiers must leave their horses, and all wear moccasins, to make no noise, and must get there before daylight. If we are discovered on the trail, we will be killed, every one of us. Nobody can escape, then. That is what Bocon and Nan-ta-je say, and they know. It will be a fine fight, anyway. The Yavapai will be in their cave, behind a rock wall across its mouth, and we will be on a flat place outside, in front; and those who fall off will land, in the river, far below. Yes. That is why I came, to see. You must run off from your pack-mules and be there, too, Cheemie.”

“No, I won’t run off, but I’ll ask, you bet!” exclaimed Jimmie, jumping up.

“Inju (good)!” grunted Micky, gulping fast, to finish his chunk. “You and I will stay with the White Mountains. They will fight. But I don’t think much of these Pimas. Whenever one is killed, the rest stop fighting and make medicine.”

Jimmie hustled back. He was all on fire to go. It sounded as though it was to be a fight that a fellow would hate to miss.

A change had come over the camp. The cavalry detachments were astir. The non-commissioned officers were passing among the squads, inspecting equipment; in the glow of the fires the men were donning moccasins, overhauling their stubby fifty-calibre Springfield carbines, and stuffing their cartridge-belts, worn outside their blue overcoats, with the brass cartridges distributed from the green ammunition-boxes lugged by the pack-train.

The officers’ council had broken up; the captains and lieutenants were with their companies; Archie MacIntosh and Joe Felmer strode briskly through, for the scouts. Jimmie seized upon Joe.

“Joe! Can I go? I want to go!”

“Whar?”

“To see the fight at the cave!”

“What cave? How do you know about any cave? You must have been with that pesky Micky Free ag’in. Wall, you keep yore mouth shut about a cave. No, I don’t say you can go. You aren’t under my orders. You’re with the pack outfit. Don’t bother me.”

And away hastened Joe, following Archie. Away hastened Jimmie, likewise, to find Jack Long.

All the cavalry horses had been tied to a picket rope, near the mules, against the canyon side. The riggings and the packs were being piled as a breastwork――the task had been almost completed――old Jack and Frank Monach and Jim O’Neill and Blacksmith John Cahill and even Slim Shorty were standing armed and ready――evidently the packers were to join the cavalrymen――hurrah, the pack men were to be in the fight!

“Say, whar you been?” accused Jack. “Now you stay――――”

“Oh, Jack, can I go? I want to go, Jack! Please can I go?” pleaded Jimmie.

“Seems to me you’re alluz wantin’ to ‘go’ some’ers,” growled Jack. “You ask Joe Felmer. He’s yore gardeen.”

“I did ask him and he said I wasn’t with him, I was with the pack outfit; and the pack outfit’s going, isn’t it?” argued Jimmie.

“Best part of it,” admitted Jack. “Orders from the major are for every able-bodied man to march out, an’ for those who can’t climb to guard the animals an’ packs, hyar. Dunno which’ll be the dangerouser place, in case the Injuns try a stampede.”

“Oh, let him go; he’s earned it, I reckon,” spoke up “Long Jim” Cook gruffly. “He can stick beside o’ me. (Long Jim being six feet eight!) Then all the bullets’ll fly so high he won’t even feel the wind of ’em.”

“I’ll be up in front with Micky Free. Micky and I can scout as well as any Apache,” panted Jimmie. “We won’t be hurt.” He turned, to make off again, but Jack sternly halted him.

“You do as the rest do, then: put on a blanket-roll an’ stick in some grub, an’ change yore feet into moccasins.”

That took only a few moments, for a boy in a hurry. Slim Shorty the cook good-naturedly supplied the moccasins; the blanket-roll was made up in a jiffy, around a wad of bread and cold meat, and was slung over Jimmie’s left shoulder――――

“If ’twasn’t Micky Free I wouldn’t let you go,” warned Jack. “But nothin’ yet invented can harm _him_, so if you jest hang onto his shirt-tail he’ll take you through!”

This time Jimmie got away, but none too soon, for the soldier column was forming, to low commands. The fires had died down, darkness had closed in, and he scurried fast, through the gloom. The scouts were bunched――Apaches together, and Pimas together――standing, wrapped in their blankets, waiting. Beyond them, somebody struck a match. The flame lighted the face of Nan-ta-je and of Major Brown, who was looking at his watch.

Jimmie, pausing and peering, felt a hand on his arm and heard Micky’s voice, under breath. Micky could see in the dark.

“Inju. Star nearly up. Before sun is up, big fight.”

Nan-ta-je’s star must have appeared at that very moment, for Major Brown struck another match, to show his hand raised as signal, he and Nan-ta-je moved forward, the scouts moved, pressing in the wake of Archie MacIntosh, and Joe, and Tony Besias, there were gruff orders, half whispers, from the sergeants, to the soldiers; and amidst soft shuffle of moccasins the whole long column followed the lead of the major and Nan-ta-je, presently up out of the little canyon, for the high mesa or table-land above.

Whew, but the December night was growing cold! The clouds had broken, the stars were very bright, faintly illumining the dark winding column, and the frosty breaths wafting from it. Scarce a sound, except the scuff of the moccasins, could be heard. The United States cavalry in Arizona did not carry sabers when scouting for Apaches; and to-night even the canteens had been stowed in the blanket rolls, lest they jingle.

According to the north star the course was westerly. Nan-ta-je and the major led at a rapid pace, to keep the men warm. Jimmie stuck close by Micky. He had no fear of not being able to hold his own. He trotted loose-kneed, toeing in, head up, breathing through his nose, Apache way.

Trudge, trudge, scuff, scuff, hour after hour, as seemed, westward across the high, rough mesa where the snow lay in patches and the Four Peaks of the Mazatzal rose close on the right. To the left was the canyon of the Salt River.

The Apache scouts forged ahead of the cavalry. Along after midnight, from a little rise sign was seen away off, before. Lights! Major Brown and Nan-ta-je had halted.

“Come! Quick!” hissed Micky, he and Jimmie trotting faster. “Camp-fires. Maybe Yavapai.”

“Column, halt! Lie down, men,” sounded the low gruff order, behind.

Down flopped everybody, except Archie MacIntosh and Joe Felmer, and half a dozen of the scouts with them, who continued on rapidly. Micky slipped after, like a shadow; he did not intend to miss anything.

Jimmie had dropped in the van of the other scouts, near to the major and Nan-ta-je. They and Chief Big Mouth and Bobby Do-klinny were crouched under a blanket.

“Nan-ta-je step in track. Think it man track,” grunted, in Apache, the Indian beside Jimmie. Queer how the Apaches seemed to know everything! And Nan-ta-je had merely felt the track, through his moccasin sole!

Under the blanket the major――or somebody――struck another match. Just the faint crackle told. The little group examined the track, there was short muttering; then the crouchers relaxed and quit, and waited. Big Mouth crept back.

“Shosh (Bear),” he informed.

Nan-ta-je had been fooled, but a bear track is very much like a moccasin track.