On The Border With Crook. John Gregory Bourke
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once firing it.
Be this as it may, we were greeted with another shot, which killed the blacksmith of “K” Troop, First Cavalry, and right behind the shot came the big Indian himself, using his rifle as a shillelah, beating Corporal Costello over the head with it and knocking him senseless, and then turning upon Sergeant Harrington and a soldier of the First Cavalry named Wolf, dealing each a blow on the skull, which would have ended them had not his strength begun to ebb away with his life-blood, now flowing freely from the death-wound through the body which we had succeeded in inflicting.
One horse laid up, three men knocked out, and another man killed was a pretty steep price to pay for the killing of this one Indian, but we consoled ourselves with the thought that the Apaches had met with a great loss in the death of so valiant a warrior. We had had other losses on that day, and the hostiles had left other dead; our pack-train was beginning to show signs of wear and tear from the fatigue of climbing up and down these stony, brush-covered, arid mountain-sides. One of the mules had broken its neck or broken its back by slipping off a steep trail, and all needed some rest and recuperation.
From every peak now curled the ominous signal smoke of the enemy, and no further surprises would be possible. Not all of the smokes were to be taken as signals; many of them might be signs of death, as the Apaches at that time adhered to the old custom of abandoning a village and setting it on fire the moment one of their number died, and as soon as this smoke was seen the adjacent villages would send up answers of sympathy.
Cushing thought that, under all the circumstances, it would be good policy to move over to some eligible position where we could hold our own against any concentration the enemy might be tempted to make against us, and there stay until the excitement occasioned by our presence in the country had abated.
The spring near the eastern base of the Pinal Mountains, where the “killing” of the early spring had taken place, suggested itself, and thither we marched as fast as our animals could make the trip. But we had counted without our host; the waters were so polluted with dead bodies, there were so many skulls in the spring itself, that no animal, much less man, would imbibe of the fluid. The ground was strewn with bones—ribs and arms and vertebrae—dragged about by the coyotes, and the smell was so vile that, tired as all were, no one felt any emotion but one of delight when Cushing gave the order to move on.
The Apaches had been there to bury their kinsfolk and bewail their loss, and in token of grief and rage had set fire to all the grass for several miles, and consequently it was to the direct benefit of all our command, two-footed or four-footed, to keep moving until we might find a better site for a bivouac.
We did not halt until we had struck the San Carlos, some thirty-five miles to the east, and about twelve or fourteen miles above its junction with the Gila. Here we made camp, intending to remain several days. A rope was stretched from one to the other of two stout sycamores, and to this each horse and mule was attached by its halter. Pickets were thrown out upon the neighboring eminences, and a detail from the old guard was promptly working at bringing in water and wood for the camp-fires. The grooming began, and ended almost as soon as the welcome cry of “Supper!” resounded. The coffee was boiling hot; the same could be said of the bacon; the hard tack had mildewed a little during the wet weather to which it had been exposed, but there was enough roasted mescal from the Indian villages to eke out our supplies.
The hoofs and back of every animal had been examined and cared for, and then blankets were spread out and all hands made ready to turn in. There were no tents, as no shelter was needed, but each veteran was wise enough to scratch a little semicircle in the ground around his head, to turn the rain should any fall during the night, and to erect a wind-brake to screen him from the chill breezes which sometimes blew about midnight.
Although there was not much danger of a night-attack from the Apaches, who almost invariably made their onset with the first twinkle of the coming dawn in the east, yet a careful watch was always kept, to frustrate their favorite game of crawling on hands and feet up to the horses, and sending an arrow into the herd or the sentinel, as might happen to be most convenient.
Not far from this camp I saw, for the first time, a fight between a tarantula and a “tarantula hawk.” Manuel Duran had always insisted that the gray tarantula could whip the black one, and that there was something that flew about in the evening that could and would make the quarrelsome gray tarantula seek safety in abject flight. It was what we used to call in my school-boy days “the devil’s darning-needle” which made its appearance, and seemed to worry the great spider very much. The tarantula stood up on its hind legs, and did its best to ward off impending fate, but it was no use. The “hawk” hit the tarantula in the back and apparently paralyzed him, and then seemed to be pulling at one of the hind legs. I have since been informed that there is some kind of a fluid injected into the back of the tarantula which acts as a stupefier, and at the same time the “hawk” deposits its eggs there, which, hatching, feed upon the spider. For all this I cannot vouch, as I did not care to venture too near those venomous reptiles and insects of that region, at least not until after I had acquired more confidence from greater familiarity with them.
We saw no more Indian “sign” on that trip, which had not been, however, devoid of all incident.
And no sooner had we arrived at Camp Grant than we were out again, this time guided by an Apache squaw, who had come into the post during our absence, and given to the commanding officer a very consistent story of ill-treatment at the hands of her people. She said that her husband was dead, killed in a fight with the troops, and that she and her baby had not been treated with the kindness which they had a right to expect. I do not remember in what this ill-treatment consisted, but most likely none of the brothers of the deceased had offered to marry the widow and care for her and her little one, as is the general custom, in which the Apaches resemble the Hebrews of ancient times. If the troops would follow her, she would guide them into a very bad country, where there was a “rancheria” which could be attacked and destroyed very readily.
So back we went, this time on foot, carrying our rations on our backs, crossing the Piñaleno to the south of the Aravaypa, and ascending until we reached the pine forest upon its summit; then down into the valley at the extreme head of the Aravaypa, and over into the broken country on the other side of the Gabilan, or Hawk Cañon.
Everything had happened exactly as the squaw had predicted it would, and she showed that she was familiar with the slightest details of the topography, and thus increased our confidence in what we had to expect to such an extent that she was put in the lead, and we followed on closely, obeying all her directions and instructions. Our men refrained from whistling, from talking—almost, I might say, from breathing—because she insisted upon such perfect silence while on the march. There were few instructions given, and these were passed from mouth to mouth in whispers. No one dared strike a match, lest the flash should alarm some of the enemy’s pickets. We had no pack-train, and that great source of noise—the shouting of packers to straying mules—was done away with. All our rations were on our own backs, and with the exception of one led mule, loaded with a couple of thousand rounds of extra ammunition, we had absolutely nothing to impede the most rapid march. We walked slowly over the high mountains, and down into deep ravines, passing through a country which seemed well adapted for the home of Indians. There were groves of acorn-bearing oaks, a considerable amount of mescal, Spanish bayonet, some mesquite, and a plenty of grasses whose seeds could be gathered by the squaws in their long, conical baskets, and then ground between two oblong, half-round stones into a meal which would make a pretty good mush.
It was very dark and quite chilly as dawn drew nigh, and every one was shivering with cold and hunger and general nervous excitement. The squaw whispered that we were close upon the site of the “rancheria,” which was in a little grassy amphitheatre a short distance in front. Slowly we drew nearer and nearer to the doomed village, and traversed the smooth, open place whereon the young bucks had been playing their great game of “mushka,” in which they roll a hoop and then throw lance staves to fall to the ground as the hoop ceases to roll. Very near this was a slippery-faced rock—either slate or basalt, the darkness did not permit a close examination—down which the children had been sliding to the grass, and, just within biscuit-throw, the “jacales” of saplings and branches.
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