“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.
“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.