“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.
Jack had had two wives, one a Modoc squaw and one a white woman; and once he had “struck it rich,” in California, and had been almost a millionaire until he had spent his money. Lately he had been living in Tucson, freighting and prospecting. There he had “j’ined Gin’ral Crook ag’in the ’Paches.”
Now Chief Packer Tom Moore had appointed him to be a pack-master. The chief packer had charge of all the pack-trains, and each pack-train was in charge of its pack-master.
“Want to j’ine the pack trains, do ye?” queried old Jack, of Jimmie. “Wall, if you’re goin’ to l’arn, you oughter l’arn right, an’ some day mebbe you’ll be in the Fust-class Packer ratin’. Mebbe you’ll get to be as big a man as I am. ’Tain’t all in throwin’ the diamond; anybody can l’arn to throw the diamond hitch. But you got to know the why an’ wharfore o’ things. Come along to the corral an’ I’ll show ye.”
So Jimmie gladly followed Jack to the post mule-corral.
“Hey, thar, amigo (friend)!” summoned old Jack, to Chileno John, who was at work among the mules. “Ven’ aqui (Come here). Fetch out one o’ yore bell sharps. Hyar’s a muchacho (boy) who wants to l’arn to be an arriero (muleteer).”
Smiling broadly, swarthy Chileno John (who was supposed to have worked in the mines of Chile) led aside a sedate, round-bellied, mouse-colored mule, and lugged the pack material for her into position.
“That thar,” said Jack, “is a bell sharp. If you don’t know what a bell sharp is, I’ll tell ye. A bell sharp is a pack-mule that’s been eddicated into mule sense, so she keeps her place in line, an’ doesn’t stray on herd, an’ comes in to her own feed canvas at feedin’ time. When she ain’t a ‘bell sharp’ she’s a pesky ‘shave-tail.’ As long as a mule hasn’t got sense an’ is alluz rampagin’ an’ makin’ trouble we jest natter’ly roach her mane an’ keep her tail trimmed to about six ha’rs on the end so’s to pick her out of a bunch at fust sight. Same way,” grumbled old Jack, “’mongst these hyar army officers. That thar sprig young Left’nant Stewart, fresh out o’ West Point, who doesn’t know any better yet’n to climb a cactus tree, he’s a ‘shave tail’; but old Cap Tommy Byrne, up ’mongst the Hualpais near the Canyon, he’s a sure ’nough ‘bell sharp’ who knows when to come in to his feed.”
Jimmie had not seen Captain Thomas Byrne, a grizzled Civil War veteran who, reports stated, was regarded as a “father” by the Hualpai Indians on the Beale Springs reservation near the Grand Canyon. But he felt pretty well acquainted with Second Lieutenant Reid T. Stewart, the slim-waisted, boyish, eager young officer who had graduated from the Military Academy only last June and had been assigned to the Fifth Cavalry in Arizona. He was stationed down at Camp Lowell, Tucson, and Jimmie had got acquainted with him there and here at Grant, also. He might be a “shave tail,” yet, according to Jack, but he was much more pleasant than some of those crusty old “bell sharps.”
“What’s General Crook, then?” queried Jimmie, to get Jack’s opinion.
“The gin’ral. See hyar, me son,” reproved Jack severely: “no levity. The gin’ral’s the old bell hoss o’ the hull outfit. Wall,” continued Jack, “fust, one of us blinds the critter with a bandage o’ sackin’ or with one o’ those leather contraptions the gin’ral’s interduced, so she’ll stand. Then havin’ got all the riggin’ to hand, we lay on this sweat-cloth, for which proper name is suadera, an’ a saddle-blanket or two for more paddin’, ’less we have a reg’lar corona, the same bein’ the blankets an’ the suadera stitched together. Then atop that we fold the bed blanket that we got to sleep under at camp. Then we h’ist on the aparejo—this-a-way, easy—an’ settle it, an’ pass the grupera back.”
The aparejo (ah-pah-ray-ho) was the pack-saddle—a long, broad mattress of canvas stuffed with hay, and stiffened with ribs of willow stems running up and down, in either half. It was broken in the middle, so that it would fit over the mule’s back.
The grupera (gru-pay-rah) was the crupper—a broad canvas and leather band that extended in a loop around the mule’s haunches under her tail, so that the aparejo could not slip forward.
“Then we lay the aparejo cincha so to hang acrost the middle, pass the ring end under her belly, connect up with the latigo strap and all together draw tighter’n sin so’s to hold the aparejo in place.”
The aparejo cincha was another canvas band, like a woven saddle-cinch. It was long enough to reach across under the mule’s belly. One end terminated in a ring and the other end in a leather strap, the latigo; and by connecting the ring and strap the cincha was drawn tight.
“You have omitted to explain this, Señor Jack,” reminded Chileno John, resting a sinewy brown hand upon the pack-saddle or aparejo; and he lifted the flap that hung down on either side.
“That thar soldier hammer?” grunted Jack. “Wall, me son, every aparejo has a duck kivver attached to its middle, so’s to protect it from bein’ cut by the ropes—an’ from weather, too. It’s got a wooden brace sewed in leather ’crost each end, yuh understan’, to stiffen it whar the cincha lays, so’s it won’t wrinkle ag’in the mule’s hide.”
“Sobre-en-jalmas is the correct name, muchacho,” said Chileno John, to Jimmie, with some dignity—for Chileno John took great pride in the Spanish language. “It is a very old name, descended to us from the ancient Moors of Spain. Sobre-en-jalmas—cover for harness. The first two words are Spanish, and the last word is Arabian. But these Americanos——!” And Chileno John shrugged his shoulders. “They do not know.”
“Wall, ‘soldier hammer,’ ‘sovrin hammer,’ or ‘Sullivan hammer,’ it’s all the same,” grunted old Jack. “Plain ‘aparejo cover’ is good enough.” And thus he disposed of the historic sobre-en-jalmas, which, pronounced rapidly sobr’-’n-halma did indeed sound like some kind of a ‘hammer.’ “After the pack saddle, ’long with its sovrin hammer, is cinched on, then we h’ist on the packs an’ sling ’em an’ fasten ’em with the diamond hitch,” he resumed. “But as we haven’t got nary packs, the fust lesson stops right hyar, me son. Now you remember what I’m tellin’ you, l’arn mules and pack-ways, an’ jump when you’re spoken to, so you won’t be a drag tail.”
“What’s a ‘drag tail,’ Jack?”
“A drag tail, me son, is wuss’n a shave tail. A drag tail is a durned lazy mule who’s alluz hangin’ back on the trail, an’ a no-’count packer who’s alluz late on his job. Savvy?”