“Lieutenant Almy is killed! Almy’s been murdered!”
“What! Where?”
“At San Carlos! An Injun shot him. There’s been an uprising.”
The word sped rapidly through Fort Whipple. It was a noon of the first week in June, and Jimmie had ridden in to dinner just on time to see a courier dash across the parade-ground for the adjutant’s office.
Chief of Scouts Al Sieber appeared, walking fast. The men made a rush for him.
“What’s that, Al? Almy killed?”
Al spoke tersely.
“Yes. At San Carlos. Chan-dezi (Long-ear) shot him. Chuntz was in it, too; he and Cli-bic-li (Tied Horse) and Cochinay. The Chuntz gang have been hanging ’round the agency, and sneaking in at night for food and to make mischief. The Tonto and Yavapai had hatched a scheme to kill the agency whites, this month, and take to the hills. But they got hold of some whiskey on the reservation, and broke too soon. The agency police started in to arrest the chiefs. Long-ear tried to lance Agent Larrabee. Yomas, a friendly, knocked the lance aside. There was a mob. Almy undertook to do the arresting himself. Went in among them alone—bravest act I ever heard of. Long-ear shot him dead and made a getaway, with Chuntz and Cochinay. That was May 27.”
“Does it mean a little scout, Al?” they hopefully queried.
“No, I think not, boys. The hostiles probably won’t leave the Gila Canyon, there, and the troops and the police can corral them. But the general’s going over.” Al saw Jimmie, and beckoned him apart. “Are you fit for a trip to Apache?”
“Yes, Mr. Sieber.”
“That’s good. Joe Felmer asked me to keep an eye on you, whenever I was around, and I’ve been thinking that it’s a little dull for a boy of your calibre to be herding horses all the time. Well, the general and some of the rest of us are starting for Apache in the morning, to look into this fracas. They need horses, over there. The quartermaster’s a good friend of mine, and I’ll just drop a hint that now might be a proper time to send a bunch in, and you with it. That’ll help you to learn the country. You’ll be forgetting how to speak Apache if you stay here talking horse.”
“I’d like to go mighty well, Mr. Sieber,” Jimmie admitted.
“All right. Micky Free’ll be glad to see you. He asks about you every time I run across him.”
Mr. Sieber hastened on. A fine man, was Al Sieber. He spoke Spanish and considerable Apache; had lived among the White Mountains at Camp Apache, and was a great favorite with Chief Pedro, there. “Man of Iron,” the White Mountains called him.
He was of powerful build, and stern-looking; apt to be of few words, right to the point; but he had a kind heart. He was now acting chief of scouts, from Whipple and Camp Verde.
Lieutenant Jacob Almy dead—murdered? That was shocking news. Everybody liked First Lieutenant Jacob Almy, of the Fifth Cavalry. Since he had been put in charge of the Indians at San Carlos, by his gentle but firmly just methods he had made many friends among them, also.
General Crook was energetic, as usual. He set out early the next morning, on “Apache” his mule, with a small escort including Lieutenant Bourke his chief aide, and Al Sieber. Jimmie and a Mexican herder accompanied, driving the bunch of remount horses.
The loose horses traveled well. The trip of two hundred and fifty miles through the roughest country in Arizona was accomplished in ten days.
There had not been much talk on the way over. The general acted grimly determined, and in a hurry. Camp Apache was found saddened and expectant.
Having turned his horses over to the post quartermaster, Jimmie saw Micky waiting for him, beside the corral here back of the parade-ground. Micky was sitting a spotted pony, and smiling broadly. He certainly had the knack of always being on hand.
“Hello, Boy-who-sleeps. Have you come over to fight?” greeted Micky.
“Has there been a fight yet, Micky?”
“Only a little one, when those Chuntz men ran away. But we are ready.”
“Where is Chuntz?”
“He and Long-ear and Cochinay are hiding in the canyon of the Gila. Tied Horse has been arrested. If we go after those others there will be good fighting. The canyon is deep and long and full of caves. Would you like another cave fight, Cheemie?”
“I’d like to get Chuntz and Long-ear,” vowed Jimmie.
“So would I. Come on. Pretty soon Sibi the Iron Man will talk with old Pedro, and you and I will want to hear what they say. Sibi can talk Apache, but he cannot talk as fast as Pedro, or as you and I. We will help.”
The general was in confab at the post headquarters with Major Randall and Al. There were fifteen hundred Pinals, Arivaipas, Yavapais, and Tontos at San Carlos—many of them now very restless under guard. Nobody might foretell just what was about to happen.
Soon after Jimmie had begun a sort of a reunion with Alchisé and Nan-ta-je and Bobby Do-klinny and others, at the Camp Apache agency building, Mr. Sieber came riding by.
“Jimmie,” he summoned, with crook of finger, “you ride along with me. I may have use for you. Bring Free, if you want to.”
“I’m going for a talk with Pedro,” he continued, in Spanish, so that Micky might understand. Micky knew no English. “If he talks too fast for me, I want one of you to explain. And the same way if I speak with words that he doesn’t know.”
“We will talk for you, Sibi,” answered Micky.
Old Chief Pedro of the White Mountain Apaches was, as everybody said, the wisest, most sensible chief among the tame Indians. They found him at home, sitting upon a blanket in the shade of a tree near his house. Since he had come back from Washington he had put up a board shanty, to live in instead of a brush wickyup. He was still wearing a white shirt—which was white no longer.
In spite of the soiled ragged shirt, a splendid old Indian he looked to be.
“You are well come, Sibi,” he remarked. “Sit down and we will talk. But who is this boy with one leg shorter than the other? I do not know him.”
“He is a friend of mine, and of Micky Free,” replied Al. “He was captured by Geronimo, and lived with Cochise and Geronimo. He was a soldier at the cave fight when the Yavapai were destroyed. He is a brave boy. The leg was made short by a wound. We may speak freely before him.”
“That is good,” answered Pedro. “I know you, and I know this wild Red-head. Now I know this other. I remember who he is. What have you come to say, Sibi? Did Cluke send you?”
They all sat down: Al beside Pedro, but Jimmie and Micky a little way apart from them, as was correct when in the company of chiefs.
“The Gray Fox is talking with Major Randall,” said Al. “That was bad work at San Carlos, Pedro. You are a wise chief, and you know Apaches. General Crook wishes to do what is right by all the Apaches. He wishes peace, so that we may all live together and prosper. No one prospers long in war. What is the best course to follow with these bad Indians? Can they be made good?”
“Let us talk in Mexican, Sibi,” spoke Chief Pedro. “And if you or I use words that are not understood, the Red-head or maybe the short-leg boy will explain. This talk must be very clear. Now, there is no way to make those bad Apaches good, except to kill them. The bad Indians do not know what I know; they have not been to the cities of the Great White Father and seen how powerful he is. I will give Cluke one hundred and fifty of my warriors, smart fighters all. Let Cluke send them into the Gila Canyon. The Gray Fox is brave, and his white soldiers are brave, but the Chuntz people will go where his soldiers cannot follow; this is summer, and they know every spot in the canyon, and will hide.
“But my Apaches will find them, and kill some of them. Then my men will come home, and rest a while, and go out and kill more. By winter time there will be fewer of the mean Apaches; and if they do not all die during the winter, in the spring we will kill the rest of them. But if Cluke waits till winter, before that time the bad Indians will have made much more trouble at San Carlos, and perhaps among my White Mountains, and perhaps among the Chiricahua.”
“I will think on what you have said,” responded Al.
“It will be no use to send you or any other person into the canyon, to spend words on those people,” proceeded Pedro. “They will burn him, and will send back an old woman to tell Cluke to give them more of his men, to burn. Now I am done, Man of Iron. I cannot read from paper, but I can look at the actions of a bad Indian, and can read how he feels and what he will do.”
“Humph!” mused Al, as with Jimmie and Micky he rode away. “I believe old Pedro is right.”
The next afternoon the general held a talk at the San Carlos agency with Es-kim-en-zin, of the Arivaipas, and with those Tonto and Yavapai chiefs who had not joined Chuntz.
The San Carlos agency was seventy miles southwest from Camp Apache, where the San Carlos River emptied into the Gila. This San Carlos reservation was really an addition to the southern boundary of the White Mountain reservation. It was sixty miles wide and extended clear to the New Mexico line, one hundred and twenty miles. The eastern half was rough and mountainous, but the western half, along the Gila River, was flatter and more open—especially around the agency, where the Indians were supposed to live.
The majority of the Apaches did not like it. They said that it was low, hot and unhealthful.
“I am sorry to hear that there are bad hearts at work among you,” spoke the general. Concepcion Equierre translated. “They have deceived you into believing that the white people might be killed, and that the Apaches might be free to rob and murder again. Now the innocent have suffered. Lieutenant Almy, one of your best friends, has been killed, and you all are prevented from going about on hunts and visits.
“I want you all to live as free as the white men. I do not expect you to stop being red men. I want your women to gather mescal and seeds and roots, and your men to hunt deer and turkeys without fear; for these things are good to eat. But you cannot do this without fear, when there is war.
“Now about these Chuntz and Long-ear bad men. I have thousands of soldiers, and many Apache scouts, and they are enough to give the bad Apaches no rest. But I want you to punish your own bad people. You must send out your own warriors, and keep sending them out until Chuntz and Long-ear and Cochinay are killed or captured, and their people surrender. It is not right that a few bad men should work so much harm to everybody. I hope that you will consider what I have said. I am done.”
All that summer of 1873 and into the next summer the San Carlos and White Mountain police, assisted by cavalry and infantry detachments patrolling the hills, harassed the outlaws. Wherever the Chuntz people moved, in the Canyon of the Gila, the reservation Apaches were ferreting them out.
Some of the outlaws sent in word that they were ready to surrender. They were told that they might come in if they brought Chuntz, Long-ear and Cochinay. Finally the outlaws were hunting their chiefs.
Cochinay was killed on May 26, 1874; Long-ear was killed on June 12; Chuntz the villain was killed on July 25. A whole sackful of heads was spilled by the Apache police upon the ground in front of Major John B. Babcock’s headquarters, at San Carlos, to prove that “peace” was being made!
Over at Verde, Delt-che had broken out and had been killed, in July.
So by mid-summer of 1874 the bad-hearted chiefs seemed all out of the way, at last. Old Cochise, also, had died, in June, on the Chiricahua reservation, and Taza was the head chief. He could be depended upon, for peace.
Meanwhile Jimmie was helping to run the first telegraph lines in Arizona, connecting military post with military post. He stayed in telegraph work some years—during which a number of things happened.