That was a stunning blow to the Crook men. The general had been relieved of his command on April 2, at his own request.
As far as might be learned by the rank and file, and the pack service, the President had not approved of the terms upon which Geronimo had surrendered; but by this time Geronimo had fled again. Then the dispatches from General Sheridan, commanding the Army, to General Crook, had somewhat questioned the wisdom of the general’s methods in depending upon the scouts, and suggested that he now make no more campaigns for a while, but try to protect the border with his troops.
The general had replied that he still believed his methods were the best, under the conditions; that he had been using the troops, to protect the border; and that it had been impossible to hold Geronimo as a prisoner and not break the promise given him.
To attack Geronimo in camp had likewise been impossible of success.
“It may be, however, that I am too much wedded to my own views in this matter,” the general was said to have added, “and as I have spent nearly eight years of the hardest work of my life in this department, I respectfully request that I may now be relieved from its command.”
The Apache medicine-men at Fort Bowie made more medicine, and insisted that if Ka-e-ten-na and other runners were sent after Geronimo, as soon as the whiskey left him he would keep his word and come in peaceably.
This was not done, because Brigadier General Nelson A. Miles, of the Fifth Infantry, commanding at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, had been directed to take command of the Department of Arizona. This of course meant new methods, and a shake-up all ’round.
Not knowing exactly what was ahead, Jimmie left the pack service and became a railroad telegraph operator.
At any rate, General Crook had not failed. Eighty of the Chiricahuas, including Chihuahua and Nana, had been brought in. Only Geronimo and Nah-che and their twenty men and boys and thirteen women, were out. And the Mangas squad of six men, who had not been with Geronimo for almost a year.
General Miles arrived at Fort Bowie on April 12. He immediately organized things for a campaign with the regular troops. The War Department did not favor trusting in the scouts as fighters—especially in the scouts from the White Mountain and Chiricahua friendlies.
The General Crook scouts had been discharged, and so were many of the interpreters. Tom Horn left. Yes, there was a decided shake-up.
But the new general seemed to be a good man, all right, and the Arizona newspapers put much faith in him. He extended the heliograph service, until a perfect network of stations had been established; and he injected fresh vim into the officers.
Suspecting that they were to get no terms at all, now, and to show that they despised the soldiers, Geronimo and Nah-che went thoroughly bad. Perhaps General Crook’s methods might have been better; perhaps not; but toward the last of April Geronimo and Nah-che led their few warriors straight up past Tucson itself; the troops had not been able to protect the border, and Nah-che penetrated clear to Fort Apache.
They lost only one man. He was a deserter, and volunteered to follow them, as “Peaches” had. The troops did heroic work. Lieutenant Lloyd Brett, of the Second Cavalry, marched twenty-six hours without a halt; his troopers were forced to drink their own blood, to quench thirst.
Captain Henry W. Lawton, of the Fourth Cavalry, and Captain Leonard Wood, assistant surgeon in the army, were selected to push the pursuit through Mexico, with a picked command of the Eighth Infantry and Fourth and Tenth Cavalry. Surgeon Wood was instructed to see if the men could not outdo even the Apaches.
Tom Horn went in charge of some Tonto and Yuma trailers. The Lawton and Wood column made terrific marches; altogether, fourteen hundred miles. On July 13, three hundred miles into Mexico they surprised the Geronimo and Nah-che camp, as Captain Crawford had surprised it, the January before.
Nah-che had been wounded; he and Geronimo and their band barely escaped. They sent word to a Mexican woman (the wife of the interpreter José Maria Yaskes) that they desired to surrender.
It was a Crook man, after all—Lieutenant George Gatewood—who performed the bravest act; and a General Crook method that clinched the surrender. From Fort Apache the lieutenant, under orders by General Miles, traveled down with only Kah-yee-ta, the deserter, and Martinez, another Chiricahua, to find the hostile camp and talk with Geronimo. This was done. Lieutenant Gatewood’s life hung by a hair; but his talk had effect, for in the morning Geronimo, Nah-che, and their warriors surrendered to Captain Lawton.
Lieutenant Gatewood had been instructed to offer them no terms whatsoever, except that their lives would be spared; the captain offered the same terms.
Geronimo agreed to march along with the column, just as before. He and his men were still very suspicious, but he sent Porico up to General Miles as a pledge of good faith.
The general met him at the border, on September 3. Geronimo did not know that while he had been out, all the Chiricahuas upon the reservation—Chato, Ka-e-ten-na, and all—had been moved, and were started for Florida.
“This,” as Tom Moore explained to Jimmie, “took the sap out of him. He had no base of trouble, any more. Nah-che hadn’t come in with him, but he sent out after him, and the whole band—what there was left of them—were packed aboard the cars on September 8, and now they’re on their way, too. Let’s see—this is 1886. How long have you known Geronimo, anyhow?”
“Sixteen years,” said Jimmie.
“Well, you’ll never see him again.”
And Jimmie never did.
He never saw General Crook again, either. The general had resumed command of the Department of the Platte; and as major-general was assigned to the command of the Division of the Missouri, with headquarters in Chicago.
But he was not forgotten in Arizona. The Indians at the San Carlos and the Fort Apache reservations continued to hold him in their hearts. Jimmie happened to be at Fort Apache, on business, when in the spring of 1890 the news of the general’s death was received.
The old men and women, and all the White Mountain scouts, “sat down in a great circle, let down their hair, bent their heads forward upon their bosoms, and wept and wailed like children.” And in the far north the Sioux also lamented the passing of their conqueror but friend, the Gray Fox.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Obvious printer’s, punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.
Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.