Tales from the X-bar Horse Camp: The Blue-Roan «Outlaw» and Other Stories

The quarry which they sought was not far ahead, and it was best to leave their animals and go the rest of the way without them.

Turning to the tall Sergeant behind him, the officer gave the orders for the movement, and back down the shivering, scattered line went the instructions: "Number fours hold the horses, every one else take all extra ammunition and their canteens and follow the column on foot."

Then came whispered pleadings from the unfortunate "number four men" doomed to remain behind to guard the horses and the rear while the others went on into the darkness to – what? Perhaps death, perhaps a wound from a poisoned arrow; in any event plenty of hardship and suffering.

How those cavalrymen begged for the privilege of getting a hole shot through them. They urged the officers to cut down the rearguard and leave but a couple of men to look after the packs and horses.

"Very well, Sergeant," the commanding officer replied, well pleased when told of the men's desire to go with the fighting force, "leave three or four men to guard the animals and let the rest come on; God knows we are very likely to need them."

Then the Sergeant, knowing his men as a schoolmaster his pupils, left behind: fat Corporal Conn whose asthmatic wheezings and puffings had already brought forth many a muttered curse upon his head; Private Hill who couldn't see an inch beyond his nose in the dark and who had fallen over every bush and rock in the trail since they entered the cañon; and two other men whose physical condition was such that he doubted their ability to make the climb which he knew was ahead of them.

Not one of these accepted the detail without as vigorous a protest as soldierly duty made possible. Bless you no! Each of them felt himself an object of especial pity, fat Conn even claiming that the higher he climbed the less the asthma troubled him.

Then the command once more drove into the blackness ahead, following the lithe Apache up a mountain side which seemed almost perpendicular.

Each man carried two belts of cartridges about his waist with a third swung from his shoulder. Most of them wore the Apache moccasin which gave forth no sound as they moved along.

At last they reached the summit of the mountain breathless and tired. Before them was a mighty cañon, the cañon of the Salt River. To their left four granite peaks, the "Four Peaks" of the maps, pierced the skyline like videttes on guard over the cañon.

From its bed, two thousand feet below, the dull murmur of the river, as it dashed along its rocky way, came softly to the soldiers' ears.

It was the dawning of December 27, 1872. The soldiers were a detachment of the Fifth United States Cavalry, Major Brown in command.

At a little spring some twenty miles away they had left their supplies and pack train.

Their Christmas holidays had been spent in pursuit of several bands of Apaches, and the scouts had reported that a large band of them was located in a cave on the Salt River cañon.

A pack mule had died in camp that day, and the Indian scouts were allowed to make a great feast upon its remains that they might set out on the expedition with full stomachs.

For years efforts had been made to concentrate the Apaches, who had been the scourge of Arizona and the Southwest, upon one or two reservations where, under guard, they could be watched and kept in bounds.

In the summer of 1872 General George Crook, after having held numerous councils with the Apaches, issued an ultimatum to the effect that, if those who were outside of the reservation did not return by the fifteenth of the coming November, active operations would begin against them. After that date every Indian found outside the reservation was to be treated as a hostile and dealt with accordingly.

The Apaches knew Crook only too well, for the "Old Grey Fox," as they called him, had always kept his word with them in the past.

Promptly on the day set General Crook took the field against the outlaw Apaches and hunted them down relentlessly day and night.

The region in which these operations took place is one of the roughest in the United States. It is located on the western side of the great "Tonto Basin" in central Arizona, and consists of ragged mountain ranges, and isolated peaks, while the whole area is cut and seamed with deep box cañons impassable for miles.

About fifty miles from the city of Phœnix, as the crow flies, and near the great Roosevelt irrigation reservoir and dam, four granite peaks pierce the sky.

Here Nature is found in one of her most inhospitable moods, and in the fastnesses of these "Four Peaks" several bands of the hunted, harassed Apaches took refuge.

In its mighty cañons the Indians knew of caves and cliffs where they had lived in safety from their old enemies for many years; there they believed no white man could possibly reach them.

Crook and his soldiers matched wits with the Indians and beat them at their own game. Wherever the Indians went there the troops followed them. They chased them on foot when their horses played out, lived on the scantiest possible allowance of food, slept in the deep snows with but a single blanket and without fires lest the telltale smoke give the Indians warning of their presence.

It was to surprise the occupants of one of these caves that Major Brown and his men were making this night march.

There the Apaches had fled, carrying into the cave great quantities of food and other necessary supplies, leaving their ponies behind to shift for themselves.

The cave itself is not a cave in the strict sense of the word, but rather a great weather-worn shelf, similar to those used by the ancient cliff dwellers for their habitations all over the Southwest.

At the outside edge the opening is about fifteen feet high from floor to roof, and sixty feet wide. The roof slopes back into the cliff for some thirty feet to a point where the rear wall is not over three feet high.

At the front, the floor of the cave projects some little distance beyond the overhanging cliff forming a sort of platform. Entirely around this platform the Apaches had raised a stone-wall several feet high, inside of which they rested in fancied security.

On top of the mountain Major Brown's command, which numbered but fifty men and officers, with two civilian guides, waited while the two scouts wormed their way into the blackness of the cañon's depths in an attempt to make sure that the Indians did not have any pickets outside the cave to guard against surprise.

The cool night breeze made the soldiers' teeth chatter. Some dropped off to sleep, while others huddled together under the lee of the great rocks whose surface still gave off some slight warmth stored up during the day. Meantime they cursed, with a soldier's vehemence, the slowness of the scouts in returning.

Finally they came, dropping into the midst of the men as if from above, so quietly did they move.

Five minutes of whispering followed between the guide, the Major and the Indians, and then Lieutenant W. J. Ross and a dozen men crawled away into the darkness with one of the Indians to guide them.

Again, those soldiers had begged to be taken as one of the party. No use to call for volunteers, they were all volunteers and envied the fortunate ones whom the tall First Sergeant named for the trip.

Ross was to endeavor to locate the entrance to the cave in order that the rest of the command might be posted in the most advantageous positions. His party dropped into the cañon and was quickly swallowed up in its sombre shadows. Down they crept, stumbling over rocks, treading on the "Cholla" cactus balls that covered the ground everywhere, and whose sharp needles will often pierce the heaviest buckskin gloves, moccasins or even leather boots. A misstep meant death far below in the cañon, while every minute they looked for the crash of the Indians' rifles.

As they felt their way carefully along, they saw the faint gleam of a campfire. Ross worked his men up as closely as he could, placing them in safe positions behind rocks scattered about. By the light of the fire, they made out some fifteen Indians standing about it while a lot of squaws were preparing food for them. The fire was but a few feet from the cave which could be seen dimly in the background, and it was quite evident the hostiles felt very secure in their retreat.

Scarcely daring to breathe, each picked out a brave for a target and at a whispered signal, fired. Those of the Indians who were not killed fled into the cave, while the report of the carbines quickly brought the rest of the command down into the cañon.

Major Brown placed his men about the cave so as to prevent the escape of any of the Indians, waiting for daylight before attempting further operations.

One Apache managed to work his way out of the cave and through the cordon by some means. He was seen after he had passed clear through the lines, standing for an instant on a great rock, his figure boldly outlined against the sky. His recklessness in his fancied security was his undoing, for one of the crack shots in the regiment, Private John Cahill, took a hasty shot at the form, and it came tumbling down the steep side of the cañon.

After Major Brown had formed his lines about the cave he called on the Indians to surrender. This they answered with cries of defiance, followed by a few scattering shots which did no harm. Later on Brown again called on them to surrender, or if not that, to send out their women and children, promising no harm should come to them. Again the Indians refused to accept the offer. They heaped epithets, dear to the Apache heart, upon the soldiers, taunting them with cowardice, and assuring them that they would soon be food for the buzzards and ravens. "May the coyotes howl over your grave," is a favorite Apache expression of contempt, which they hurled at their opponents many times during the fight.

Daylight came slowly, and then the siege was on in earnest. Brown again renewed his offer of protection to the women and children, but to no purpose. Of arrows and lances, as well as fixed ammunition for their rifles, the Indians seemed to have an unlimited supply. They showered arrows upon the soldiers by hundreds, sending them high into the air, so they would fall upon the men lying behind the rocks scattered about. Lances were also thrown in the same manner, but they were unable to inflict any damage upon the besiegers by such tactics. The Indians also played all the tricks belonging to their style of warfare. War bonnets and hats were raised upon lances above the wall with the intention of drawing the fire of some soldier and getting him exposed to a return shot. But Brown warned his men against all such schemes, and no harm was done by them.