“And we can punish the Mexicans for inviting the soldiers of the pindah-lickoyee to come down to their country and kill us,” added Geronimo. “I think you have spoken true words. I think we should go to Mexico. Perhaps there we shall find all of our friends and relatives from whom we became separated when the soldiers were hunting us in Sonora and Chihuahua. Perhaps we can even be happy again. Who knows?”
And so it was that when the troopers of “B” Troop rode into the camp of Geronimo a week later they found nothing but cold ashes where the cooking fires had been and the débris of a deserted Indian village that the Apaches had not taken their usual precautions to hide, since they expected never again to return to their beloved mountains.
Far to the south, below the line, frightened peons burned many candles and said many prayers, for they had heard stories. A man had found the bodies of three vaqueros, and he had seen the print of an Apache moccasin in the camp where they had been killed. They had not been tortured nor mutilated.
“The Apache Devil again!” whispered the peons.
A terrified freighter, a bullet through his shoulder, galloped an exhausted mule into a little hamlet. The wagon train that he had been with had been attacked by Apaches and all had been slain save he, and with his own eyes he had recognized Geronimo.
“Holy Mother, preserve us! Geronimo and the Apache Devil, both!”
Leaving a trail of blood and ashes behind them the renegades headed for the mountains near Casa Grande. Having committed no depredations north of the line they felt confident that the United States soldiers would not follow them into Sonora. Why should they? There was nothing for the soldiers of the pindah-lickoyee to avenge.
Thus the Apaches reasoned, since, in common with white men, they possessed the very human trait of easily forgetting the wrongs that they committed against others, even though they might always harbor those that were committed against them.
So now they either forgot or ignored what the whites still considered just causes for righteous anger—burnt ranches, stolen stock, tortured men, women, and children, mutilated corpses that had emblazoned their trail through Arizona from San Carlos to the border over a year before; but the whites had no intention of permitting these occurrences to go brown in their memories.
From one end of the country to the other Geronimo and his bloody deeds occupied more front page newspaper space than any other topic, and to the readers of the newspapers of all the civilized world his name was a household word. For over a year the armies of two nations had been futilely engaged in an attempt to capture or kill a handful of men, women, and children. Geronimo and his renegades had outwitted, outgeneraled, and outfought them; and now, after again outwitting the army of the United States, they had come back to Mexico and were meting out punishment to those whom they mistakenly believed were responsible for bringing United States troops below the border to fight them; and in carrying out this policy they attacked every Mexican they saw after they crossed the border, all the way to Casa Grande. Nor did they desist then.