“Huh! leften’t right—dey bad ’Paches—soon make trouble.”
CHAPTER XVI.
THE RANCHMAN’S HOME.
The days became weeks, the weeks grew into months and peace reigned in Southern Arizona, that section which time and again was harried by the fierce raids of the terrible Apaches, until many of the ranchmen abandoned their homes and sought safety at the posts and settlements.
The history of those outrages proves the fact which has already been hinted: had the management of the tribes been left to the army, the reign of terror would have ended years before it became necessary to run down Geronimo and the other disaffected leaders and transport them to the east, there to spend the remainder of their lives.
I have no intention of giving anything in the nature of a history of the Indian troubles in the Southwest, but a single episode will enforce what has been said.
In April, 1873, Buckskin Hat, head chief of all the Indians in the Tonto Basin, went to General Crook and said he wished to surrender. Crook took his hand and told him that if he and his people would stop their outrages and become orderly citizens, he would be the best friend they ever had. He promised to teach them to work and agreed to find a good market for everything they could produce.
Within a month General Crook had all the Apaches in Arizona, excepting the Chiricahuas, who were not within his jurisdiction, at work at Camp Apache and Camp Verde, digging irrigating ditches, planting vegetables, cutting hay and wood and with everything on the highway to prosperity. Then a gang of politicians and contractors, remembered as the “Tucson Ring,” persuaded the authorities in Washington to order the Apaches down to the dismal sand waste of the San Carlos, where the water is brackish, the soil worthless, and the flies intolerable. Roused to fury by the injustice, the Apaches took the warpath, and then followed those terrible scenes which are matters of public record.
For a long time, Maurice Freeman was so doubtful of the continuance of peace, that he was on the point of removing from the territory. Indeed he would have done so but for the persuasions of his nearest neighbor and close friend, Captain Murray, who insisted that no serious danger would come again.