General Crook and the Fighting Apaches / Treating Also of the Part Borne by Jimmie Dunn in the days, 1871-1886, When With Soldiers and Pack-trains and Indian Scouts, but Employing the Stronger Weapons of Kindness, Firmness and Honesty, the Gray Fox Worked Hard to the End That the White Men and the Red Men in the Southwest as in the Northwest Might Better Understand One Another

by Edwin L. Sabin

XIII
HUNTING THE YAVAPAI

“Now Apache catch Apache,” announced Micky.

It was a sharply chill evening, December 27, this 1872, and under a clouded sky the whole Major Brown command were encamped together in the little canyon of Cottonwood Creek, about seventy-five miles northwest of Camp Grant.

Not far west rose the long, high plateau of the Mazatzal or Four Peaks Range, through which the Salt River cut a deep, crooked trail toward Camp MacDowell on the other side.

But the seventy-five miles was only a small portion of the distance that had been covered. The Major Brown column out of Grant had been marching north, west, south, and north again, for more than a month; sometimes in cactus and sunshine, sometimes in snow and storm, ever trying to corral the Chuntz and Delt-che outlaws.

These were hard to find. In this rough canyon country they had made their homes for years and years. They knew every inch of it. Only the Sierra Blanca scouts, who were afoot, in silent moccasins, and kept a day’s march ahead, had had any luck. Twice they had struck small rancherias; and they had killed four or five warriors.

Micky hunted with the scouts, daytimes; and each night, when in camp, he had great stories to tell. It all was a lark, to Micky the red-head. He had captured a rifle, in one of the Chuntz jacals or huts, and now was very happy. He seemed rather to pity Jimmie, who was held to the plodding, scrambling pack-train, at the rear.

Still, duty was duty, and business was business; and the pack-train was as important as the soldiers or the scouts. Without the pack-train, then the expedition needs must quit or starve—and what would General Crook say?

On Christmas Day forty men of Company G, Fifth Cavalry, commanded by Captain “Jimmie” Burns and Lieutenant Earl D. Thomas, with pack-train and almost one hundred Pima Indian scouts, all from Camp MacDowell, had joined.

They’d had some luck. On the top of the Four Peaks they had surprised a Yavapai rancheria (one of Delt-che’s, they thought), had killed six Indians and captured a squaw and a little boy. They had brought the boy along, because he could kill quail with stones and with bow and arrow. His new name was “Mike.”