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

There was one line of crouching scouts and soldiers behind the many boulders (which sometimes touched one another) not far in front of the cave-mouth wall and on either flank as the ends curved in. These were skirmishers. Back of them, clear along the edge of the immensely broad shelf and extending around the ends of the shelf, and even among the crags of the precipice, was a second line, in reserve, also behind rocks, to cover the first line. Some of the rocks were low, some high; they formed all kinds of shelter, from which one might shoot over and around corners and through chinks. The Micky-Jimmie boulder, down from the foot of the trail, in the second line, was about the size of a roll-top office-desk; and squatting they might peep across the ragged surface of it and see the whole length of the big shelf.

From either side Joe Felmer and Big Mouth wriggled in toward them, to shoot between their rocks and this.

“Steady! Hold your fire till orders,” warned Sergeant Turpin and others.

For Antonio Besias the interpreter was speaking. He half rose, from along the second line, and called in Apache.

“You must all come out!” he shouted. “The soldier-captain has many men and many guns. He has found you, and you cannot get away. He does not wish to kill you, but he will kill you unless you lay down your guns and come out.”

Back behind his rock ducked Antonio, just in time to dodge a dozen arrows, not to say several bullets. What a storm of hoots and shrieks had drowned his voice!

“We are not afraid!” were retorting the cave warriors. “Yah yah! We are not afraid,” they jeered, in Apache and Spanish. “It is you who will die, you white men and you traitor moccasin-stealers who rob women.” To accuse an Apache of stealing moccasins from squaws was the bitterest of insults. “You will not live to see the sun rise. Our people are coming up from below, and you will be fed to the buzzards. Yah!”

Nan-ta-je tried, in Apache and Mohave jargon both. But he, too, had to duck, before he had finished telling them to send out their women and children, anyway.

“We are not fighting those,” he said. “We fight only men. The soldier-captain will wait until you send out your women and children. They will not be harmed. It is not right——” and his words were lost in another burst of furious, insolent clamor.