The general was about to stride on, when Jimmie hastily spoke.
“But if you go against the Chiricahua, I’d like to go too, sir.”
“That will be a hard and maybe a long chase,” gravely said the general. “Probably into the Mexican mountains, with picked men. You can help by sticking to your present business. The telegraph and the railroad are very necessary.”
Jimmie, thinking it over afterward, almost decided likewise. His leg bothered him, and his shoulder was still tender. Chasing Geronimo through the Mexican mountains, with a leader who never rested, required nerve and strength both.
The general tried to hold a conference with the Geronimo runaways. From the border he sent a party of Apache scouts under Alchisé across, for a few miles, but they found no traces of the Chiricahuas.
Two Chiricahua squaws were captured while returning to San Carlos. They said that the Geronimo band had a strong hiding-place deep in the Sierra Madre Mountains several days’ travel below the border; were living off the Mexicans, and knew that the American soldiers could not come down there.
General Crook assigned Captain Emmet Crawford of the Third Cavalry (a broad-shouldered six-footer) to the military station at San Carlos, obtained permission from the Indian Bureau for the White Mountains to live upon the high, cooler lands near Fort Apache and to plant crops there, and from headquarters at Fort Whipple issued an order that said:
Officers and soldiers serving in this department are reminded that one of the fundamental principles of the military character is justice to all—Indians as well as white men—and that a disregard of this principle is likely to bring about hostilities, and cause the death of the very persons they are sent here to protect. In all their dealings with the Indians, officers must be careful not only to observe the strictest fidelity, but to make no promises not in their power to carry out; ...
As long as the Chiricahuas stayed out of the United States, there was not much more to be done. The Apaches on the reservations seemed content again; the border was being patrolled by one hundred and fifty Apache scouts, in the hope of catching the trail of any outlaws who might venture up; the telegraph was kept in fine working order, and the troops at the posts were given constant practice marches.