“The Chiricahua will not understand, and they will not forget,” said Maria Jilda, who was at the border camp. “You will chase Geronimo and Nah-che again, Jeemie.”
“Well, I shorely hope not,” quoth Frank Monach. “Hope we get a chance to rest up, anyhow. The general and Sieber look about tuckered.”
And that was so. After five hundred miles of travel through the roughest of mountain country, in heat and cold and dry and wet, even General Crook seemed to be worn out.
He kept his word with the Chiricahuas. Geronimo and the other chiefs were permitted to choose their own lands, and settled with their people, five hundred and twelve in number, south of Fort Apache. It was a fine country, too, on the head-waters of Turkey Creek.
The general obtained orders from Washington that all the Chiricahuas should be placed under his control. This was thought by Arizona to be a very good plan, because the Chiricahuas, like the other Apaches, had much faith in “Cluke.”
As the governor said, in an annual message to the legislature: “The Indians know General Crook and his methods, and respect both.”
Jimmie stuck at Fort Bowie. He had been appointed pack-master, there, and this was quite a job for a boy scarcely twenty-one years old. But he felt as though he had grown up in the service; and old Jack Long had started him off well.
Captain Crawford was in military charge of the San Carlos reservation. Micky Free was over there, too, as a sergeant of the Indian police. Lieutenant Gatewood was stationed in the Chiricahua camp at Turkey Creek, just as the general had promised. Maria Jilda took up a ranch; he said that he was tired of scouting and interpreting. Al Sieber, as chief of scouts, divided his time between San Carlos and Fort Apache; and where Archie MacIntosh went, Jimmie did not know.
But there was no opportunity for being lonesome at Fort Bowie. Pack-train duties kept a fellow hopping, if he tried to have a crack outfit—and the only outfits tolerated by the quarter-master’s department under General Crook were crack ones. Supplies had to be packed in from the railroad, fifteen miles, and there were scoutings and practice marches.
For the remainder of 1883 everything seemed to be quiet. Reports stated that Geronimo and all the Chiricahuas were farming and doing famously, and that the White Mountains, on the other side of Fort Apache, were getting rich by selling their barley and hay to the post and to the towns.