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

XXV
ON THE JOB WITH CAPTAIN CRAWFORD

One hundred and twenty Chiricahuas under Geronimo, Chihuahua, old Nana and Nah-che were the ones who had run away. Chato had persuaded the three hundred other Chiricahuas to stay. He did not approve of Geronimo and Nah-che, or of further war.

The outbreak had occurred on the night of May 17. The Chiricahuas had left in parties of twenty or so, to meet again across the border. Lieutenant Britton Davis, of the Third Cavalry, had been in charge at the reservation. As soon as he had discovered the loss, he had tried to telegraph General Crook; but the “talking wires” had been damaged. Before the message got through, the Chiricahuas were beyond the railroad, with a clear field ahead.

Nah-che had spoken truly when he said to Jimmie that they ran away because they feared being locked up. They knew that they were watched. And in defiance of the general’s complaints that liquor was manufactured upon the reservation, they had obtained a quantity of it and drunk it—which of course made them liable to punishment.

The general came over to the reservation too late; but flying columns had been sent out at once, from Apache and Thomas and Grant and Bowie. Two hundred scouts from all the reservation bands were enlisted for six months. Chato himself volunteered.

The columns dispatched were mainly for the purpose of keeping the Chiricahuas away from the border until it might be patrolled, and the principal band located by either the American or the Mexican troops.

Meanwhile as a crack pack-master Jimmie was decidedly busy at Fort Bowie. Bowie had waxed to a bustling supply depot, and was likely to be headquarters field base.

Tom Moore, who had been up north in the Department of the Platte, was sent for by the general to be chief packer again in the Department of Arizona. He brought down from Cheyenne, Wyoming, the best of the Platte pack-mules, and was given a great welcome at Bowie by Jimmie and the other “old-timers.”

The country was being scoured for good mules. These had to be broken, some of them, and distributed. Troops were pouring in, until the general had at his disposal forty companies of infantry and the same of cavalry.