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

However, the two Tontos would have none of that. They stood braced, with bended bows, glaring from tangled hair, as defiant and menacing as a coiled rattle-snake. On a sudden—“Twang!”—they had loosed their arrows, and with a single backward spring and another bound had disappeared over the edge! Evidently they preferred death to capture—they certainly had killed themselves, for the basin looked to be a sheer drop of over a thousand feet.

Out bolted Jimmie and ran, the better to see. Forward ran the canvas suit man and his officers and the soldiers. And there were the two Tontos, alive and running, themselves. They were leaping and bounding like rabbits, from rock to rock and landing-place to landing-place of the merest trail zigzagging them almost straight up and down! that must have been the trail which all the Tontos had climbed.

For a moment everybody was too astonished to shoot. Then—“Bang!” The canvas suit man had thrown his gun to his shoulder, lightning-quick, and aimed and pulled trigger.

The second of the two Tontos leaped aside, one arm fell limp, and was dyed red. But he did not slacken. Now “Bang! Bang! Bang-bang!” The soldiers and the officers also shot as fast as they could, so that even the basin echoed. They were excited, and shooting down-hill, the Tontos were leaping and dodging and looked very small, not much larger than coyotes; and as far as anybody might see, not a bullet touched them.

Pretty soon they had plunged into the brush and scrub-oak chaparral almost at the bottom of the precipice; they had got away.

Jimmie drew a long breath. In the excitement he had forgotten all about himself. Now he came to, and discovered that he was standing out here, alone, on a curve of the basin rim; and that the soldiers, the nearest only a few paces away, holding their smoking carbines were surveying him keenly. Some had begun to steal around, to head him off.

Naturally they took him for an Apache.

The canvas suit man had seen as quickly as any of the soldiers.

“No cuidado, muchacho! Ven’ aqui! (Don’t be afraid, boy! Come here!),” he called, in Spanish, to Jimmie. And added, in English, to the soldiers: “Bring that boy in.”

Jimmie did not wait to be brought in. He raised his hand in the “peace sign,” and ran forward, crying: