“Wall, ’xpec’ you want to hear all the news yourself,” proposed “Uncle” Joe, that evening, at the ranch, after Jimmie had told his own story in every detail.
“Yes, if you please,” answered Jimmie.
“Wall,” mused Joe Felmer, stroking his shaggy full beard, “lemme see. ‘Six-toed’ Hutton’s been kicked in the jaw by a mule, an’ he’s like to go under. The kick busted his heart, same time it busted his jaw, ’cause he ought to’ve known better than to get in the way.”
“Six-toed” Hutton’s real name was Oscar Hutton. He had six toes on either foot, and was one of the bravest scouts at Camp Grant. To be killed by a mule kick did indeed seem an untimely end for a scout.
“’Paches have been awful bad all ’long the line,” continued Joe. “Chiricahuas an’ Tontos an’ Pinals been raidin’ the stage road out o’ Tucson, both ways. Forty-seven whites an’ Mexicans have been killed down thar’bouts, an’ ten thousand dollars’ wuth o’ property burned or stolen. Up ’round Prescott the Hualpais an’ Apache-Mohaves have corraled the mail rider an’ run ranchers an’ miners off. An’ a passel o’ blamed rascals lit out with an old mule from my very pasture—three of ’em at once on her back, in broad day!”
The recollection of this evidently made “Uncle” Joe very angry again. He paused to mumble.
“Thar’s a band o’ Es-kim-en-zin’s Pinals an’ Arivaipas farmin’ on the creek ’bout a mile from Grant,” he resumed. “Gathered thar ag’in after that massacre last spring, when those whites an’ Mexicans an’ Papagos from Tucson way came up an’ wiped out ’most their women an’ old men an’ stole their children. Yessir, killed over seventy squaws an’ only eight bucks, some of ’em while asleep, an’ carried off thirty children. Sold ’em ’mongst the Mexicans an’ Papagos, they did. Now I hear tell that the Government’s sendin’ what it calls a ‘peace commissioner,’ from New Yawk, to fetch in other ’Paches an’ feed ’em an’ treat ’em nice. Wall, reckon he’ll have his hands full.”
Although Joe and others, soldiers and civilians both, at Camp Grant, insisted that there could be no good excuse for attacking Indians who had surrendered themselves, the Tucson papers and people declared that these very Pinals and Arivaipas had recently been murdering Americans and Mexicans, and stealing stock, and deserved Indian punishment instead of white protection. It would teach the Apaches a lesson.
Of course, when one’s father and mother and brothers and sisters have been tortured and killed only because they were white, it is hard to feel at all kindly toward the race that did it. Jimmie knew how that was. White persons’ clothing—the clothing of the very ones who had been murdered—was found in the Pinal and Arivaipa camp. Still, for the white people to act like Indians, set a bad example, if the Indians were to be shown that the white way of living was the better way.