“Chuntz is bad,” sympathized Santos, to Jimmie. “He is bad and so are his men. All those Tonto and Yavapai are bad at heart. To kill a boy is not Christian. The only way to make those Tonto and Yavapai good is to hunt them down. Cluke, the man with the brown clothes, must go out after them, and after the Chiricahua, too. I have told the Arivaipa what I have seen among the white men. The white men are many and very rich, and we will live like them if they do not try to make us believe that the earth is round. General Howard started to tell me that the earth is round, but I answered that he and I are too great chiefs, to be such fools as that!”
Little Francisco was laid away at the ranch. For some time Jimmie felt sad and lonely. Francisco had been his chum. The end was cruel and horrible.
So he was mighty glad when Joe sent him out with old Jack Long, to help take a pack-train and bunch of cavalry horses clear to Camp Bowie, by way of Tucson.
“An’, b’gosh, you’d better hustle back,” warned Joe. “That Chuntz is a-goin’ to be made to pay for his boy killin’, as soon as thar’s snow on the peaks. The old man’s only waitin’ till winter sets in.”
It seemed high time that something was done. In the past twelve months of Peace Policy over forty Americans and Mexicans of Arizona had been killed by the Apaches, sixteen wounded, and five hundred and fifty cattle stolen.
X
ON THE TRAIL WITH THE PACK-TRAIN
John Cahill, the new blacksmith at Grant, went; but Joe had been appointed a scout, and stayed at home.
Tucson, only fifty-five miles south, was easily made in two days, for the loose horses and the Grant pack-mules traveled light. But Camp Bowie, at the Apache Pass in the Chiricahua Mountains, was one hundred and ten miles east from Tucson and Camp Lowell. That meant a real march with thirty loaded mules, and a hundred remount cavalry horses, and the cavalry escort commanded by Lieutenant Jacob Almy, and a riding-mule for each man of the pack-train.
The packs were chiefly ammunition. Each mule carried three hundred pounds.