“Nyle-chie-zie, who is Cochise’s brother-in-law, wanted to trade two of his young wives to the general for the general’s four wagon-mules. The general said he already had a wife. But the girls said that made no difference; they would all get along together nicely. If the general had not explained that the laws of the Americans forbade him to have more than one wife at a time, he might have been in much trouble, I think.”
“Yes, many wives at once are a trouble,” asserted Ponce, who, with Chie, was returning to the Warm Spring bands. “The soldier-captain saw Cochise’s hand. That is why he refused the two girls!”
“What was the matter with Cochise’s hand?” queried Jimmie.
They all were talking in Apache.
“Those two big holes in it are where one of his wives bit him. He was afraid he would be sick, so he burned the places.”
“The one-armed soldier-captain is very wise,” laughed Chie. “He does not wish to lose the only hand he has.”
“But it is true that white people are allowed only one wife at a time,” insisted Jimmie. However, Ponce and Chie did not act as though they believed this.
Camp Bowie was reached early the next morning. It was a small army post, about the size of Grant, composed of log and adobe buildings set in a clearing on a hill in the middle of the celebrated Apache Pass over the Chiricahua Mountains that extended on southward into Mexico. The pass was long and rolling, between high brushy, thinly timbered slopes. Bowie commanded the stage road both ways for two or three miles.
This had been Cochise’s favorite resort, in former days. At the east end of the pass was where his brother had been hanged, after the fracas eleven years ago, or in 1861. There had been no Camp Bowie, then; only the stage station.