“Hello, Cheemie. Your patron says for you to come quick, if you want to go to Camp Apache.”
“When did you get in, Micky?” panted Jimmie, as they trotted on together.
“Just now. Alchisé (Al-chi-say) and I bring dispatches. The canvas suit general is at Camp Apache, and everybody is to join him there, to go against the Tonto.”
XII
GENERAL CROOK RIDES AGAIN
“That’s right,” Patron Jack was urging, among the fast working men. “Move yore feet, hombres, or the cavalry’ll beat you. The old man’s up yonder, waitin’ on his mule, with both bar’ls loaded. Mebbe it’s peace in the south but it’s war in the north.” And to Jimmie: “Say, muchacho! Thar’s livelier things’n graveyards. We’re goin’ after Chuntz an’ the rest o’ those boy murderers. So you jump an’ help the cook.”
Alchisé and Micky Free had brought orders from General Crook at Camp Apache to Lieutenant Almy to join him there at once with all the cavalry and pack-mules that could be spared from Camp Bowie.
Of course, the orders had not explained why; but the busy-minded Micky asserted that everybody at Apache knew why: they knew why, because the Sierra Blanca or White Mountains had been asked to send their young men with the soldiers and help to drive the bad Tontos and Apache-Mohaves out of the Tonto Basin. These Tontos and Yavapais were making trouble between the white men and the red.
The pack-train was ready first. In an hour the cavalry were ready, and the column moved out of Bowie, for Camp Apache, two hundred miles by trail north across the mountains.
Maria had to stay behind, at Bowie.