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

“Oh, yes,” assured Micky. “That Cluke is cunning. All the way over he saw that the water of the high places was frozen; winter has come and the Tonto and Yavapai will be staying home. They cannot move their rancherias, easy. I will go to Camp Grant with you, anyway,” added Micky. “But don’t say so, to other people. I am not an Apache. I will do as I please.”

General Crook did not delay an instant at Camp Apache after he had turned his orders into action. Upon the second morning after the arrival of the reinforcements from Camp Bowie he started, with cavalry and pack-mules and those White Mountain scouts who were ready, for Camp Grant.

He directed that the rest of the Apache scouts were to follow, in three days. They would find many other Indians at Camp Grant, who would try to be braver than the Sierra Blanca.

“My young men will show how the White Mountains can fight,” had answered old Pedro.

General Crook was in a great hurry.

“Yuh see,” explained Patron Jack, to the men who were astonished by being roused out at two in the morning and led on without a halt until late afternoon, “the old man’s promised to meet a lot more chiefs at Grant, besides those Sierra Blancas, an’ he knows he’s got to keep his word. If you don’t keep yore word with Injuns, they call you a liar.”

The distance by trail from Apache to Grant was a little more than one hundred miles—but each mile, as Cargador Frank Monach put it, meant one mile up, two miles down, and one mile across! Alchisé and Archie MacIntosh the Hudson Bay trapper, were the guides. Micky Free had not appeared, at the start; and when Jimmie, disappointed, inquired about him of Alchisé, Alchisé claimed to know nothing about Micky. He only shrugged his shoulders, and grunted:

“Maybe come, maybe stay. Who can tell?”

The second day’s march was terrific, into canyons and out again; and when darkness fell the column was still struggling to find a camping-place. The mules and the cavalry horses had all they could do to keep their feet amidst the brush and rocks; the general rode from head to rear, encouraging, and looking after men and mules—he sought no rest, for himself, and everybody worked like a demon. But Alchisé and Archie MacIntosh, in trying a short cut, had missed the trail.