On the Border with Crook

by John Gregory Bourke

One night we bivouacked at a spot not far from where the mining town of Globe now stands, and at a ledge of rocks which run across the valley of Pinal Creek, but part for a few feet to permit the feeble current to flow through. The sky was comparatively clear, a few clouds only flitting across the zenith. Back of us, hanging like a shroud over the tops of the Pinal, were heavy, black masses, from whose pendulous edges flashed the lightning, and from whose cavernous depths roared and growled the thunder.

“That looks very much like a cloud-burst coming,” said Cushing; “better be on the safe side, anyhow.” So he gave orders to move all the bedding and all the supplies of the pack-train higher up the side of the hill. The latter part of the order was obeyed first, and almost if not quite all the ammunition, bacon, coffee, and sugar had been carried out of reach of possible danger, and most of the blankets and carbines had been shifted—everything, in fact, but the hard tack—when we noticed that the volume of water in the creek had unaccountably increased, and the next moment came the warning cry: “Look out! Here she comes!” A solid wall of water—I do not care to say how many feet high—was rushing down the cañon, sweeping all before it, and crushing a path for itself over the line along which our blankets had been spread so short a time previously.

The water didn’t make very much noise. There was no sound but a SISH! That meant more than my pen can say. All that we had carried to the higher slopes of the cañon side was saved. All that we had not been able to move was swept away, but there was nothing of value to any one excepting a mule belonging to one of the guides, which was drowned, and a lot of harness or rigging from the pack-train, which, with the hard tack, found a watery grave.

Cushing, too, would have been swept off in the current had he not been seized in the strong grasp of Sergeant Warfield and “Big Dan Miller,” two of the most powerful men in the troop. The rain soaked through us all night, and we had to make the best of it until dawn, when we discovered to our great surprise and satisfaction that the stream, which had been gorged between the rocks at our camp, widened below, and this had allowed the current to expand and to slacken, dropping here and there in the valley most of the plunder which was of consequence to us, especially the hard bread.

All this meant an exasperating delay of twenty-four hours to dry our blankets upon the rocks, and to spread out our sodden food, and save as much of it as we could from mildew.

From there we made a detour over to Pinto Creek, where I may inform those of my readers who take an interest in such things, there are one or two exceptionally well-preserved cliff-dwellings, which we examined with much curiosity.

Not far from there we came upon the corn-fields of a band of Apaches, and destroyed them, eating as many of the roasting ears as we could, and feeding the rest to our stock.

Such were the military instructions of twenty and twenty-five years ago. As soldiers we had to obey, even if we could feel that these orders must have been issued under a misconception of the Indian character. The more the savage is attached to the soil by the ties of a remunerative husbandry, the more is he weaned from the evil impulses which idleness engenders. This proposition seems just as clear as that two and two make four, but some people learn quickly, and others learn slowly, and preachers, school-teachers, and military people most slowly of all.

Our presence was discovered by the Apache look-outs before we were able to effect a surprise, or, to be candid, we stumbled in upon the nook, or series of nooks, in which this planting was going on, and beyond exchanging a few shots and wounding, as we learned afterward, a couple of the young men, did not do much at that moment; but we did catch two squaws, from whom some information was extracted.

They agreed to lead us to where there was another “rancheria” a few miles off, in another cañon over toward Tonto Creek. We found the enemy, sure enough, but in such an inaccessible position, up among lofty hills covered with a dense jungle of scrub oak, that we could do nothing beyond firing shots in reply to those directed against us, and were so unfortunate as to lose our prisoners, who darted like jack-rabbits into the brush, and were out of sight in a flash. Why did we not catch them again? Oh, well, that is something that no one could do but the gentle reader. The gentle reader generally is able to do more than the actors on the ground, and he may as well be allowed a monopoly in the present case.