On the Border with Crook

by John Gregory Bourke

With the exception of Colonel Guy V. Henry, Captain W. W. Robinson of the Seventh Cavalry, and myself, none of the officers of that scout are left in the army. Major Ross, our capable quartermaster, is still alive and is now a citizen of Tucson. Crook, Stanwood, Smith, Meinhold, Mullan, and Brent are dead, and Henry has had such a close call for his life (at the Rosebud, June 17, 1876) that I am almost tempted to include him in the list.

The detachment of scouts made a curious ethnographical collection. There were Navajoes, Apaches, Opatas, Yaquis, Pueblos, Mexicans, Americans, and half-breeds of any tribe one could name. It was an omnium gatherum—the best that could be summoned together at the time; some were good, and others were good for nothing. They were a fair sample of the social driftwood of the Southwest, and several of them had been concerned in every revolution or counter-revolution in northwestern Mexico since the day that Maximilian landed. Manuel Duran, the old Apache, whom by this time I knew very intimately, couldn’t quite make it all out. He had never seen so many troops together before without something being in the wind, and what it meant he set about unravelling. He approached, the morning we arrived at Sulphur Springs, and in the most confidential manner asked me to ride off to one side of the road with him, which I, of course, did.

“You are a friend of the new Comandante,” he said, “and I am a friend of yours. You must tell me all.”

“But, Manuel, I do not fully understand what you are driving at.”

“Ah, mi teniente, you cannot fool me. I am too old; I know all about such things.”

“But, tell me, Manuel, what is this great mystery you wish to know?”

Manuel’s right eyelid dropped just a trifle, just enough to be called a wink, and he pointed with his thumb at General Crook in advance. His voice sank to a whisper, but it was still perfectly clear and plain, as he asked: “When is the new Comandante going to pronounce?”

I didn’t explode nor roll out of the saddle, although it was with the greatest difficulty I kept from doing either; but the idea of General Crook, with five companies of cavalry and one of scouts, revolting against the general Government and issuing a “pronunciamiento,” was too much for my gravity, and I yelled. Often in succeeding years I have thought of that talk with poor Manuel, and never without a chuckle.

We learned to know each other, we learned to know Crook, we learned to know the scouts and guides, and tell which of them were to be relied upon, and which were not worth their salt; we learned to know a great deal about packers, pack-mules and packing, which to my great surprise I found to be a science and such a science that as great a soldier as General Crook had not thought it beneath his genius to study it; and, applying the principles of military discipline to the organization of trains, make them as nearly perfect as they ever have been or can be in our army history. Last, but not least, we learned the country—the general direction of the rivers, mountains, passes, where was to be found the best grazing, where the most fuel, where the securest shelter. Some of the command had had a little experience of the same kind previously, but now we were all in attendance at a perambulating academy, and had to answer such questions as the general commanding might wish to propound on the spot.

Side scouts were kept out constantly, and each officer, upon his return, was made to tell all he had learned of the topography and of Indian “sign.” There was a great plenty of the latter, but none of it very fresh; in the dim distance, on the blue mountain-tops, we could discern at frequent intervals the smoke sent up in signals by the Apaches; often, we were at a loss to tell whether it was smoke or the swift-whirling “trebillon” of dust, carrying off in its uncanny embrace the spirit of some mighty chief. While we slowly marched over “playas” of sand, without one drop of water for miles, we were tantalized by the sight of cool, pellucid lakelets from which issued water whose gurgle and ripple could almost be heard, but the illusion dissipated as we drew nearer and saw that the mirage-fiend had been mocking our thirst with spectral waters.