"Well, I'm blessed if here ain't Sherry!"
It was useless for the old sergeant to scold now. The officers promptly and laughingly took the boy's part and declared him "a chip of the old block," and bade the sergeant bring the boy along. It was safer, at all events, than sending him back.
And so, secretly proud of him, though openly declaring he would larrup him well the moment they got back to the post, Sergeant Bates obeyed his Captain, and thus it happened that Master Sherry was with "F" Troop the chill October morning, just at dawn, when they found out, entirely to their satisfaction, just what those signal-fires meant.
They were not visible from Camp Sandy, you must understand. Indians are too sharp for that. They were started in certain deep clefts in the Red Rocks which permitted their glare to be seen only from the southeast or the east, the direction from which the roving bands approached when seeking to steal their way back to the old reservation after some bloody foray, sure of food and welcome at the lodges of their friends and fellow-savages, provided they came not empty-handed. Coyote's band had not been near the reservation since their exploit of the year before. A price was on the leader's head, but scouting parties away down to the southeast in the Chiricahua country had learned that recently Coyote with some forty followers had crossed to the north of the Gila, and seemed to be making his way back to his old haunts in the Mogollon. All this was wired to Major Wheeler, and Wheeler sent some trustworthy Apache-Mohave scouts out towards the head-waters of Chevelon's Fork to the east, with orders to watch for the coming of Coyote. It was one of these runners who brought in the tidings that the signal-fires were burning, and that meant, "Come on, Coyote; the coast is clear."
And Apache confederates, watching from the reservation, twenty miles up-stream, would have said the coast was still clear, for the road to Stoneman's Lake was untrodden. A day later, to be sure, they got word that a whole troop of horse had gone by night up into the mountains, but it was then too late to undo what they had done—lured Coyote many a mile towards his enemies. They sent up "smokes" in the afternoon to warn him, but by that time Coyote's people, what was left of them, knew more than did their friends at the reservation.
For, early that morning, just at dawn, while some of them were sound asleep in their brush shelters, or "wicky-ups," away on top of a rocky pinnacle that overlooked the country for miles, this is what happened:
Following the lead of three or four swart, black-haired, beady-eyed Apache scouts, the soldiers came stealthily climbing the steep. Away down in a rocky cañon they had left the horses and pack-mules, their blankets and, many of them, their boots, and in moccasins, or even stocking feet in a few cases, they noiselessly made their way. Officers and all carried the death-dealing little brown cavalry carbine, and thimble belts of copper cartridges were buckled about their waists. "Find um top," the leader of the little squad of scouts muttered to the Captain, as he pointed the evening before to this distant peak, and well he knew their ways, for only three years before he himself had been a "hostile," and was tamed into subjection by General Crook. And so it proved. Relying on the far-away night fires, Coyote and his weary band had made their brush shelters on the old Picacho. The few squaws with them had filled their water-jars at the cañon. Two trusty runners had gone on westward to the reservation, and the rest to sleep. Coyote thought the white soldiers "too heap fool" to think of making a night march through the mountains instead of coming away around by the old road. With the troop-horses was left a small guard, and with the guard a little boy—Master Sherry Bates—fretting and fuming not a little as he lay there among the rocks, wrapped in his father's blanket, and listening with eagerness unspeakable for the crash of musketry away up on that dimly outlined peak that should tell that his father and the boys had found their foemen and the fight was on. Presently, as the eastern sky began to change from crimson to gold, the lofty summit seemed slowly to blaze with glistening fire. The light, still dim and feeble in the jagged ravine, grew sharp and clear along the range, and one of the guard, peering through the Captain's binocular, swore he could "see some of the fellers climbing close to the top"; and Sherry, though shivering with cold and excitement, rolled out of his blanket and scrambled to his feet. An instant more and, floating on the mountain breeze, there came the sudden crash and splutter of distant musketry, and Sherry could control himself no longer. Mad with excitement, he began dancing about the bivouac. The men were all listening and gazing. The horses were snorting and pawing. There was no one to hinder the little fellow now. Half shrouded by the lingering darkness in the gorge, he stole away among the stunted pines and went speeding as though for dear life up the cañon.
The fight itself was of short duration. Surprised in their stronghold, the Indians sprang to their arms at the warning cry of one haplessly wakeful sentinel. It was his death-song, too, for Sergeant Bates and the veteran corporal at his side, foremost with the guides, drove their almost simultaneous shots at the dark figure as it suddenly leaped between them and the sky, tumbling the sentry in his tracks, and then, before the startled band could spring to the shelter of surrounding bowlders, the soldiers with one volley and a ringing cheer came dashing in among them. Some warriors in their panic leaped from the ledge and were dashed upon the rocks below; some, like mountain-goats, went bounding down the eastward side and disappeared among the straggling timber; some, crouching behind the bowlders, fought desperately, until downed by carbine butt or bullet. Some few wailing squaws knelt beside their slain, sure that the white soldiers would not knowingly harm them; while others, like frightened doe, darted away into the shelter of rock or stunted pine. One little Indian boy sat straight up from a sound sleep, rubbing his baby eyes, and yelling with terror. Another little scamp, with snapping black eyes, picked up a gun and pulled trigger like a man, and then lay sprawling on his back, rubbing a damaged shoulder, and kicking almost as hard as the old musket. And then, while some soldiers went on under a boy Lieutenant in charge of the fleeing Indians, others, with their short-winded Captain, counted up the Indian losses and their own, and gave their attention to the wounded; and all of a sudden there went up a shout from Sergeant Bates, who was peering over the edge of a shelf of rock.
"Here's more of 'em, sir, running down this way!" followed by a bang from his carbine and a yell from below, and men who reached his side were just in time to see a brace of squaws, dragging two or three youngsters by the hand, darting into the bushes, while their protecting warriors defiantly faced their assailants, fired a shot or two, and then went plunging after. "I know that Indian," almost screamed old Bates. "It's Coyote himself!"
"After 'em, then!" was the order, and away went every man.