Page:Life among the Apaches.djvu/170

 when camp-fires would afford the enemy the best kind of advantage, was not true policy, and Capt. Roberts ordered each man to take a drink from the precious and hardly-earned springs, and fill his canteen, after which the troops retired within the shelter afforded by the stone station house, the proper guards and pickets being posted.

In this fight Roberts had two men killed and three wounded, and I afterwards learned from a prominent Apache who Was present in the engagement, that sixty-three warriors were killed outright by the shells, while only three perished from musketry fire. He added "We would have done well enough if you had not fired wagons at us." The howitzers being on wheels, were deemed a species of wagon by the Apaches, wholly in experienced in that sort of warfare.

Capt. Roberts suffered his men to recruit their wasted energies with supper, and then taking one-half his company, the remainder being left under command of Lieut. Thompson, marched back to Swell's Station, fifteen miles, to assure the safety of the train under my command, and escort it through the pass. As before stated, he reached my camp a little after two o'clock, where the men rested until five, when the march toward the pass was resumed. Several alarms were given before his arrival, and we heard the Apaches careering around us; but they made no attack, and kept out of sight. At five o'clock, the train was straightened out with half my effective cavalry force three hundred yards in the advance, and the other half about as far in the rear, while the wagons were flanked on either side by the infantry. In this order we entered that most formidable of gorges, when the bugles blew a halt. A considerable body of the infantry were then thrown out on either side