Page:Life among the Apaches.djvu/94

 was also seized and a prisoner. Cuchillo Negro looked at him for a moment, with a most gratified expression on his savage face, and then said:

"My friend, you see that you cannot escape us. But I like you and will do you no harm. You must cease from staying on that hill. I want it; it belongs to me. You have intruded into my country; but you yourself I like. I will keep these pistols; but send for the rest of your men on the hill and take them away. For your sake we will not kill them this time."

Poor Lieut. Diaz had not a word to reply except to promise that the Indian's request would be granted in re turn for his generosity. It seems that Cuchillo Negro had observed the movement of Mr. Diaz, and with his band had buried himself under the grass, waiting the auspicious moment when Mr. Diaz should pass him on the road, when suddenly and noiselessly rising the savages grasped the unsuspecting Mexicans. I will here add, that Mr. Diaz was the officer charged to blow up the fortress of Chapultepec, should it fall into the hands of the Americans; but when the time came his heart failed him and he was captured pistol in hand, as if about to fire the magazine.

A few weeks after the incidents above described, the Commission abandoned the Copper Mines, in order to prosecute their labors to completion, and this abandonment was always regarded by the Apaches as the legitimate result of their active hostility. This fact came to my knowledge twelve years subsequent to the period of our removal, at which time it was again my province to renew my acquaintance with Mangas Colorado, then the only one living of the chiefs we had met at the Copper Mines. Coletto Amarillo, Ponce and his son, were killed in action by Californian soldiers, and it was the fate of Mangas to die on the point of an American bayonet.