Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/129

 Tucson to show to the people there, on returning from our scouts in the upper Gila.

On one occasion the Apaches ran off the herd of sheep belonging to Tully, Ochoa & DeLong, which were grazing in the foot-hills of the Santa Teresa not two miles from town. The young Mexican who was on duty as "pastor" kept his ears open for the tinkle of the bell, and every now and then would rouse himself from his doze to look around the mesquite under which he sat, to ascertain that his flock was all right. Gradually, the heat of the day became more and more oppressive, and the poor boy, still hearing the tintinnabulation, was in a delightful day-dream, thinking of his supper, perhaps, when he half-opened his eyes, and saw leering at him a full-grown Apache, who had all the while been gently shaking the bell taken an hour or two before from the neck of the wether which, with the rest of the flock, was a good long distance out of sight behind the hills, near the "Punta del Agua." The boy, frightened out of his wits, screamed lustily, and the Apache, delighted by his terror, flung the bell at his head, and then set off at a run to gain the hills where his comrades were. The alarm soon reached town, and the sheep were recovered before midnight, and by dawn the next day were back on their old pasturage, excepting the foot-sore and the weary, too weak to travel.

Our scouting had its share of incidents grave, gay, melancholy, ludicrous; men killed and wounded; Apaches ditto; and the usual amount of hard climbing by day, or marching by night upon trails which sometimes led us upon the enemy, and very often did not.

There was one very good man, Moore, if I remember his name correctly, who died of the "fever"—malaria—and was carried from the "Grassy Plain" into old Camp Goodwin, on the Gila, near the Warm Spring. No sooner had we arrived at Goodwin than one of the men—soldier or civilian employee, I do not know now—attempted to commit suicide, driven to despair by the utter isolation of his position; and two of our own company—Sergeant John Mott and one other, both excellent men—dropped down, broken up with the "fever," which would yield to nothing but the most heroic treatment with quinine.

In a skirmish with the Apaches near the head of Deer Creek,