Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/130

 one of our men, named Shire, was struck by a rifle ball in the knee-cap, the ball ranging downward, and lodging in the lower leg near the ankle bone. We were sore distressed. There was no doctor with the little command, a criminal neglect for which Cushing was not responsible, and there was no guide, as Manuel Duran, who generally went out with us, was lying in Tucson seriously ill. No one was hurt badly enough to excite apprehension excepting Shire, whose wound was not bleeding at all, the hemorrhage being on the inside.

Sergeant Warfield, Cushing, and I stayed up all night talking over the situation, and doing so in a low tone, lest Shire should suspect that we had not been telling the truth when we persuaded him to believe that he had been hit by a glancing bullet, which had benumbed the whole leg but had not inflicted a very serious wound.

Our Mexican packers were called into consultation, and the result was that by four in the morning, as soon as a cup of coffee could be made, I was on my way over to the Aravaypa Cañon at the head of a small detachment in charge of the wounded man, who was firmly strapped to his saddle. We got along very well so long as we were on the high hills and mountains, where the horse of the sufferer could be led, and he himself supported by friendly hands on each side. To get down into the chasm of the Aravaypa was a horse of altogether a different color. The trail was extremely steep, stony, and slippery, and the soldier, heroic as he was, could not repress a groan as his horse jarred him by slipping under his weight on the wretched path. At the foot of the descent it was evident that something else in the way of transportation would have to be provided, as the man's strength was failing rapidly and he could no longer sit up.

Lieutenant Cushing's orders were for me to leave the party just as soon as I thought I could do so safely, and then ride as fast as the trail would permit to Camp Grant, and there get all the aid possible. It seemed to me that there could be no better time for hurrying to the post than the present, which found the detachment at a point where it could defend itself from the attack of any roving party of the enemy, and supplied with grass for the animals and fuel and water for the men.

Shire had fainted as I mounted and started with one of the