Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/131

 men, Corporal Harrington, for the post, some twelve miles away. We did not have much more of the cañon to bother us, and made good speed all the way down the Aravaypa and into the post, where I hurriedly explained the situation and had an ambulance start up the cañon with blankets and other comforts, while in the post itself everything was made ready for the amputation in the hospital, which all knew to be a foregone conclusion, and a mounted party was sent to Tucson to summon Dr. Durant to assist in the operation.

Having done all this, I started back up the cañon and came upon my own detachment slowly making its way down. In another hour the ambulance had rolled up to the door of the hospital, and the wounded man was on a cot under the influence of anæsthetics. The amputation was made at the upper third of the thigh, and resulted happily, and the patient in due time recovered, although he had a close call for his life.

The winter of 1870 and the spring of 1871 saw no let up in the amount of scouting which was conducted against the Apaches. The enemy resorted to a system of tactics which had often been tried in the past and always with success. A number of simultaneous attacks were made at points widely separated, thus confusing both troops and settlers, spreading a vague sense of fear over all the territory infested, and imposing upon the soldiery an exceptional amount of work of the hardest conceivable kind.

Attacks were made in southern Arizona upon the stage stations at the San Pedro, and the Cienaga, as well as the one near the Picacho, and upon the ranchos in the Barbacomori valley, and in the San Pedro, near Tres Alamos. Then came the news of a fight at Pete Kitchen's, and finally, growing bolder, the enemy drove off a herd of cattle from Tucson itself, some of them beeves, and others work-oxen belonging to a wagon-train from Texas. Lastly came the killing of the stage mail-rider, between the town and the Mission church of San Xavier, and the massacre of the party of Mexicans going down to Sonora, which occurred not far from the Sonoita.

One of the members of this last party was a beautiful young Mexican lady—Doña Trinidad Aguirre—who belonged to a very respectable family in the Mexican Republic, and was on her way back from a visit to relatives in Tucson.