Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/132

 That one so young, so beautiful and bright, should have been snatched away by a most cruel death at the hands of savages, aroused the people of all the country south of the Gila, and nothing was talked of, nothing was thought of, but vengeance upon the Apaches.

Cushing all this time had kept our troop moving without respite. There were fights, and ambuscades, and attacks upon "rancherias," and night-marches without number, several resulting in the greatest success. I am not going to waste any space upon these, because there is much of the same sort to come, and I am afraid of tiring out the patience of my readers before reaching portions of this book where there are to be found descriptions of very spirited engagements.

The trail of the raiders upon the ranch at the "Cienaga" (now called "Pantano" by the Southern Pacific Railroad people) took down into the "Mestinez," or Mustang Mountains, so called from the fact that a herd of wild ponies were to be found there or not far off. They did not number more than sixty all told when I last saw them in 1870, and were in all probability the last herd of wild horses within the limits of the United States. In this range, called also the "Whetstone" Mountains, because there exists a deposit or ledge of the rock known as "novaculite" or whetstone of the finest quality, we came upon the half calcined bones of two men burned to death by the Apaches; and after marching out into the open valley of the San Pedro, and crossing a broad expanse covered with yucca and sage-brush, we came to a secluded spot close to the San José range, where the savages had been tearing up the letters contained in one of Uncle Sam's mail-bags, parts of which lay scattered about.

When the work-oxen of the Texans were run off, the Apaches took them over the steepest, highest and rockiest part of the Sierra Santa Catalina, where one would not believe that a bird would dare to fly. We followed closely, guided by Manuel Duran and others, but progress was difficult and slow, on account of the nature of the trail. As we picked our way, foot by foot, we could discern the faintest sort of a mark, showing that a trail had run across there and had lately been used by the Apaches. But all the good done by that hard march was the getting back of the meat of the stock which the Apaches killed just the moment they reached the cañons under the Trumbull Peak. Two