Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/149

 a vivid but horrifying description of the chaotic condition in which affairs were left by the sudden withdrawal of the troops, leaving the mines, which, in each case, were provided with stores or warehouses filled with goods, a prey to the Apaches who swarmed down from the mountains and the Mexican bandits who poured in from Sonora.

There was scarcely any choice between them, and occasionally it happened, when the mining superintendent had an unusual streak of good luck, that he would have them both to fight at once, as in Pumpelly's own case.

Not very long previous to this, Arizona had received a most liberal contingent of the toughs and scalawags banished from San Francisco by the efforts of its Vigilance Committee, and until these last had shot each other to death, or until they had been poisoned by Tucson whiskey or been killed by the Apaches, Arizona's chalice was filled to the brim, and the most mendacious real-estate boomer would have been unable to recommend her as a suitable place for an investment of capital.

It is among the possibilities that the Apaches could have been kept in a state of friendliness toward the Americans during these troublous days, had it not been for one of those accidents which will occur to disturb the most harmonious relations, and destroy the effect of years of good work. The Chiricahua Apaches, living close to what is now Fort Bowie, were especially well behaved, and old-timers have often told me that the great chief, Cocheis, had the wood contract for supplying the "station" of the Southern Overland Mail Company at that point with fuel. The Pinals and the other bands still raided upon the villages of northern Mexico; in fact, some of the Apaches have made their home in the Sierra Madre, in Mexico; and until General Crook in person led a small expedition down there, and pulled the last one of them out, it was always understood that there was the habitat and the abiding place of a very respectable contingent—so far as numbers were concerned—of the tribe.

A party of the Pinal Apaches had engaged in trade with a party of Mexicans close to Fort Bowie—and it should be understood that there was both trade and war with the Castilian, and, worst of all, what was stolen from one Mexican found ready sale to another, the plunder from Sonora finding its way into the hands of the settlers in Chihuahua, or, if taken up into our country, sell