Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/157

 sneak in upon the herd and stampede it, and set the soldiery on foot, or drive a few arrows against the sentinels, if he can discern where they may be moving in the gloom.

All sorts of signals are made for the information of other parties of Apaches. At times, it is an inscription or pictograph incised in the smooth bark of a sycamore; at others, a tracing upon a smooth-faced rock under a ledge which will protect it from the elements; or it may be a knot tied in the tall sacaton or in the filaments of the yucca; or one or more stones placed in the crotch of a limb, or a sapling laid against another tree, or a piece of buckskin carelessly laid over a branch. All these, placed as agreed upon, afford signals to members of their own band, and only Apaches or savages with perceptions as keen would detect their presence.

When information of some important happening is to be communicated to a distance and at once, and the party is situated upon the summit of a mountain chain or in other secure position, a fire is lighted of the cones of the resinous pine, and the smoke is instantaneously making its way far above the tracery of the foliage. A similar method is employed when they desire to apprise kinsfolk of the death of relatives; in the latter case the brush "jacal" of the deceased—the whole village, in fact—is set on fire and reduced to ashes.

The Apache was a hard foe to subdue, not because he was full of wiles and tricks and experienced in all that pertains to the art of war, but because he had so few artificial wants and depended almost absolutely upon what his great mother—Nature—stood ready to supply. Starting out upon the war-path, he wore scarcely any clothing save a pair of buckskin moccasins reaching to mid-thigh and held to the waist by a string of the same material; a piece of muslin encircling the loins and dangling down behind about to the calves of the legs, a war-hat of buckskin surmounted by hawk and eagle plumage, a rifle (the necessary ammunition in belt) or a bow, with the quiver filled with arrows reputed to be poisonous, a blanket thrown over the shoulders, a watertight wicker jug to serve as a canteen, and perhaps a small amount of "jerked" meat, or else of "pinole" or parched corn-*meal.

That is all, excepting his sacred relics and "medicine," for now is the time when the Apache is going to risk no failure by neglect