Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/167

 Washington, and lead to the formulation of any scheme in the premises. It used to take from four to six months for such a simple thing as a requisition for rations or clothing to produce any effect, and, of course, it would seem that the caring for a large body would consume still longer time for deliberation. But, no matter what Washington officialism might do or not do, General Crook was not the man to delay at his end of the line. We were on our way to Fort Bowie, in the eastern section of Arizona, leaving Tucson at six o'clock in the morning of July 11, 1871, and filing out on the mail road where the heat before ten o'clock attained 110° Fahrenheit in the shade, as we learned from the party left behind in Tucson to bring up the mail.

As it happened, Crook's first movement was stopped; but not until it had almost ended and been, what it was intended to be, a "practice march" of the best kind, in which officers and men could get acquainted with each other and with the country in which at a later moment they should have to work in earnest. Our line of travel lay due east one hundred and ten miles to old Fort Bowie, thence north through the mountains to Camp Apache, thence across an unmapped region over and at the base of the great Mogollon range to Camp Verde and Prescott on the west. In all, some six hundred and seventy-five miles were travelled, and most of it being in the presence of a tireless enemy, made it the best kind of a school of instruction. The first man up in the morning, the first to be saddled, the first ready for the road, was our indefatigable commander, who, in a suit of canvas, and seated upon a good strong mule, with his rifle carried across the pommel of his saddle, led the way.

With the exception of Colonel Guv V. Henry, Captain W. W. Robinson of the Seventh Cavalry, and myself, none of the officers of that scout are left in the army. Major Ross, our capable quartermaster, is still alive and is now a citizen of Tucson. Crook, Stanwood, Smith, Meinhold, Mullan, and Brent are dead, and Henry has had such a close call for his life (at the Rosebud, June 17, 1876) that I am almost tempted to include him in the list.

The detachment of scouts made a curious ethnographical collection. There were Navajoes, Apaches, Opatas, Yaquis, Pueblos, Mexicans, Americans, and half-breeds of any tribe one could name. It was an omnium gatherum—the best that could be