Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/171

 *dence of the close proximity of the Apaches to stimulate all to keep both eyes open.

"F" troop of the Third Cavalry, to which I belonged, had the misfortune to give the alarm to a large band of Chiricahua Apaches coming down the Sulphur Springs Valley from Sonora, with a herd of ponies or cattle; we did not have the remotest idea that there were Indians in the country, not having seen the faintest sign, when all of a sudden at the close of a night march, very near where the new post of Camp Grant has since been erected on the flank of the noble Sierra Bonita or Mount Graham, we came upon their fires with the freshly slaughtered beeves undivided, and the blood still warm; but our advance had alarmed the enemy, and they had moved off, scattering as they departed.

Similarly, Robinson I think it was, came so close upon the heels of a party of raiders that they dropped a herd of fifteen or twenty "burros" with which they had just come up from the Mexican border. Our pack-trains ran in upon a band of seven bears in the Aravaypa cañon which scared the mules almost out of their senses, but the packers soon laid five of the ursines low and wounded the other two which, however, escaped over the rough, dangerous rocks.

There were sections of country passed over which fairly reeked with the baleful malaria, like the junction of the San Carlos and the Gila. There were others along which for miles and miles could be seen nothing but lava, either in solid waves, or worse yet, in "nigger-head" lumps of all sizes. There were mountain ranges with flanks hidden under a solid matting of the scrub-oak, and others upon whose summits grew dense forests of graceful pines, whose branches, redolent with balsamic odors, screened from the too fierce glow of the noonday sun. There were broad stretches of desert, where the slightest movement raised clouds of dust which would almost stifle both men and beasts; and gloomy ravines and startling cañons, in whose depths flowed waters as swift and clear and cool as any that have ever rippled along the pages of poetry.

Camp Apache was reached after a march and scout of all the intermediate country and a complete familiarization with the course of all the streams passed over en route. Nature had been more than liberal in her apportionment of attractions at this point, and there are truly few fairer scenes in the length and