Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/214

 the commissioned list, until, at a point in the Superstition Mountains, we were joined by Captain James Burns and First Lieutenant Earl D. Thomas, Fifth Cavalry, with Company G of that regiment, and a large body—not quite one hundred—of Pima Indians. In addition to the above we had Archie Macintosh, Joe Felmer, and Antonio Besias as guides and interpreters to take charge of the scouts. Mr. James Dailey, a civilian volunteer, was also with the command. The pack train carried along rations for thirty days, and there was no lack of flour, bacon, beans, coffee, with a little chile colorado for the packers, and a small quantity of dried peaches and chocolate, of which many persons in that country made use in preference to coffee. We were all cut down to the lowest notch in the matter of clothing, a deprivation of which no one complained, since the loss was not severely felt amid such surroundings.

It was now that the great amount of information which General Crook had personally absorbed in regard to Arizona came of the best service. He had been in constant conference with the Apache scouts and interpreters concerning all that was to be done and all that was positively known of the whereabouts of the hostiles; especially did he desire to find the "rancheria" of the chief "Chuntz," who had recently murdered in cold blood, at Camp Grant, a Mexican boy too young to have been a cause of rancor to any one. It may be said in one word that the smallest details of this expedition were arranged by General Crook in person before we started down the San Pedro. He had learned from "Esquinosquizn" of the site of the rancheria supposed to be occupied by "Deltchay" in the lofty range called the "Four Peaks" or the "Matitzal," the latter by the Indians and the former by the Americans, on account of there being the distinctive feature of four peaks of great elevation overlooking the country for hundreds of miles in all directions. One of the most important duties confided to our force was the destruction of this rancheria if we could find it. These points were not generally known at the time we left Grant, neither was it known that one of our Apache guides, "Nantaje," christened "Joe" by the soldiers, had been raised in that very stronghold, and deputed to conduct us to it. First, we were to look up "Chuntz," if we could, and wipe him out, and then do our best to clean up the stronghold of "Deltchay."