Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/218

 range, and had destroyed a "rancheria," killing six and capturing two; one, a squaw, sent in to MacDowell, and the other, a small but very bright and active boy, whom the men had promptly adopted, and upon whom had been bestowed the name "Mike" Burns, which he has retained to this day. This boy, then not more than six or seven years old, was already an expert in the use of the bow and arrow, and, what suited Captain Burns much better, he could knock down quail with stones, and add much to the pleasures of a very meagre mess, as no shooting was allowed. During the past twenty years, Mike Burns has, through the interposition of General Crook, been sent to Carlisle, and there received the rudiments of an education; we have met at the San Carlos Agency, and talked over old times, and I have learned what was not then known, that in Burns's fight with the band on the summit of the Four Peaks, seven of the latter were killed, and the men and women who escaped, under the leadership of Mike's own father, hurried to the stronghold in the cañon of the Salt River, where they were all killed by our command a few days later. On the evening of the 27th of December, 1872, we were bivouacked in a narrow cañon called the Cottonwood Creek, flowing into the Salado at the eastern base of the Matitzal, when Major Brown announced to his officers that the object for which General Crook had sent out this particular detachment was almost attained; that he had been in conference with "Nantaje," one of our Apache scouts, who had been brought up in the cave in the cañon of the Salt River, and that he had expressed a desire to lead us there, provided we made up our minds to make the journey before day-dawn, as the position of the enemy was such that if we should be discovered on the trail, not one of our party would return alive. The Apaches are familiar with the stars, and "Nantaje" had said that if we were to go, he wanted to start out with the first appearance above the eastern horizon of a certain star with which he was acquainted.

Brown gave orders that every officer and man who was not in the best condition for making a severe march and climb over rugged mountains, should stay with the pack-trains and be on the watch for any prowling band of the enemy. First, there was made a pile of the aparejos and supplies which could serve in emergency as a breastwork for those to remain behind; then a picket line was stretched, to which the mules and horses could be