Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/222

 and his comrades, which had sent six souls to their last account, and sounded the death-knell of a powerful band. The surprise and terror of the savages were so complete that they thought only of the safety which the interior of the cave afforded, and as a consequence, when my party arrived on the scene, although there were a number of arrows thrown at us as we descended the path and rounded the angle, yet no attempt was made at a counter-assault, and before the Apaches could recover from their astonishment the two parties united, numbering more than fifty, nearer sixty, men, had secured position within thirty yards of one flank of the cave, and within forty yards of the other, and each man posted behind rocks in such a manner that he might just as well be in a rifle pit. My instructions were not to make any fight, but to keep the Apaches occupied, in case they tried to break out of the trap, and to order all men to shelter themselves to the utmost. Major Brown was down with the remainder of the command almost before a shot could be exchanged with the enemy, although there were two more killed either a moment before his arrival or very soon after. One of these was a Pima, one of our own allies, who persisted in disregarding orders, and exposed himself to the enemy's fire, and was shot through the body and died before he ever knew what had struck him. The other was one of the Apaches who had sneaked down along our right flank, and was making his way out to try to open up communication with another village and get its people to attack us in rear. He counted without his host, and died a victim to his own carelessness; he had climbed to the top of a high rock some distance down the cañon, and there fancied himself safe from our shots, and turned to give a yell of defiance. His figure outlined against the sky was an excellent mark, and there was an excellent shot among us to take full advantage of it. Blacksmith John Cahill had his rifle in position like a flash, and shot the Indian through the body. At the time of the fight, we did not know that the savage had been killed, although Cahill insisted that he had shot him as described, and as those nearest him believed. The corpse could not be found in the rocks before we left, and therefore was not counted, but the squaws at San Carlos have long since told me that their relative was killed there, and that his remains were found after we had left the neighborhood.

Brown's first work was to see that the whole line was impreg