Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/43



STRANGE VISITORS—SOME APACHE CUSTOMS—MEXICAN CAPTIVES—SPEEDY AND THE GHOST—THE ATTACK UPON KENNEDY AND ISRAEL'S TRAIN—FINDING THE BODIES—THE DEAD APACHE—A FRONTIER BURIAL—HOW LIEUTENANT YEATON RECEIVED HIS DEATH WOUND—ON THE TRAIL WITH LIEUTENANT CUSHING—REVENGE IS SWEET.

We had all sorts of visitors from the adjacent country. The first I remember was a squaw whose nose had been cut off by a brutal and jealous husband. The woman was not at all bad looking, and there was not a man at the post who did not feel sorry for the unfortunate who, for some dereliction, real or imagined, had been so savagely disfigured.

This shocking mode of punishment, in which, by the way, the Apache resembled some of the nations of antiquity, prevailed in full vigor until after General Crook had subjected this fierce tribe to law and discipline, and the first, or, at least, among the very first, regulations he laid down for their guidance was that the women of the tribe must be treated just as kindly as the men, and each and every infraction of the rule was threatened with the severest punishment the whole military force could inflict. Since then the practice has wholly died out among both the Apaches and the Hualpais.

Then there came an old withered crone, leading a woman somewhat younger, but still shrivelled with the life of care and drudgery which falls to the lot of the Apache matron, and a third member of this interesting party, a boy ten or twelve years old, who was suffering from the bite of a rattlesnake, which had caused his right leg to shrink and decay. The medicine-men of their band had sung vigorously and applied such medicine as they thought best suited to the case, but it proved to be beyond their skill, and they had advised this journey to Camp Grant, to see what the white man's medicine could do for the sufferer.