Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/473

 haunts and learn all they had to say, and he learned much. He took with him Mr. C. E. Cooley, formerly one of his principal scouts, who was to act as interpreter; Al Seiber, who had seen such wonderful service in that country; Surgeon J. O. Skinner; and myself. Captain Wallace, with his company of the Sixth Cavalry, remained in charge of the pack-train.

Upon the elevated plateau of broken basalt which separates the current of the White River from that of the Black there is a long line of forest, principally cedar, with no small amount of pine, and much yucca, soapweed, Spanish bayonet, and mescal. The knot-holes in the cedars seemed to turn into gleaming black eyes; the floating black tresses of dead yucca became the snaky locks of fierce outlaws, whose lances glistened behind the shoots of mescal and amole. Twenty-six of these warriors followed us down to our bivouac in the cañon of the "Prieto," or Black River, and there held a conference with General Crook, to whom they related their grievances.

Before starting out from Camp Apache General Crook had held a conference with such of the warriors as were still there, among whom I may mention "Pedro," "Cut-Mouth Moses," "Alchise," "Uklenni," "Eskitisesla," "Noqui-noquis," "Peltie," "Notsin," "Mosby," "Chile," "Eskiltie," and some forty others of both sexes. "Pedro," who had always been a firm friend of the whites, was now old and decrepit, and so deaf that he had to employ an ear-trumpet. This use of an ear-trumpet by a so-called savage Apache struck me as very ludicrous, but a week after I saw at San Carlos a young baby sucking vigorously from a rubber tube attached to a glass nursing-bottle. The world does move.

From the journal of this conference, I will make one or two extracts as illustrative of General Crook's ideas on certain seemingly unimportant points, and as giving the way of thinking and the manner of expression of the Apaches.

down on paper, because what goes down on paper never lies. A man's memory may fail him, but what the paper holds will be fresh and true long after we are all dead and forgotten. This will not bring back the dead, but what is put down on this paper today may help the living. What I want to get at is all that has happened since I left here to bring about this trouble, this pres
 * "I want to have all that you say here go