Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/48

 freely from a wound in the chest, conclusively showed to have been an Apache ambuscade.

With faltering voice and in broken accents the sufferer explained that he was one of a party of more than thirty Mexicans coming up from Tucson to work on the ranch of Kennedy and Israel, who lived about a mile from our post down the San Pedro. There were a number of women and several children with the train, and not a soul had the slightest suspicion of danger, when suddenly, on the head of the slope leading up to the long "mesa" just this side of the Cañon del Oro, they had found themselves surrounded on three sides by a party of Apaches, whose strength was variously put at from thirty to fifty warriors.

The Americans and Mexicans made the best fight possible, and succeeded in keeping back the savages until the women and children had reached a place of comparative safety; but both Kennedy and Israel were killed, and a number of others killed or wounded, our informant being one of the latter, with a severe cut in the left breast, where a bullet had ploughed round his ribs without doing very serious damage. The Apaches fell to plundering the wagons, which were loaded with the general supplies that ranchmen were in those days compelled to keep in stock, for feeding the numbers of employees whom they had to retain to cultivate their fields, as well as to guard them, and the Mexicans, seeing this, made off as fast as their legs could carry them, under the guidance of such of their party as were familiar with the trails leading across the Santa Catalina range to the San Pedro and Camp Grant. One of these trails ran by way of Apache Springs at the northern extremity of the range, and was easy of travel, so that most of the people were safe, but we were strongly urged to lose no time in getting round by the longer road, along which the Apaches were believed to have pursued a few men.

The Mexican, Domingo, had seen Sergeants Warfield and Mott, two old veterans, on his way through the post, and they, without waiting for orders, had the herd run in and saddles got out in anticipation of what their experience taught them was sure to come. Every man who could be put on horseback was mounted at once, without regard to his company or regiment, and in less than twenty minutes the first detachment was crossing