Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/49

 the San Pedro and entering the long defile known as the Santa Catalina Cañon—not very well equipped for a prolonged campaign, perhaps, as some of the men had no water in canteens and others had only a handful of crackers for rations, but that made no difference. Our business was to rescue women and children surrounded by savages, and to do it with the least delay possible. At least, that was the way Colonel Dubois reasoned on the subject, and we had only our duty to do—obey orders.

A second detachment would follow after us, with a wagon containing water in kegs, rations for ten days, medical supplies, blankets, and every other essential for making such a scout as might become necessary.

Forward! was the word, and every heel struck flank and every horse pressed upon the bit. Do our best, we couldn't make very rapid progress through the cañon, which for its total length of twelve miles was heavy with shifting sand.

Wherever there was a stretch of hard pan, no matter how short, we got the best time out of it that was possible. The distance seemed interminable, but we pressed on, passing the Four-mile Walnut, on past the Cottonwood, slipping along without a word under the lofty walls which screened us from the rays of the sun, although the afternoon was still young. But in much less time than we had a right to expect we had reached the end of the bad road, and halted for a minute to have all loose cinches re-*tightened and everything made ready for rapid travelling on to the Cañon del Oro.

In front of us stretched a broken, hilly country, bounded on the east and west by the Tortolita and the Sierra Santa Catalina respectively. The summer was upon us, but the glories of the springtime had not yet faded from the face of the desert, which still displayed the splendors of millions of golden crocuses, with countless odorless verbenas of varied tints, and acres upon acres of nutritious grasses, at which our horses nibbled every time we halted for a moment. The cañon of the Santa Catalina for more than four miles of its length is no wider than an ordinary street in a city, and is enclosed by walls rising one thousand feet above the trail. Wherever a foothold could be found, there the thorny-branched giant cactus stood sentinel, or the prickly plates of the nopal matted the face of the escarpment. High up on the wall of the cañon, one of the most prominent of the pitahayas or