Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/491

 *mission to go with the column. By the terms of the convention then existing between Mexico and the United States, the armed forces of either country could, when in pursuit of hostile Indians, cross the frontier and continue pursuit until met by troops of the country into whose territory the trail led, though this convention applied only to desert portions of territory. Crook visited Guaymas, Hermosillo (in Sonora), and Chihuahua, the capital of the Mexican State of the same name, where he conferred with Generals Topete, Bernardo Reyes, and Carbo, of the Mexican Army, Governor Torres, of Sonora, and Mayor Zubiran, of Chihuahua, by all of whom he was received most hospitably and encouraged in his purposes.

He organized a small force of one hundred and ninety-three Apache scouts and one small company of the Sixth Cavalry, commanded by Major Chaffee and Lieutenant Frank West. The scouts were commanded by Captain Emmet Crawford, Third Cavalry; Lieutenant Gatewood, Sixth Cavalry; Lieutenant W. W. Forsyth, Sixth Cavalry; Lieutenant Mackay, Third Cavalry, with Surgeon Andrews as medical officer. Crook took command in person, having with him Captain John G. Bourke, Third Cavalry, and Lieutenant G. J. Febiger, Engineer Corps, as aides-de-camp; Archie Macintosh and Al Seiber as chiefs of scouts; Mickey Free, Severiano, and Sam Bowman as interpreters. The expedition was remarkably successful: under the guidance of "Peaches," "To-klanni," "Alchise," and other natives, it made its way down to the head waters of the Yaqui River, more than two hundred miles south of the international boundary, into the unknown recesses of the Sierra Madre, and there surprised and captured, after a brief but decisive fight, the stronghold of the Chiricahuas, who were almost all absent raiding upon the hapless Mexican hamlets exposed to their fury. As fast as the warriors and squaws came home, they were apprehended and put under charge of the scouts.

This was one of the boldest and most successful strokes ever achieved by an officer of the United States Army: every man, woman, and child of the Chiricahuas was returned to the San Carlos Agency and put to work. They had the usual story to tell of ill-treatment, broken pledges, starvation, and other incidentals, but the reader has perhaps had enough of that kind of narrative. The last straw which drove them out from the agency was the