Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/493

 from which they fought to the death. This story was investigated by Major William C. Rafferty, Sixth Cavalry, who found no massacre, no Indians, no miners, no cave, nothing but a Buck-*horn basin.

There was a small set of persons who took pleasure in disseminating such rumors, the motive of some being sensationalism merely, that of others malice or a desire to induce the bringing in of more troops from whose movements and needs they might make money. Such people did not reflect, or did not care, that the last result of this conduct, if persisted in, would be to deter capital from seeking investment in a region which did not require the gilding of refined gold or the painting of the lily to make it appear the Temple of Horrors; surely, enough blood had been shed in Arizona to make the pages of her history red for years to come, without inventing additional enormities to scare away the immigration which her mines and forests, her cattle pasturage and her fruit-bearing oases, might well attract.

It was reported that the Chiricahua prisoners had been allowed to drive across the boundary herds of cattle captured from the Mexicans; for this there was not the slightest foundation. When the last of the Chiricahuas, the remnant of "Ju's" band, which had been living nearly two hundred miles south of "Geronimo's" people in the Sierra Madre, arrived at the international boundary, a swarm of claimants made demand for all the cattle with them. Each cow had, it would seem, not less than ten owners, and as in the Southwest the custom was to put on the brand of the purchaser as well as the vent brand of the seller, each animal down there was covered from brisket to rump with more or less plainly discernible marks of ownership. General Crook knew that there must be a considerable percentage of perjury in all this mass of affidavits, and wisely decided that the cattle should be driven up to the San Carlos Agency, and there herded under guard in the best obtainable pasturage until fat enough to be sold to the best advantage. The brand of each of the cattle, probable age, name of purchaser, amount realized, and other items of value, were preserved, and copies of them are to be seen in my note-books of that date. The moneys realized from the sale were forwarded through the official military channels to Washington, thence to be sent through the ordinary course of diplomatic correspondence to the Government of Mexico, which would naturally be more