Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/506



foe? Nothing, absolutely nothing. It is no exaggeration to say that these fiends can travel, week in and week out, at the rate of seventy miles a day, and this over the most barren and desolate country imaginable. One week of such work will kill the average soldier and his horse; the Apache thrives on it. The frontiersman, as he now exists, is simply a fraud as an Indian-fighter. He may be good for a dash, but he lacks endurance. General Crook has pursued the only possible method of solving this problem. He has, to the extent of his forces, guarded all available passes with regulars, and he has sent Indian scouts on the trail after Indians. He has fought the devil with fire. Never in the history of this country has there been more gallant, more uncomplaining, and more efficient service than that done by our little army in the attempt to suppress this Geronimo outbreak."
 * sary forage, rations, and camp equipage, do as against this supple, untiring

In the month of November additional scouts were enlisted to take the place of those whose term of six months was about to expire. It was a great time at San Carlos, and the "medicine men" were in all their glory; of course, it would never do for the scouts to start out without the customary war dance, but besides that the "medicine men" held one of their "spirit" dances to consult with the powers of the other world and learn what success was to be expected. I have several times had the good luck to be present at these "spirit dances," as well as to be with the "medicine men" while they were delivering their predictions received from the spirits, but on the present occasion there was an unusual vehemence in the singing, and an unusual vim and energy in the dancing, which would betray the interest felt in the outcome of the necromancy. A war dance, attended by more than two hundred men and women, was in full swing close to the agency buildings in the changing lights and shadows of a great fire. This enabled the "medicine men" to secure all the more privacy for their own peculiar work, of which I was an absorbed spectator. There were about an even hundred of warriors and young boys not yet full grown, who stood in a circle surrounding a huge bonfire, kept constantly replenished with fresh fagots by assiduous attendants. At one point of the circumference were planted four bunches of green willow branches, square to the cardinal points. Seated within this sacred grove, as I may venture to call it, as it represented about all the trees they could get at the San Carlos, were the members of an orchestra, the leader of which with a small curved stick beat upon the drum improvised out of an iron camp-kettle, covered with soaped