Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/511

 *ten-na" a letter which he had received from Lorenzo Bonito, an Apache pupil in the Carlisle School. "Ka-e-ten-na" had received one himself, and held it out in the light of the fire, mumbling something which the other Apaches fancied was reading, and at which they marvelled greatly; but not content with this proof of travelled culture, "Ka-e-ten-na" took a piece of paper from me, wrote upon it in carefully constructed school-boy capitals, and then handed it back to me to read aloud. I repressed my hilarity and read slowly and solemnly: "MY WIFE HIM NAME KOWTENNAYS WIFE." "ONE YEAR HAB TREE HUNNERD SIXY-FIBE DAY." Ka-e-ten-na" bore himself with the dignity and complacency of a Boston Brahmin; the envy of his comrades was ill-concealed and their surprise undisguised. It wasn't in writing alone that "Ka-e-ten-na" was changed, but in everything: he had become a white man, and was an apostle of peace, and an imitation of the methods which had made the whites own such a "rancheria" as San Francisco.

The next morning we struck out southeast across a country full of little hills of drift and conglomerate, passing the cañons of the Guadalupe and the Bonito, the former dry, the latter flowing water. A drove of the wild hogs (peccaries or musk hogs, called "jabali" by the Mexicans) ran across our path; instantly the scouts took after them at a full run, "Ka-e-ten-na" shooting one through the head while his horse was going at full speed, and the others securing four or five more; they were not eaten. Approaching the Cañon de los Embudos, our scouts sent up a signal smoke to warn their comrades that they were coming. The eyes of the Apaches are extremely sharp, and "Alchise," "Mike," "Ka-e-ten-na," and others had seen and recognized a party of horsemen advancing towards us for a mile at least before Strauss or I could detect anything coming out of the hills: they were four of our people on horseback riding to meet us. They conducted us to Maus's camp in the Cañon de los Embudos, in a strong position, on a low mesa overlooking the water, and with plenty of fine grass and fuel at hand. The surrounding country was volcanic, covered with boulders of basalt, and the vegetation was the Spanish bayonet, yucca, and other thorny plants.

The rancheria of the hostile Chiricahuas was in a lava bed, on top of a small conical hill surrounded by steep ravines,