Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/512

 not five hundred yards in direct line from Maus, but having between the two positions two or three steep and rugged gulches which served as scarps and counter-scarps. The whole ravine was romantically beautiful: shading the rippling water were smooth, white-trunked, long, and slender sycamores, dark gnarly ash, rough-barked cottonwoods, pliant willows, briery buckthorn, and much of the more tropical vegetation already enumerated. After General Crook had lunched, "Geronimo" and most of the Chiricahua warriors approached our camp; not all came in at once; only a few, and these not all armed. The others were here, there, and everywhere, but all on the qui vive, apprehensive of treachery, and ready to meet it. Not more than half a dozen would enter camp at the same time. "Geronimo" said that he was anxious for a talk, which soon took place in the shade of large cottonwood and sycamore trees. Those present were General Crook, Dr. Davis, Mr. Moore, Mr. Strauss, Lieutenants Maus, Shipp, and Faison; Captain Roberts and his young son Charlie, a bright lad of ten; Mr. Daily and Mr. Carlisle, of the pack-trains; Mr. Fly, the photographer, and his assistant, Mr. Chase; packers Shaw and Foster; a little boy, named Howell, who had followed us over from the San Bernardino ranch, thirty miles; and "Antonio Besias," "Montoya," "Concepcion," "José Maria," "Alchise," "Ka-e-ten-na," "Mike," and others as interpreters.

I made a verbatim record of the conference, but will condense it as much as possible, there being the usual amount of repetition, compliment, and talking at cross-purposes incident to all similar meetings. "Geronimo" began a long disquisition upon the causes which induced the outbreak from Camp Apache: he blamed "Chato," "Mickey Free," and Lieutenant Britton Davis, who, he charged, were unfriendly to him; he was told by an Indian named "Nodiskay" and by the wife of "Mangas" that the white people were going to send for him, arrest and kill him; he had been praying to the Dawn (Tapida) and the Darkness, to the Sun (Chigo-na-ay) and the Sky (Yandestan), and to Assunutlije to help him and put a stop to those bad stories that people were telling about him and which they had put in the papers. (The old chief was here apparently alluding to the demand made by certain of the southwestern journals, at the time of his surrender to Crook in 1883, that he should be hanged.)