Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/515

 an impregnable little citadel. There were not more than twelve or fifteen of these in the "rancheria," which was situated upon the apex of an extinct crater, the lava blocks being utilized as breastworks, while the deep seams in the contour of the hill were so many fosses, to be crossed only after rueful slaughter of assailants. A full brigade could not drive out that little garrison, provided its ammunition and repeating rifles held out. They were finely armed with Winchesters and Springfield breech-loading carbines, with any quantity of metallic cartridges.

Physically, the Chiricahuas were in magnificent condition: every muscle was perfect in development and hard as adamant, and one of the young men in a party playing monte was as finely muscled as a Greek statue. A group of little boys were romping freely and carelessly together; one of them seemed to be of Irish and Mexican lineage. After some persuasion he told Strauss and myself that his name was Santiago Mackin, captured at Mimbres, New Mexico; he seemed to be kindly treated by his young companions, and there was no interference with our talk, but he was disinclined to say much and was no doubt thoroughly scared. Beyond showing by the intelligent glance of his eyes that he fully comprehended all that was said to him in both Spanish and English, he took no further notice of us. He was about ten years old, slim, straight, and sinewy, blue-gray eyes, badly freckled, light eyebrows and lashes, much tanned and blistered by the sun, and wore an old and once-white handkerchief on his head which covered it so tightly that the hair could not be seen. He was afterwards returned to his relations in New Mexico.

One of the Chiricahuas had a silver watch which he called "Chi-go-na-ay" (Sun), an evidence that he had a good idea of its purpose. Nearly every one wore "medicine" of some kind: either little buckskin bags of the Hoddentin of the Tule, the feathers of the red-bird or of the woodpecker, the head of a quail, the claws of a prairie dog, or silver crescents; "medicine " cords—"Izze-kloth"—were also worn. I stopped alongside of a young Tubal Cain and watched him hammering a Mexican dollar between two stones, and when he had reduced it to the proper fineness he began to stamp and incise ornamentation upon it with a sharp-pointed knife and a stone for a hammer. Nearly all the little girls advanced to the edge of our camp and gazed in mute admiration upon Charlie Roberts, evincing their good opinion in