Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/62

 be found in plenty and of great size close to the post. I have seen the nests in question three or four feet high, and not less than six feet long, crowded with industrious population. The way to start the battle was to make a hole in each nest and insert cans which had lately been emptied of peaches or other sweets.

These would soon fill with the battalions of the two colors, and could then be poured into a basin, where the combat ''à outrance'' never failed to begin at once. The red ants were much the braver, and one of that color would tackle two, and even three, of the black. If the rumpus lasted for any length of time, queens would appear, as if to superintend what was going on. At least, that was our impression when we saw the large-bodied, yellow-plush insects sallying from the depths of the nests.

We had not been back in the post a week before we had something to talk about. A Mexican who was doing some work for the Government came up to confer with the commanding officer as to details. He left the adjutant's office before mid-day, and had not gone one thousand yards—less, indeed, than rifle-shot—from the door, when an Apache, lurking in ambush behind a clump of palmilla, pierced him through and through with a lance, and left him dead, weltering in his own blood. To attempt pursuit was worse than useless, and all we could do was to bury the victim.

It was this peculiarity of the Apaches that made them such a terror to all who came in contact with them, and had compelled the King of Spain to maintain a force of four thousand dragoons to keep in check a tribe of naked savages, who scorned to wear any protection against the bullets of the Castilians, who would not fight when pursued, but scattered like their own crested mountain quail, and then hovered on the flanks of the whites, and were far more formidable when dispersed than when they were moving in compact bodies. This was simply the best military policy for the Apaches to adopt—wear out the enemy by vexatious tactics, and by having the pursuit degenerate into a will-o'-th'-wisp chase. The Apaches could find food on every hillside, and the water-holes, springs, and flowing streams far up in the mountains were perfectly well known to them.

The Caucasian troops, of whatever nationality, would wander