Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/65

 refinement. We shared the misery of the post with them, which was about all we could pretend to do. Vacant rooms were found for them in the Israel ranch, and there they stayed for a few days, just long enough for every one to catch the fever.

Before we start out in pursuit of the attacking Apaches, let me relate the story told all over southern Arizona about the spot where this Gatchell-Curtis train had been surprised. It was known as the scene of the ambuscade of the Miller-Tappan detail, and frontier tale-tellers used to while away the sultry hours immediately after the setting of the sun in relating how the soldiers under Carroll had been ambushed and scattered by the onslaught of the Apaches, their commander, Lieutenant Carroll, killed at the first fire. One of the survivors became separated from his comrades in their headlong flight into Camp Grant. What became of him was never fully known, but he had been seen to fall wounded in the head or face, and the soldiers and Mexicans seemed to be of but one opinion as to the direction in which he had strayed; so there was no difficulty in getting a band of expert trailers to go out with the troops from the camp, and after burying the dead, make search for the missing man. His foot-prints were plainly discernible for quite a distance in the hard sand and gravel, until they led to a spring or "water-hole," where one could plainly read the "sign" that the wounded man had stopped, knelt down, drunk, washed his wound, torn off a small piece of his blouse, perhaps as a bandage, and written his name on a rock in his own blood.

So far, so good; the Mexicans who had been in the searching party did not object to telling that much, but anything beyond was told by a shrug of the shoulders and a "Quien sabe?"

One day it happened that José Maria was in a communicative mood, and I induced him to relate what he knew. His story amounted to just this: After leaving the "water-hole," the wounded man had wandered aimlessly in different directions, and soon began to stagger from bush to bush; his strength was nearly gone, and with frequency he had taken a seat on the hard gravel under such shade as the mesquites afforded.

After a while other tracks came in on the trail alongside of those of the man—they were the tracks of an enormous mountain lion! The beast had run up and down along the trail for a short distance, and then bounded on in the direction taken by the