Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/67

 quartermaster's corral. The ease with which these youngsters not over nine or ten years old did this used to surprise me, but it seemed to make them regard the Americans as a very peculiar people for demanding such a slight task.

Out on the trail again, down the San Pedro and over the Gila, but keeping well to the west until we neared the Mineral Creek country; then up across the lofty Pinal Range, on whose summits the cool breezes were fragrant with the balsamic odors of the tall, straight pines, over into the beautiful little nook known as Mason's Valley, in which there was refreshing grass for the animals and a trickling stream of pure water to slake their thirst. Then back to the eastward until we struck the waters of the Pinal Creek, and had followed it down to the "Wheat Fields," and still no signs of Indians. The rainy season had set in, and every track was obliterated almost as soon as made.

One night we bivouacked at a spot not far from where the mining town of Globe now stands, and at a ledge of rocks which run across the valley of Pinal Creek, but part for a few feet to permit the feeble current to flow through. The sky was comparatively clear, a few clouds only flitting across the zenith. Back of us, hanging like a shroud over the tops of the Pinal, were heavy, black masses, from whose pendulous edges flashed the lightning, and from whose cavernous depths roared and growled the thunder.

"That looks very much like a cloud-burst coming," said Cushing; "better be on the safe side, anyhow." So he gave orders to move all the bedding and all the supplies of the pack-train higher up the side of the hill. The latter part of the order was obeyed first, and almost if not quite all the ammunition, bacon, coffee, and sugar had been carried out of reach of possible danger, and most of the blankets and carbines had been shifted—everything, in fact, but the hard tack—when we noticed that the volume of water in the creek had unaccountably increased, and the next moment came the warning cry: "Look out! Here she comes!" A solid wall of water—I do not care to say how many feet high—was rushing down the cañon, sweeping all before it, and crushing a path for itself over the line along which our blankets had been spread so short a time previously.

The water didn't make very much noise. There was no sound