Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/72

 were so polluted with dead bodies, there were so many skulls in the spring itself, that no animal, much less man, would imbibe of the fluid. The ground was strewn with bones—ribs and arms and vertebræ—dragged about by the coyotes, and the smell was so vile that, tired as all were, no one felt any emotion but one of delight when Cushing gave the order to move on.

The Apaches had been there to bury their kinsfolk and bewail their loss, and in token of grief and rage had set fire to all the grass for several miles, and consequently it was to the direct benefit of all our command, two-footed or four-footed, to keep moving until we might find a better site for a bivouac.

We did not halt until we had struck the San Carlos, some thirty-five miles to the east, and about twelve or fourteen miles above its junction with the Gila. Here we made camp, intending to remain several days. A rope was stretched from one to the other of two stout sycamores, and to this each horse and mule was attached by its halter. Pickets were thrown out upon the neighboring eminences, and a detail from the old guard was promptly working at bringing in water and wood for the camp-fires. The grooming began, and ended almost as soon as the welcome cry of "Supper!" resounded. The coffee was boiling hot; the same could be said of the bacon; the hard tack had mildewed a little during the wet weather to which it had been exposed, but there was enough roasted mescal from the Indian villages to eke out our supplies.

The hoofs and back of every animal had been examined and cared for, and then blankets were spread out and all hands made ready to turn in. There were no tents, as no shelter was needed, but each veteran was wise enough to scratch a little semicircle in the ground around his head, to turn the rain should any fall during the night, and to erect a wind-brake to screen him from the chill breezes which sometimes blew about midnight.

Although there was not much danger of a night-attack from the Apaches, who almost invariably made their onset with the first twinkle of the coming dawn in the east, yet a careful watch was always kept, to frustrate their favorite game of crawling on hands and feet up to the horses, and sending an arrow into the herd or the sentinel, as might happen to be most convenient.

Not far from this camp I saw, for the first time, a fight between a tarantula and a "tarantula hawk." Manuel Duran had