Page:The Overland Monthly Volume 5 Issue 3.djvu/24



that stolid indifference which everywhere prevails among them; watch all your movements, and leave at night as before; neither putting faith in the other, yet behaving decently as in armed truce: and so affairs seemed progressing favorably toward one of those burlesque Indian treaties, whose name is legion and whose nature is as the mirage of the desert, being, like them, substantial or unsubstantial, according to the distance preserved. A temporary treaty was, however, desirable to us for several reasons; and as it seemed equally agreeable to Mangas, we managed to keep up amicable appearances for some time.

But Mangas had a weakness for whisky, and aguardiente was his Delilah. This article was not as scarce in camp then as it afterward became, when, from our isolation, evén food was nearly exhausted; and our visitors took readily all they could get. One day it occurred that Mangas being unusually social, toddies of considerable strength and frequency were wasted on him, at least they seemed to be wasted on his granite brain, until toward evening he, surreptitiously obtaining a bottle full of liquor, swallowed a large portion of it, to the detriment of his locomotive powers, which began to describe curves instead of straight lines.

As he now began to get noisy, and might be troublesome, and as his people had left camp, it was deemed advisable to put him in charge of the guard, who were instructed to take care that in his present condition he did not leave until daylight. Mangas was somewhat indignant, and disposed to resist when the guard led him off: his resistance, however, was maudlin and undecided. Like many others, "protgsting he would ne'er consent, consented," he was led off quietly, soon falling into a deep slumber.

The night had far advanced to morning before Mangas awoke, and, as he did so, all his faculties took the alarm. Here he was in the prison and custody

of his enemies—men with whom he never kept nor expected faith. In an instant he was on his feet, his eye was on the door; but at that moment the Sergeant of the Guard, loaded carbine at shoulder, stood fronting him. Who shall tell what host of memories crowding their avenging claims upon the soldier's brain stood also in front? Who shall tell what pictures of woe and desolation, for the future as in the past, in which the Apache Chief was the principal figure, moved before the soldier's vision, and nerved his hand and heart to send a bullet surely into the Apache's brain, speeding out of this world a being who equaled in atrocity any of the most pitiless heroes of war? And thus died the red-sleeved Chief. This statement of facts connected with his death will be received with feelings dependent upon the prior education of the reader. If he be an admirer or apologist of the Indian for the part taken by him in his intercourse with our race, and ready to class all or most of his actions as justifiable retaliations, it will receive the usual condemnation accorded to summary dealings with the Indians by our race; but if he or his friends have suffered in person or property by one of their characteristic raids, made, as usual, indiscriminately upon any Pale Face they meet, he most likely will conclude Mangas met a fate well deserved, and was checked by tactics of his own institution or adoption. The Indian well understands the /ex ¢alionis: so the men of the post often wondered why he should trust himself in their hands after his conduct to them at Apache Pass, now Fort Bowie, in April, 1862. They well remembered the death of their three comrades—Maloney and twoothers—treacherously slain there while filling their canteens at the spring on the hill, by a portion of this very band, while the others, about two hundred yards distant, were collected for a peace treaty, shak