Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/565

Rh CHAPTER XXXI.

To CALIFORNIA FOR HORSES. MY BEAUTIFUL MARE, BLACK BKSS. WE GET SIXTY-SIX SCALPS AND SEV- ENTY-EIGHT HORSES. A CLEAN SWEEP.

It was about the first of January when Gen. Crook ordered Lieut. Jackson and I to go to California to buy fifty head of cavalry horses. With an escort of twelve men we headed for Los Angeles, expecting to be able to procure the horses there, which we did, and were back at Yuma in a little more than a month preparing to give Apaches more of our warm social attention. In this campaign Lieut. Jackson was to take the lead with two companies of cavalry and one of infantry, and take the same route as the season before. Gen. Crook was to follow in a month, taking no wagons, but a pack-train of one hundred animals. Only Mexicans were employed ti.is time as packers, and the captain of our train was named Angel, but he didn't look it.

It was arranged between Gen. Crook and I that I was to have twelve scouts and select them myself. The General sent a sergeant with me to take the names of the men I wished to secure, and then he gave me per- mission to go into the corrall and select two horses for each of my men, taking anything that did not belong to a commissioned officer. In the afternoon of the same day Lieut. Jackson came to me and said: "Captain, I