The Story of Geronimo Part 11

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"Our chief, old and ill, and who must have been weary, lay down by the fire. He slept. One of the guards thrust the long knife, the bayonet that white soldiers carry on the end of their guns, into the fire. When the bayonet glowed red with heat, the soldier touched it against our chief. Mangus Coloradus sprang up, as who would not? He started to run, as who would not if awakened in such a fas.h.i.+on? There were two shots and ..."

Diablo fell silent and stared moodily into the fire.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

_Geronimo in Chains_

In the Apache camp at Warm Springs, New Mexico, Victorio and Geronimo braced themselves against the side of a big wooden building which had once been a barracks for white soldiers. All about them wickiups sprouted like misshapen plants. A large herd of horses grazed near by.

Women and older children ground corn in their stone grinding bowls.

Others prepared freshly killed meat, but they were not working over the carca.s.ses of elk, deer, and antelope. These were stolen range cattle that the women made ready for cooking pots. But they were as tasty as any wild game. And they also furnished a great deal more meat for every shot expended.

The warm sun had made Geronimo and Victorio sleepy, so that neither warrior felt like moving unnecessarily. But their conversation was lively enough.

"The days of our fathers are truly gone, and I do not believe they will ever be again," said Geronimo. "Even war as we once knew it is no more.

There was a time when Apaches fought more for adventure and plunder than anything else. But now, since the white men have become our enemies, both sides fight only to kill."

"That is how Cochise fought the white men for ten long years," Victorio remarked.

Geronimo said bitterly, "But finally even he made terms. He promised to fight no more if his Chiricahuas were permitted to stay in their homeland, the Chiricahua Mountains. General Howard, with whom Cochise treated, pledged his word that they might.

"Yet, less than eighteen months after Cochise has gone to join his ancestors, all his people have been rounded up by troops and s.h.i.+pped to a new reservation. It is somewhere here in New Mexico, and the Chiricahuas do not like it. Many have already deserted to go back on the warpath. Many more will desert. There will be much trouble."

Victorio said bitterly, "The white soldiers are great fools. If they had left the Chiricahuas alone, there would have been no trouble. But has there ever been a time when white soldiers did not promise us one thing and give us another?"

"Why do you think I followed you to this place where you and your people have fled?" Geronimo queried. "I will not live with the other Apaches in that stinking country called the San Carlos Reservation which the white men saw fit to give them. And there are too many soldiers being stationed in Arizona. I knew that I and those few who came with me could not hope to fight them. It is good here."

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"It is good here," Victorio agreed. "But only because the white soldiers are so stupid. In Arizona, every group of soldiers starting on an Apache trail had many mules to carry provisions. Thus they were able to stay on the trail for many days or even weeks. Here in New Mexico, each soldier has only his own horse. When they set out to pursue us, they may continue only until their horses are too weary to go on. Then the soldiers must turn back."

"There is small need to fret about them," Geronimo said confidently.

"For many years we have run away from all the soldiers in Arizona and New Mexico too. They will not catch us now."

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Victorio said, "It is not the soldiers who worry me, but a white man who is now in charge of the San Carlos Reservation. His name is John Clum, and he is no more like the ordinary white man who comes to oversee Indians than a jack rabbit is like an elk. He has treated the Apaches fairly, and as a result they have grown to respect him. Some of the bravest and best Apache warriors have joined his Indian police force.

And he has vowed to put you and me, whom he calls renegades, on the reservation too."

"Let him talk," muttered Geronimo. "One cannot catch us with words."

He did not know that even as he spoke, John Clum and a number of his most fearless and sharpest-shooting Indian police were on their way to the camp. They had left San Carlos a week earlier for the sole purpose of capturing these two men and their followers.

For more than a year the Apaches had remained unmolested in this isolated camp in New Mexico. When they went to bed that night, they scarcely bothered to post a sentry.

In the first light of early morning John Clum and his Indian police closed in. Taken wholly by surprise, the Apaches could do nothing but surrender.

Geronimo felt the cold of iron manacles as they were clamped over his wrists. He and seven other troublemakers were chained together. John Clum directed a company of his police to take Victorio and his band to the Ojo Caliente reservation in Texas. All the rest were returned to San Carlos in Arizona.

Geronimo knew perfectly well that this reservation, along the banks of the Gila River, had been given to the Apaches only because no white man thought he would ever want the land. The reservation was blistering hot in summer and wind-blasted in winter. There was so little year-round rainfall that nothing would grow well except cactus, palo verde trees, greasewood, mesquite, and other desert vegetation.

Even as he arrived on the reservation, Geronimo knew that he would never stay. But all his ammunition and his rifle had been taken away. His knife was gone too. Since no warrior could travel far without weapons, Geronimo could do nothing for a while except bide his time and draw his rations of worm-ridden flour and tough, stringy beef.

But he was not idle, as he waited for a chance to escape. Searching daily, he found a bullet here, another there, and finally stole a rifle and hid it out on the desert. The agent who replaced John Clum was not interested in watching him closely. So Geronimo was able also to rebuild his horse herds through night raids on the Papagoes.

Other discontented Apaches were doing likewise.

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One dark night, little more than a year after Geronimo had been brought to San Carlos in chains, a visitor came to his wickiup. He was Carlos Anaya, who had been one of Victorio's warriors.

"I come from the warpath," Carlos said softly to Geronimo.

"Victorio broke out?" Geronimo asked.

"Aye," Carlos said. "He left Ojo Caliente and fled south to join Caballero, chief of the Mescalero Apaches. Their combined forces made war throughout Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Old Mexico. They killed more than a thousand people.

"They forced many soldiers and many men called the Texas Rangers, and a vast number of the _rurales_, into the field against them. But finally most of them were killed. Only a few of us escaped. Still a warrior's death is better than a reservation life."

"Far better," said Geronimo. "I and those who follow me are almost ready to make a break for freedom too."

CHAPTER TWELVE

_Flight into Mexico_

The lowering sun scorched Camp Goodwin, the United States Army fort on the San Carlos reservation. But despite the sun, Geronimo had been sitting near the fort all day, as he had sat for the past six days, with a Navajo blanket draped about him and his fastest pony near at hand. He wanted the Indian agent at Camp Goodwin, a man named Hoag, to become accustomed to his sitting thus so that Hoag would pay no attention to him.

On this seventh day, plans that had been more than a year in the making were at last as perfect as they ever would be. Swift action lay ahead.

Geronimo's blanket hid a Winchester repeating rifle and bullet-filled belts. He watched a little group of Apaches, all mounted, riding southward. n.o.body else paid any attention; the group might have been going hunting or wood gathering.

Geronimo returned his attention to Camp Goodwin. Two Apache chiefs named Loco and Nana, with most of their people, were gathered near the building. They all knew that Geronimo and another leader, Whoa, were about to make a break for Mexico with sixty warriors and a hundred and sixty women and children. Loco and Nana wanted to be sure that the agent could see them near the fort and know that they were taking no part in this break.

Geronimo wanted to make sure that neither chief told Hoag of the forthcoming flight. If there was any sign that they intended to betray his plans for escape, Geronimo would shoot them, and Loco and Nana both knew it.

Planning the flight had not been easy. And when the plans were made it had been necessary to choose the right time for the break. There would never be a better one than this afternoon. Many of the soldiers usually stationed at Camp Goodwin were away. Some were campaigning in New Mexico. Some were hunting outlaw Apaches who had been reported near the Arizona-Mexico border.

Whoa had left early this morning to wait in a dry wash some miles to the south. All day long Apaches had been quietly drifting out to join him.