Part 19 (1/2)
On the translucent walls of canvas there was a weird design of black shadows, a design which was constantly s.h.i.+fting and taking on new shapes. And as the shadows moved, sometimes with grotesque effect and swiftly, sometimes slowly, voices filtered through the gleaming cloth to mingle with the whispering of the night wind in the bear-gra.s.s, the dull stamping of tethered horses, the intermittent jingling of bitt-chains and the steady soft footfalls of two sentries.
The voices changed as often as the shadows on the tent-wall; now it was the abrupt, clipping speech of a white man and now the deep, inflectionless ba.s.s of an Indian. But most often it was the droning monotone of the post interpreter, uttering his translations in English or in the tongue of the Apache.
Of what was taking place within those luminous walls of canvas, official records still exist; and of what followed there are whole volumes of further records in Was.h.i.+ngton. Dry reading in themselves, they hold the meat of a remarkable story, a story whose colorful narration has been given by its own main characters and thus has come down among the true chronicles of the old-timers.
On that evening in 1859 two groups of men faced one another, and the lantern which hung on the center-pole of the Sibley tent shone down on their faces, revealing the growing pa.s.sion in their eyes. One of the groups was composed of soldiers, wearing the blue uniforms, the queer straight-visored caps, and the huge wide-topped boots which our cavalry used during those times; a guard of sunburnt troopers under a hard-bitten nom-com.; and standing a pace or so ahead of them, a young second lieutenant fresh from West Point: Lieutenant Bascom, a stranger in a strange, harsh land, just a little puzzled over the complications which he saw arising here, but dead sure of himself and intolerant of the men with whom he was treating. That intolerance showed in his stare as he regarded them.
There were half a dozen of the Apaches, chiefs every one of them, a ragged group clad in a mixture of their native garb and cast-off clothes of the white man; frowzy hair hanging to their shoulders and bound round at the brows by soiled thin turbans. But they stood erect and there was a dignity in the way they held their heads back, a dignity in their immobility of feature and in their slow, grave speech. It was the dignity of men who knew that they were leaders of their people; who felt themselves on entire equality with the leader of the white man's warriors; who felt the gravity of this occasion where they had been invited into conference with this blue-clad representative of a mighty government. Their head man was Cochise.
Like Lieutenant Bascom, he stood a pace ahead of his followers, a lean Apache, with a thinner face than most of his tribesmen and a remarkably high forehead. And as he looked into the eyes of the young man in blue who had just come from the far cities of the east coast there began to come into his own eyes the shadow of suspicion. The talk went on; the interpreter droned out one answer after another to his speeches, and that shadow in the eyes of Cochise deepened.
In itself the matter at issue was a small one. A settler had lost a cow and he had accused the Apaches of stealing the animal. Young Lieutenant Bascom had summoned the chiefs to conference and they had come--they said--to help him find the culprit. After the manner of the Indian, of whose troubles the pa.s.sing of time is the very least, they talked slowly, listened to the interpreter's rendition of the lieutenant's answers, and then talked more.
They did not know the man who had stolen the cow; that was the sum and substance of their speeches. And Lieutenant Bascom, fretting with the pa.s.sage of the hours, looked on the ragged group in their dirty nondescript garments and chafed with fresh intolerance.
Cochise read that intolerance in the eyes of the smooth-cheeked officer and, being an Apache, managed to conceal the suspicion in his own eyes. He did not want trouble with the white man. He had never yet had trouble with soldier or settler. Ever since he had been a chief among the Chiracahua Apaches he had held down the turbulent spirits in his portion of the tribe; he had out-intrigued savage politicians and had smoothed over more than one difficulty like this. As a matter of fact he was a.s.similating some of the white man's ways; he was getting into business; working a crew of his people at wood-cutting, selling cord-wood to the stage company at the Stein's Pa.s.s station. He was doing well, saving money, and saw ahead of him the time when he would own many cattle, like some of the settlers.
All of this was very comfortable and to his taste, and because he liked it he held a firm stand against the suasions of warring chiefs from his and other tribes. He even came to cool terms with his relative Mangus Colorado, the greatest leader the Apaches had ever known. But while he was keeping to his position he had to listen to many an argument and many a tale of the white man's treachery, and a man cannot listen often without sometimes finding himself inclined to believe.
Settler and soldier, so said Mangus Colorado and other men of parts among his people, regarded their promises to the Indians as nothing; they were forever trying to entice the Apaches into conference and then taking advantage of them--sometimes by ma.s.sacre. While he argued slowly against the impatient utterances of Lieutenant Bascom, reading the growing intolerance in the other's eyes, Cochise remembered some of the stories which he had frowned down when his people told them.
That was the state of affairs when Lieutenant Bascom, with the c.o.c.ksureness of the young and the intolerance of the Easterner for frowzy Indians, made a decision. To him it was evident that these tattered savages were lying, they were a treacherous lot at the best, and always thieves. So, now that he was getting sick of the whole drawn-out business, he turned from the interpreter to his sergeant.
”Arrest 'em,” he said.
Cochise heard him and slipped to the rear of the tent as the troopers stepped forward. The other chiefs, who could understand no English, did not need an interpreter to tell them the meaning of this movement.
At once the quiet of the Arizona night was shattered by the thud of blows and savage outcries. The crowded s.p.a.ce within the tent was filled with struggling men.
And while that fight went on, Cochise, aflame with hatred, outraged by this violation of the sacred custom of conference, believing now every word that had been spoken to him by Mangus Colorado and the other war-chiefs, whipped out his knife. The sound of the blade as it rent the canvas was drowned by the other noises, and when Lieutenant Bascom and his breathless troopers surveyed their bound captives Cochise was in full flight across the darkened plain.
Now word was sent by courier to the agency, and government runners went forth that night to all parts of the reservation, but they found no Indians to receive their messages. The Chiracahua Apaches were already riding toward their mountains where Mangus Colorado and the renegade members of their tribe were biding on the heights, like eagles resting on the rocky peaks before they take their next flight.
Like roosting eagles the warriors of Mangus Colorado scanned the wide plains beneath the mountains. Their eyes went to the ragged summits of the ranges beyond. Now as the day was creeping across the long, flat reaches of the Sulphur Springs valley, tipping the scarred crests of the Dragoons with light off to the west, touching the distant northern pinnacles of the Grahams with throbbing radiance, one of these lookouts beheld a thread of smoke unraveling against the bright morning sky.
Under the newly-risen sun Cochise and his followers were traveling hard away off there to the northward. The turbaned warriors came on first, half-naked, armed some of them with lances, some with bows and poisoned arrows, and a goodly number bearing rifles. Their lank brown legs moved ceaselessly in rhythm with the trotting of the little ponies; their moccasined heels thudded against the flanks of the animals.
In the rear of the column the squaws rode with the children and the scanty baggage. As they traveled thus, an outrider departed from the column to leave his horse upon an arid slope and climb afoot among the rocks above until he stood outlined against the clear hot sky, kindling a wisp of flame. Now he bent over the fire, casting bits of powdered resin upon the blaze, holding a square of tattered blanket over it after the first puff of black smoke had risen, feeding it then with a scattering of green leaves which in their turn gave forth a cloud of white fumes.
And so the smoke thread unwound its length, showing itself in black and white; spelling forth, by the same system of dot and dash which the white man employs in his telegraph, the tidings of what had taken place back there in the Sibley tent.
From his nook in the Chiracahuas the watching warrior read its message. And long before the first faint haze of mounting dust betrayed the approach of the fugitives, Mangus Colorado knew that his nephew and his nephew's people had quit the reservation and the rations of meat and flour to make their living henceforth, as their savage forebears had made theirs as far back as the memory of the oldest traditions went--by marauding. So he gathered all his forces and welcomed Cochise into a council, where they planned their first series of raids against the white men.
In this manner Cochise reverted to the customs of his ancestors; customs which had come gradually to the Apaches when they wandered down from Athabasca, pa.s.sing southward through regions held by hostile tribes s.n.a.t.c.hing their sustenance from these enemies, fleeing before superior forces of warriors, until they reached the flaming deserts down by the Mexican border, past-masters of the arts of ambush and raid and retreat, owning no longer any love of home or knowledge of tepee building; nomads who made their lodges by spreading skins or blankets over the tops of bushes which they had tied together; to whom the long march had become an ingrained habit and all the arts of b.l.o.o.d.y ambush an instinctive pleasure.
Now he devoted all his mind and bent his talents to these wiles of Apache warfare; he directed his young men in making a living for the rest of the tribe by theft and murder.
His uncle, Magnus Colorado, was the most skilful leader the Apaches had ever known, a marvelously tall savage with an enormous head.
Cochise learned from him and in time surpa.s.sed him as a general. For nearly a decade and a half he made a plunder ground of southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico, extending his forays away down across the line into Sonora and Chihuahua until a remarkable man among his white enemies came to him, and by a daring bit of frontier diplomacy, put an end to the bloodiest outbreak in the history of the Southwest.