CHAPTER X.
“Lo! the poor Indian.”
Imperfect definition and classification, followed by hasty, inaccurate, and unwarranted generalization, are fruitful sources of popular error. To the misinformed or uninformed mind the Indian is a noble savage, whose hunting-grounds and corn-fields have been taken from him by the ruthless paleface, and who passes his time pensively leaning upon his rifle, with his face to the setting sun, the while he makes touching appeals to the Great Spirit, and mourns the disappearance of his race.
In the country west of the Rocky Mountains and south of Green River, the sentimental Indian with whom Cooper doped American literature, has absolutely no existence. Uncas and Chingachgook never journeyed so far westward as the Rio Grande, and prosy old Leather Stocking, with his Sunday-school soliloquies, and his alleged marvelous marksmanship on knife blades at three hundred yards, would have been elected president of the Arizona Lying Club by acclamation.
Many tribes of Indians in that section of the country have scarcely any belief in a future state of existence, and no words in their jargons to represent the ideas of gratitude, of female chastity, or of hospitality. Their opportunities of obtaining food have been in nowise lessened by white occupation of the land. There never were any buffalo there, they never hunted bears or any combative animal, the fish and small game and pine-nuts are nearly as plentiful as ever, and the bacon-rinds and decayed vegetables to be found near every mining camp furnish the noble reds with a food supply more agreeable to their indolent habits than the hard-won trophies of the chase.
Yet there are Indians and Indians, as there are Christian bank presidents and unsanctified bank robbers, and it is as incorrect to class the devilish Chiricahua Apache with the dirty but gentle Yuma as it would be to similarly couple a hook-nosed vender of Louisiana lottery tickets with a blonde-haired solicitor for a church raffle.
In the mountains of Eastern Arizona and Western New Mexico, occupying a country hundreds of miles in area, a country which, for their benefit, has been reserved from miner, settler, and grazier, live the White Mountain Apaches during the winter months, when they are not “on the war path,” as their pillaging and murdering expeditions are somewhat bombastically designated.
Whatever may be said of other savages in other localities, the Arizona Apaches are without a single just cause of complaint against the government, or against any of the Caucasian race. No cruel white men have ever invaded their hunting-grounds, or given them high-priced whisky in exchange for low-priced peltry. Red-handed and tangle-haired have these marauders and their ancestors lived for centuries in their mountain lair.
Since the United States of America became, forty years ago, the nominal suzerain of the territory occupied by these peripatetic “vermin ranches,” they have been unprovoked invaders, thieves, and assassins, and their summer raids upon the miners, teamsters, and cattle ranchers of Arizona and New Mexico, have been as regular as their winter acceptance of the bacon and blankets with which a generous but mistaken policy feeds and warms them, at a cost equal to that of providing each savage with a suite of rooms at a fashionable hotel.
It is but a few years since a small party of the most vicious and untamable of these bandits, who were captured with the scalps of their victims at their belts, were declared by the authorities at Washington to be not answerable to trial or punishment by the courts of the Territory whose people they have robbed and murdered with impunity for many years. But, partly in deference to outraged public sentiment, and partly in apprehension of the acts of a possible committee of vigilance, these Indians were condemned for their crimes to imprisonment in a government fortress in Florida.
Unlike white prisoners who were condemned to labor and isolation, these tawny murderers were allowed to be accompanied in their journey across the country by their wives and concubines, who were transported, fed, clothed, and made comfortable, at government cost. Arrived at their destination, it was found, after a few months’ sojourn, that the humid air, lower altitude, and uncongenial surroundings of Florida, and, later, of North Carolina, disagreed with the digestion and disgruntled the disposition of the noble reds, and, upon a proper showing that their health demanded a return to their former homes, lest confirmed nostalgia should set in, and possibly remove them permanently from the scene of human activities, they were surreptitiously returned by the government to their old reservation, where they promptly expressed their appreciation of the clemency accorded them by breaking out once more and heading for the Mexican Sierras, marking their track with burning ranch houses and murdered settlers.
In the summer of 1893 a party of about forty of these Apaches, headed by the most cruel, malignant, and treacherous of savages—the thrice-pardoned and faith-breaking Geronimo—left the reservation for their annual raid. The military post at Fort Lowell having been abandoned and the troops removed in the interest of government parsimony, the savages found it convenient to make a detour by the valley of the Santa Cruz, so as to cross the railroad track in the vicinity of Tucson, and reach their mountain fastnesses in Sonora by the Arivaca Pass.
It chanced that David Morning, on his departure from Waterspout for New York, while riding from the Rillito station into Tucson, and riding by night, to avoid the heat of an Arizona sun, was seen by the Indians, who, having emerged from a defile in which they had been concealed during the day, were now stealthily and swiftly journeying in the same direction. The opportunity to murder a white man was one not to be neglected, but the report of a rifle might attract attention and instigate speedy pursuit, so two of Geronimo’s followers were detailed, armed only with bows and arrows, to follow the wayfarer through the dusk, and bring back a scalp, that might be obtained without danger and without noise.
If Morning had been riding a horse, this tale might have had sudden ending, but he had found for his necessarily frequent journeys between the mine and Tucson no such convenient and comfortable mode of transportation as a seat upon the back of Julia. The equine in question was a large jet black saddle mule bred at the ranch of Señor Don Pedro Gonzales, which was situated at the foot of the mountain, on the opposite side of the Rillito Valley, about three miles from the road.
The mule, as an animal, is often both misrepresented and misunderstood. No creature tamed by man has keener instincts or greater sagacity, or is governed to so great an extent by intelligent self-interest. A mule is always logical. His ordinary reasoning is a syllogism without a flaw. A horse impelled by high spirit, and patient even unto death, will travel until he drops from exhaustion, and will pull or carry without complaint a load that causes his every muscle to pulse with the pain of weariness.
But where lives the man who was ever able to impose upon a mule? Strap an unaccustomed or unjust load upon the back of this animal of unillustrious paternity, and he will not move except in the direction of lying down. Attempt to ride or drive him past his rightful and usual resting-place, and there may be retrogression, and there may be a circus, but there will be no advance.
In addition to his other virtues a mule has an exceedingly keen scent. He seeks no close acquaintance with either grizzly bears or Indians. He will get the wind of either of his aversions as quickly as a hound will whiff a deer, and, like the hound, he will give his knowledge to the world, in a voice that is resonant, magnetic, and—on the whole—musical. The bray of an earnest mule is not after the Italian but the Wagnerian school. It is not the sweet, tender tenor of Manrico, it is Lohengrin sounding his note of power. It is not, perhaps, equal to an orchestra of nightingales, but it has a rhythm, and passion, and power, and sweetness, nevertheless.
The quick instinct of Julia caught the scent of the Apache assassins, and as they crept up she was engaged in a struggle with her rider, who, with voice and spur, was vainly endeavoring to induce and compel her to proceed along the usual road.
“Why, Julia,” soliloquized Morning, “you must have been browsing on rattle-weed! What is the matter with you?”—and he tugged vainly at her bridle.
Whizz! whizz! went the arrows. With one shaft quivering in her flank, the mule fairly sprang into the air, while the other transfixed the left arm of David Morning, and pinned it to his side.
And then his question was answered, and he knew what was the matter with Julia.
The frenzied animal leaped the Rillito at a bound, and swept across the valley to the corral adjoining the Gonzales ranch house. Once within the inclosure, she stopped and uttered her most melodious notes of delight. With a crescendo of welcome a dozen of her kindred greeted Julia, and the swarthy major-domo of the ranch, accompanied by half a dozen vaqueros with lights, rushed out, and Morning, weak from pain and loss of blood, was half-led and half-carried into the ranch house.
The Señor Don Pedro Gonzales a year before had journeyed into Paradise, from the effects of an attack of mountain fever, aggravated by too copious use of mescal, and left his ranch houses and corral, his two hundred mules and horses, his two thousand cattle, his brand of G on a triangle, and his rancho Santa Ysbel to his señora, the Donna Maria, who, with her family, continued to occupy the place.
Messengers dispatched to Tucson returned with physicians, who cut out the arrow and found that the wound was severe, and its result might be fatal. They agreed that for Morning to endeavor to travel with such a wound would be simply suicide, and that he must not attempt to leave the shelter and care which the hospitable Gonzales family were glad to accord him.