The Camden chronicle. (Camden, Tenn.) 1890-current, 1894-03-23

% i: i; .: :: -: 4: z: !: =; s:
- feels at the end Of
a perfect dinner. | had related my
romance, and We now turned to our
host.
Marlin, how did you win your
wife,"
cts long story-began on hunt
ing pass in the Arizona desert, crossed
the water, and ended in Colorado.
Light fresh cigars.
t. l think it was the summer of sc.
Geronimo was not yet taken, and we
had been chasing in our turn until,
for lack of backs and feet, our horses
were tagging in the race, and we were
set to watch water-holes in the San
Simon, so polluted with alkali and
arsenic q sensible savage would have
Stunned it, as my dyspepsia, which
dates from that campaign, tells me |
failed to do.
Somehow the Geronimo campaign
always reminded me of n fox-hunt;
the Indian scouts keeping their noses
close to the scent like dogs too slow
to force the bush into the open, while
the various troops, like hunters in
different wind, held and lost the
place which promised first at the fin
ish. If you know Arizona at all, you
wall recall how sharp and rocky are
the crests of the divides; being lines
of most resistance in this land Of deep
epOsion, they retain the sharp, Jagged
profile often seen in the snow-ice of
mountain drifts as it disappears in
early summer Below these scoops lie
a colony of rounded foot hills, reced-
ing and growing less until they end in
broken bowlder mesa, which, with
numerous arroyos, fades into the soft,
level adobe plain, and blends, as I'M
suspected as the canvas walls of cy-
clorama Join the rocks and logs in the
pit below you.
The Indians preferred these sharp
orests, which were for them both
Watch-towers and impregnable has
tons. Occasionally they would strike
3cross the valley, kill rancher, and
Steel fresh ponies, and some troop
would cut in and crowd them in the
open till they took the next divide
and met some barrier that baked the
pursuers and forced on them detour,
while some other troop, through acct
dent Of locality, would tack and take
the chosen place on the trail, giving
for a few days It's dust to the other
pursuing columns. 1t was weary
stern-chase, performed under burning
skies Of cloudiess blue in a thirsty
land of heat into,erable.
. We had had cur little squirt; hai
brushed them off the divide, and fol
three days led in the open across the
valley to the Sierra Madre where
fresher horsehesh cut in from on,
right and took from us the place o
honor and left us, foot-sore and back
sore and winded at the base Of tn,
mountains, where we we're ordered {
days march back into the valley, nea
the border, to guard water holes 0
the San Simon in the sullen month o
August. The nights were gettinl
bearable, but the day heat still he'll
on with the stubborn insistence of
Southern summer. Our camp was no
happy---the water was bad our shell
ter-halves, but little thicker tina
cheese-cloth, proved leaky sun-shades
and we reinforced them with our sac
dle-blankets; we had no amusemen
except to growl wish we were in tn
chase and wondering whose bioomn
intellect had squatted us down anon
ella monsters and sand-hies to waite
water so foul neither soil nor su
would drink it.
Something was going to happen, fc
the strain was telling on mems nerves
The weather was too hot for cam
idleness, and we were near the line.
l was first sergeant of l. Troop the1
and, next to a coward or a thief,
think loathed deserter. We wei
near the border Of Mexico, where Oh
must not cross, but where smugglin
is permitted and vice possible.
} The men were getting irritable.