Reporter and farmer. [volume] (Webster, Day County, Dakota [S.D.]) 188?-1946, 1895-07-05

TN told IL turn their
" little story in the
~ free confidence one
feels at the end of
a perfect dinner. l had related my
romance, and we now turned to our
host.
marlin, how did you win your
wife?"
"lt's a long story-began on hunt
ing pass in the Arizona desert, crossed
the water, and ended in Colorado.
Light fresh cigars"
1 think it was the summer of SO.
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 we're
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 I
failed to do.
Somehow the Geronimo campaign
always reminded me of q 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
will recall how sharp and rocky are
the crests Of the divides; being lines
of most resistance in this lad Of deep
erosion, 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
q colony of rounded foothills, 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 un-
suspected as the canvas walls Of a cy-
clorama Join the rocks end logs in the
pit below you.
The Indians preferred these sharp
crests, which were for them both
watch-towers and im~pregnable bas-
tions. Occasionally they would st-ike
across the valley, kill a 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 a detour,
while some other troop, through acct
dent of locality, would tack and take
the chosen place on the trail, giving
for o few days Its dust to the other
pursuing columns. 1t was a weary
stern-chase, performed under burning
skies of cloudless blue in q thirsty
land of heat intolerable.
We had had our little squirt; had
brushed them off the divide, and for
three days led in the open across the
valley to the Sierra Madre, where
fresher horsefesh cut in from our
right and took from us the place OF
honor and LETT us, foot-sore and back
sore and winded, at the base of the
mountains, where we were ordered a
days march back into the valley, heal
the border, to guard water holes of
the San Simon in the sullen month of
August. The nights were getting
bearable, but the day heat still held
on with the stubborn insistence of q
Southern summer. Our camp was not
happy--the water was bad our shell
ter-halves, but little thicker than
cheese-cloth, proved leaky sun-shades,
and we reinforced them with our sad
dle-blankets; we had no amusement
except to growi. wish we were in the
chase and wondering whose blooming
intellect had squatted us down among
ella monsters and sand.fies to watch
water SO foul neither soil nor d
would drink it.
Something was going to happen, for
the strain was telling on mems nerves.
The weather was too hot for camp
idleness, and we were neal the 'sline."
I was first sergeant of l. Troop then,
and, next to a coward or a thief, /
think I loathed a deserter. We were
near the border of Mexico, where one
must not cross, but where smuggling
is permitted and vice possible.
The men were getting irritable--I
knew the signs, the tension was reach
ing swapping point. / mad been think
ing of it all day. That evening John
Leighton and l were working under
the orderly fly at the "records"---were
posting Yaugn and Murray's ''inals"
in the clothing and descriptive books.
yaugn was a corporal and Murray u
blacksmith, who had been killed the
week before on the day we pushed the
Apaches of the divide. We were
crowding them to closely in the lower
pass, when a few bucks slipped OF into
the anon and nipped our pack train