Twice-a-week plain dealer. (Cresco, Howard County, Iowa) 1895-1913, 1896-02-21


litter to show where 100 Apnches had
made their stronghold for two months.
The Indian looked down upon the
place and couldn't understand it. He
had only been gone few days to see
if the soldiers were coming from the
west, and when he left his 100 fellows
were still enjoying the fruits of their
great raid. They had as many horses
and oxen as they could drive be-
fore them, and the squaws were
gay with the rings and watches that
had been torn from the bodies OF
those who had met the column on its
wild ride from the reservation to the
Mexican mountains.
It didn't take him long to under
stand. There were tracks there never
made by moccasins, and he followed
the broad trail until he comprehend
ed. The soldiers had come and were
taking the renegades back to San Car
los. He looked for signs of battle,
but found none. The cactus was not
torn up, there were no empty cartridge
shells, no graves and no blood stains.
The last raid before this one that he
was on the soldiers had also found them.
and many were killed in fight, and
when they got the rest back to the res
ervation some were hanged and some
were sent away with iron rings fasten-
ing their hands and feet. So he did not
follow the back trail long. Maybe they
would break away from the soldiers.
If they didn't they would be sure to
come back in the spring, after they got
their blankets and when the white men
began to crowd the road with their
teams. So he made up his mind to wait.
He did not go back to where the big
camp had been. That was hard to reach
and we'll hidden in the mountains, but
the soldiers knew where it was now and
the strongest article in his faith was to
keep out of the way of the soldiers.
Soldiers he could not understand. They
were always after him and his kind
when they left the agency, and yet
when they had him there they derived
neither amusement nor profit from him,
for they neither tortured him nor made
him work. He never stole the soldiers
horses, and did not kill them, except
when they pursued him, because they
went too many together, SO h. could not
see why they were always after him.
He had kept away from them pretty
successfully SO far, though he did limp
from a rifle ball that had got him during
one raid. That is why his fellows called
him "Coyote-That- Drags- His Foot. -
Thirty years ago, when he was only a
little boy, a man in a black dress at the
mission had thrown q few drops of
water on him and then said something
in Spanish, and ever since that time
the white people had called him Jesus,
and it was against that name that the
rations he drew were entered.
He had assisted at the burning of the
mission and the killing of the priest
some years after.
Back he turned into the mountains.
For n week or two he waited to hear
| from the rest of the band, but no orders
came back. He would wait until spring,
when some of them would surely break
away from the reservation and take the
war trail back into Mexico. Old Geroni-
mo and Chatto and the rest always
broke away in the spring. He didn't
know that the incomprehensiblew white
men would send the bad chiefs off in the
railroad train so far that they could
never get back.
So Jesus started out alone. There
are not many people about the Sierra
Madre. but he knew trail where the
prospectors sometimes Travelled. and he
!oitered along this rrail At last he saw
a mounted man against the sky on top
of hill. He knew it was not an In
dian, even at that distance, because
Apaches do not ride along n ridge