By this time our three months’ supply was running short, and Lieut.  Jackson commenced making preparations to return to headquarters with his entire command.  We pulled out for the fort, and did not see an Indian or even a fresh track on our way.

When we arrived at the fort and Lieut.  Jackson made his report Gen. Crook was more than pleased with the success we had met, and I succeeded in getting George’s wages raised from seventy-five to one hundred dollars per month, unbeknown to him.

It was now in the fall of the year, and the General decided to send us back again with two companies of cavalry and one company of infantry, calculated more for camp and guard duty than for actual service.

After we had rested up a month or such a matter the General had six or eight mule teams rigged up, also fifty burros for pack animals, and started Lieut.  Jackson back again with three hundred soldiers.

CHAPTER XXX.

A wicked little battle.—­Capture of one hundred and eighty-two horses.—­Discovery of black canyon.—­Fort Yuma and the pay master.

We traveled very slowly and cautiously, and at the foot of the mountains, one hundred and fifty miles from Fort Yuma, we met a freight train from Santa Fe loaded with flour and bacon, principally, bound for Tombstone, Arizona.  This train was owned by a man named Pritchett; but he was generally known as “Nick in the Woods.”  His party had had a fight with the Indians in the mountains the third day before we met him, and he had lost several mules killed and two of his teamsters were wounded.  He informed us that the mountains were swarming with Indians, so the Lieutenant sent one company ahead of the command, George Jones and I going as scouts.

The advance company was under command of an orderly sergeant, who was instructed that if we met no Indians before reaching our old quarters we were to stay there until the command came up.  On the third evening, just as our company was going into camp, and Jones and I were taking a survey from the hill near by, we saw a band of Indians coming leisurely along and evidently bound for the same camp ground that the soldiers were.  Jones hurried down to inform the sergeant of the situation, I tarrying long enough to become positively convinced that the reds might get their camp fixings mixed with ours.  So I put spurs to my horse and rode down to camp as quickly as I could.  During this time the sergeant was flying around like a chicken with his head cut off to have his company ready to meet the Indians, and he barely had time to get his men all mounted when the reds came in sight, not forty rods away.  George and I had ridden our horses very hard all day, consequently took no hand in this engagement, but rode to the top of a little hill close by where we could see the whole affair.