The soldiers who had their horses killed were mounted on the choice horses that we had captured from the Indians, which made very fair cavalry horses.

As soon as we had completed our arrangements Gen. Crook started back for Fort Yuma, much wiser than he came, while we pushed farther out on the Butterfield route, with two companies of cavalry and fifty infantry-men.

We traveled four days from our old camp before making a general halt.  The evening of the fourth day just a short time before we were ready to go into camp the scouts came in and reported having seen a small band of Indians only a short distance west of us, and they said they had watched them go into camp.

I reported to the Lieutenant and he started with one company of cavalry after them, leaving orders for the command to go into camp at the next water, which was about a mile ahead of us.  This proved to be a small hunting party, and they in some way discovered us before we got to their camp.  When we came in sight of them we were about a quarter of a mile away from their camp and they had their horses all packed and were beginning to mount.  We gave chase, but they had the start of us so that we only got two out of the band, but we crowded them so close that they had to leave their pack-horses, and we got all of them, there being twenty.

I captured a fine American horse that showed good breeding.  He was a sorrel, with white hind feet and a white strips on his face and branded C on the left shoulder.  I made the Lieutenant a present of this horse, and he afterwards proved to be a very fast animal, as the Lieutenant told me several years after, that during the winter months he kept the soldiers nearly all broke with that horse.  He told me that he proved to be the fastest half mile horse he ever saw.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

The massacre at choke Cherry canyon.—­Mike Maloney gets into A Muss.—­Rescue of white girls.—­Mike gets even with the apaches.

The emigrants now begun to come along and we were kept busy night and day looking after the small bands of Indians that were continually making murderous forays in spite of all we could do to prevent.

With only three hundred soldiers and twelve scouts, and a country over one hundred miles in extent to guard, the service was exacting, and our lot was not altogether a happy one.

One day in July, in company with George Jones and John Riley, I started out in the direction of Black canyon to see if I could locate any small band of Apaches that might be prowling around.  We traveled all day, and not seeing any Indians or sign of them, concluded to return to camp and get some much needed rest, and did so.  It now seemed that there were no Apaches near us so I went to Lieut.  Jackson’s