The Story of Geronimo Part 12

They intended to start just before dark so they would have all night before the soldiers still in Camp Goodwin could take their trail.

Geronimo's eyes narrowed. Loco and Nana and their followers had done nothing. But the man named Sterling, Chief of San Carlos Police, now rode up with some Apache policemen. Had someone betrayed the careful plans? Or had Sterling intended to bring his Apache Police to Camp Goodwin anyhow?

The sun told Geronimo that it was a little past four o'clock. He rose.

Still keeping the rifle hidden under his blanket, he walked to his pony and was preparing to mount when the man named Sterling shouted:

"Hey you! Wait!"

Pretending he did not know that he was being addressed, Geronimo did not look around. Sterling shouted again:

"I mean you, Geronimo! Stop or I'll shoot!"

Geronimo sprang to the saddle, dropping his blanket as he did so.

Sterling's rifle cracked and a bullet sang close. Leveling his own rifle from the back of the already running pony, Geronimo flung a shot at Sterling. He bent low on his pony's back to make a smaller target as bullets from Sterling's Apache police whistled past. Then he galloped over a hill and was hidden.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Geronimo raced into the dry wash where the rest awaited him. All the warriors were on foot and holding their horses. The women and children were mounted, and some of the women held tightly to babies not yet old enough to ride alone. Most children, often with three on the same pony, managed their own mounts. Whoa, an Indian so big that he dwarfed the wiry little pony he rode, came to meet Geronimo.

"What news do you bring?" Whoa asked.

Geronimo said, "The man named Sterling came with his Apache police. He shot at me, and I shot at him, but I do not know if I hit him. The soldiers must know soon that we are gone."

"Come."

The warriors mounted. With an advance and rear guard, and scouts on either side, men, women, and children rode on at a fast trot.

Night fell, and they were safe until the sun rose again. But sunrise might find soldiers hot on their trail, so there could be no thought of sparing horses. The only sleep they dared allow themselves was such s.n.a.t.c.hes as might be had in the saddle. From time to time they nibbled a bit of the parched corn or jerky, sun-dried beef that they carried in pouches.

With daylight, Geronimo reined in on top of a hill and looked behind him. There were no soldiers in sight and no cloud of dust, to indicate that any were coming. Geronimo turned and overtook Whoa.

"n.o.body comes from the rear," he said, "but we shall be in trouble soon. Our mounts reel from weariness."

"Yes," Whoa grunted.

Neither said more. Both had known that they and their people must travel fast. And both had also known that their horses and ponies could not run all the way to Mexico. They did not know yet what they would do when the animals were played out.

Some Apaches were asleep in the saddle, and now the fastest must suit their gait to the slowest. A pony stumbled, almost went down, then found his balance and pounded on. Suddenly Geronimo pointed ahead and exclaimed:

"Look! Usan has smiled upon us!"

A long pack train, with some horses and mules bearing packs and many more running loose, was making its way up the valley. Knowing how to get the last burst of speed from his tired pony, Geronimo whooped and sped to the attack. He began to shoot as soon as he was in range, and he heard the rifles of the rest of the warriors blasting behind him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_Look! Usan has smiled upon us!_"]

The white men and the Mexicans with them were outnumbered six to one.

They fired a few hasty return shots and spurred out of danger, leaving their pack train and loose horses behind them. Letting the fleeing men go, Geronimo rode in ahead of the frightened horses and turned them. The warriors surrounded the herd.

There was a quick exchange of saddles and bridles, a swift rummaging through all the packs for priceless rifles and bullets, and most of the Apaches rode on.

Freshly mounted, Geronimo returned to the top of a hill for another look at the back trail. He could still see neither soldiers nor the telltale dust cloud to indicate any were coming. Geronimo hurried to catch Whoa.

"No soldiers are near enough to cause trouble from the rear," he reported. "So rather than go on at full speed, it would be wise to ride these fresh horses at a pace they can maintain."

"Wise indeed," Whoa said. "But let us not forget that some soldiers are elsewhere and even now may be returning to Camp Goodwin. We must be alert for whoever approaches from the front."

Geronimo said, "You speak wisely."

Alternately walking and trotting their mounts, they rode steadily toward Mexico. That day they stopped only long enough to let the thirsty Apache horses drink from a water hole. A herd of range horses was already drinking there, and they took those horses with them when they went on.

Into the night they traveled, and stopped again for two hours at another water hole. The horses drank and grazed. Some of the weariest people slept. Geronimo, who often had been afield a full week with only such sleep as he could get in the saddle, climbed a hill to look for danger on the back trail.

The next day, riding as advance scout, Geronimo saw soldiers coming a moment before they saw him. There were two companies, about sixty men, of the Fourth Cavalry, and they were directly in the path the Apaches must follow. Geronimo waved his rifle as a signal that enemies were sighted, and the warriors whooped to join him.

This was Apache country, a land in which they were familiar with every rock and crevice, and to the west was a bypa.s.s around the soldiers.

Driving the loose horses at full run, the women and children raced toward that bypa.s.s. Yelling, but not shooting, because they had no bullets to waste, the warriors swooped down on the soldiers. It looked as though they intended to have a hand-to-hand fight with them.

Again Geronimo could not help admiring American soldiers, who never ran as Mexicans so often did but always stood their ground. However, the Apache charge was a trick.

Suddenly the racing Indians swerved east, toward some rocky hills. They rode up a narrow cleft, the only one around which horses could climb.

The soldiers shot, but the range was so long that they hit no one.

Reaching the summit of the cleft, the Apaches took their horses behind some rocks where they would be safe from bullets. Then they scrambled back to take up positions in the rocks themselves.

The soldiers launched a spirited attack, but they could not advance under the withering fire rained down upon them. They retreated, re-formed, and attacked again.

The Apaches shot slowly and carefully, for they wanted neither a fierce battle nor close-quarter fighting. Their only purpose was to delay the soldiers until the women and children had had time to reach a place of safety.

Two hours after the soldiers first opened fire, the Apaches began to slip away. Each mounted his own horse, and each took a different path to rejoin the women and children. Finally only Geronimo and a dozen others were left. They fired at the soldiers and drove them to cover in the rocks. Then all the remaining Apaches rose and ran to their horses.

On their next attack, the soldiers took the hilltop. There was not an Apache left to resist them, but there were sixty different trails that led in sixty different directions.

Forty-eight hours after they left San Carlos, the Apaches crossed the Mexican border and were safe in the Sierra Madre Mountains.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

_Fortress Paradise_

Urged by three of Geronimo's warriors, fifty-three cattle climbed laboriously up a slope and shuffled into pine forest. Stolen from a Mexican _rancheria_, they had been driven most of the night at the fastest pace they could keep up. Now the cattle staggered with weariness. But they would rest soon.

Geronimo and a warrior named Francisco, who had helped steal the cattle, were with the raiding party. Watching only until the cattle had reached the mountain top, they turned to look back down the slope.

Beneath, the Sierra Madres leveled into low foothills. In the distance, the hills seemed to fold into each other, so that instead of many mountains there was just one. Finally the one was lost in a s.h.i.+mmering blue haze.

The two Apaches tied their horses to nearby trees and continued to scan the hills below them. It was Geronimo who spoke.