Apache Campaigns - Fort Huachuca - U.S. Army

West, tells interestingly as follows:
By crossing the canyon it was a hard, dangerous climb both down and up, and
when at the top we found that the mesa ended at the side of the canyon by a ledge of rock,
probably six feet high. The top was defended by a small force of renegade Apache skirmishers.
Forming our men below the ledge, they were ordered to jump over and take to
the nearest tree. After seeing all the men move forward I followed and dropped down behind
my tree, selected before I started. By a natural and excusable mistake six of my men had
chosen the same tree. It was not the largest there, but we were all safe, as owing to the
disinclination of the men to expose themselves the Indians could not hit us, their bullets hitting
the tree about three feet above the ground. The men, however, were uneasy, there being so
little tree and so much of a crowd, and without a word all jumped up and ran back, fortunately
without loss. As it was safer, and a good place, I crawled up to my vacated tree. A
chief just in front of and very close to me—thirty feet—thinking the entire party had gone,
sprang out from his cover and commenced a war dance. After stopping his play in short
order, I became anxious to know how far back my party had gone, and went back with much
haste and little dignity. I was glad to find the men under the ledge cool enough and wondering
where I was. We tried the advance again and in better form, and gained the top. 96
Abbot, with the other flankers, had made a difficult crossing just as we had. But when
his men reached the top of the canon, it was to meet a strong party of hostiles bent on the same
maneuver as our own—attempt to get behind the enemy. Na-ti-o-tish had made several errors
of generalship, as we learned later. He had watched Chaffee and Sieber all afternoon of the
preceding day, counted the soldiers and Indians, and felt confident that his seventy-odd renegades
could easily wipe them out at Chevelon’s Fork. Converse’s white horses had been
taken for Chaffee’s. He still had no idea that our force from Apache was joined to the little
force he had counted—and discounted.
The flanking party which ran into Abbot was moving almost carelessly, expecting to
scramble easily across the canon and take Chaffee from the rear. Abbot’s force poured bullets
into them, killing and wounding several, sending the rest in a mad rout back to their main
body at the trail.
Their stampede did not stop there; the panic infected those renegades who were shooting
at the troopers on the far rim. The whole remnant milled toward the ponies just as we got
the herd behind us.
It seemed to us that our capture of the herd had roused the Indians to a rush, bent on
retaking the ponies. But actually they had no thought of our presence; they only knew that
something was radically wrong and wanted to get away.
West had pushed his line on until all of us formed a quarter-circle from the canon edge
across the trail leading to the Navajo country. Abbot, of course, was moving to make a
similar quarter-circle from the canon edge to the Navajo Trail. The renegades were now in a
trap.
We fired into them and saw some fall and others jump to hunt cover behind the pines.
Our line moved to enclose them and push them toward the canon. Shadows were thickening
in that forest, and it was not so easy to see. I had the left flank of our E Troop, at the canon
rim, some two hundred yards in front of what had been the main camp of the hostiles—
A MAGAZINE OF THE FORT HUACHUCA MUSEUM
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