Apache Campaigns - Fort Huachuca - U.S. Army

one, and they could not be assailed under cover in any direction; so, taking the corporal with
me, we started nearly due east; but noticing about a mile away on the plain we were heading
for, a triangular-shaped mass that stood higher than the rest of the vicinity, I scented danger,
so I turned our course southward, so as to pass the end of it 500 yards away. Sure enough,
there sat and stood a bunch of Apaches, evidently put on watch to prevent any couriers being
sent out from the rifle pits. At the moment we saw them they were very much excited about
something; their ponies were tethered near them, and they were gesticulating and talking
excitedly, and even the watch who had been looking in our direction must have gone back to
them, and so missed seeing us. The instant they saw us, however, there was a hubbub, shots
were exchanged, and mounting their ponies, on they came, some fifteen or eighteen of them.
We put our horses at a good gait, going a little south of our former course to avoid losing
distance by enabling them to cut across a short angle and thereby gain on us.
We soon found that we had the better mounts and that they could not overtake us, so we
kept well ahead of them, stopped to breathe our animals until they were within range, took a
shot at them, and pushed on again. In about three miles we came out on the plain and struck
what in the language of the frontier in those parts is called a “sliyer”—that is, the hard, sunbaked
bed of a depression in the soil, only a few inches below the level of the surrounding
plain, that in wet weather forms a lake, and in dry times becomes a flat, smooth, crusted
surface. We made for the centre, dismounted, and prepared to fight, intending to kill our
horses for breastworks of necessary; but as there was not even a blade of grass to protect them
and afford cover in case they followed us, I doubted if they would dare to attempt an attack in
the open. They stopped and gathered in council. Suddenly we heard firing down at the lower
end of the sliyer, and saw dismounted Indians coming out on it, and our pursuers began
slowly turning back towards the mountains. One Indian came dashing up on the only horse I
had left back at the rifle pits. I thought it was a hostile who had captured the horse and wished
to deceive me, and was about to fire, when he gave the sign of friendship, and I realized he
was the big Mojave scout. I asked what the firing was, and who were the Indians on the lower
end of the sliyer. He told me that, hearing the report of our guns, the scouts determined to
leave the pits and come to our assistance, and had been followed by the Apaches, and were
now firing back at them. Happening to cast my eyes to the north over some sand hills just
below the sliyer, we could see a cloud of dust coming rapidly nearer us, and realizing that
there was no danger of the hostiles coming any further, I galloped across the sliyer and
dashed up the hill, and just beyond and below I saw six splendid cavalry troops in beautiful
order en echelon, sweeping towards us at a full gallop. Quah-day-lay-thay-go had bravely
performed his mission, but at the expense of the life of our plucky racehorse Jumping Jack. 72
After McDonald rejoined the 4th Cavalry strike force and reported his action to the
commander, Forsyth moved his troops up into position in the foothills, just out of range of the
hostiles. He said, “The position occupied by the hostiles was a capital one. I found them strongly
intrenched on the left side of Horse Shoe Canyon, and also in the middle of it, where there was an
outlying mass of rugged rocks about four hundred feet in height, a smaller ledge of rocks about
thirty feet in height connecting the two places.” Leaving one troop in reserve with the horses, he
sent G troop directly at the center of the enemy position, while two troops circled to the left, C
and F, and two troops, M and H, to the right to flank the Indians’ stronghold. He remembered
that “Major Wirt 73 Davis opened the attack, and in about an hour, by hard work and good
climbing, we compelled them to abandon their position and fall back. They then took up a second
A MAGAZINE OF THE FORT HUACHUCA MUSEUM
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