Some of the spellings and hyphenations in the original are unusual; they have not been changed. Minor punctuation errors have been corrected without notice. A few obvious typographical errors have been corrected, and they are indicated with a mouse-hover and listed at the end of this book.
| Starlight Ranch | 7 |
| Well Won; or From the Plains to "the Point" | 40 |
| From "the Point" to the Plains | 116 |
| The Worst Man in the Troop | 201 |
| Van | 234 |
We were crouching round the bivouac fire, for the night was chill, andwe were yet high up along the summit of the great range. We had beenscouting through the mountains for ten days, steadily working southward,and, though far from our own station, our supplies were abundant, and itwas our leader's purpose to make a clean sweep of the line from oldSandy to the Salado, and fully settle the question as to whether therenegade Apaches had betaken themselves, as was possible, to the heightsof the Matitzal, or had made a break for their old haunts in the TontoBasin or along the foot-hills of the Black Mesa to the east. Strongscouting-parties had gone thitherward, too, for "the Chief" was bound tobring these Tontos to terms; but our orders were explicit: "Thoroughlyscout the east face of the Matitzal." We had capital Indian allies withus. Their eyes were keen, their legs tireless, and there had been badblood between them and the tribe now broken away from the reservation.They asked nothing better than a chance to shoot and kill them; so wecould feel well assured that if "Tonto sign" appeared anywhere along ourpath it would instantly be reported. But now we were south of theconfluence of Tonto Creek and the Wild Rye, and our scouts declared that[Pg 6]beyond that point was the territory of the White Mountain Apaches,where we would not be likely to find the renegades.
East of us, as we lay there in the sheltered nook whence the glare ofour fire could not be seen, lay the deep va