Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/513

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"I don't want that any more; when a man tries to do right, such stories ought not to be put in the newspapers. What is the matter that you [General Crook] don't speak to me? It would be better if you would speak to me and look with a pleasant face; it would make better feeling; I would be glad if you did. I'd be better satisfied if you would talk to me once in a while. Why don't you look at me and smile at me? I am the same man; I have the same feet, legs, and hands, and the Sun looks down on me a complete man; I wish you would look and smile at me. The Sun, the Darkness, the Winds, are all listening to what we now say. To prove to you that I am now telling you the truth, remember I sent you word that I would come from a place far away to speak to you here, and you see me now. Some have come on horseback and some on foot; if I were thinking bad or if I had done bad, I would never have come here. If it had been my fault would I have come so far to talk with you?" He then expressed his delight at seeing "Ka-e-ten-na" once more: he had lost all hope of ever having that pleasure; that was one reason why he had left Camp Apache.

General Crook: "I have heard what you have said. It seems very strange that more than forty men should be afraid of three; but if you left the reservation for that reason, why did you kill innocent people, sneaking all over the country to do it? What did those innocent people do to you that you should kill them, steal their horses, and slip around in the rocks like coyotes? What had that to do with killing innocent people? There is not a week passes that you don't hear foolish stories in your own camp; but you are no child—you don't have to believe them. You promised me in the Sierra Madre that that peace should last, but you have lied about it. When a man has lied to me once, I want some better proof than his own word before I can believe him again. Your story about being afraid of arrest is all bosh; there were no orders to arrest you. You sent up some of your people to kill 'Chato' and Lieutenant Davis, and then you started the story that they had killed them, and thus you got a great many of your people to go out. Everything that you did on the reservation is known; there is no use for you to try to talk nonsense. I am no child. You must make up your minds whether you will stay out on the war-path or surrender unconditionally. If you stay out I'll keep after you and kill the last one if it takes