Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/533

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TROUBLED BY APACHES.
405

ing him that by ascending them he would be able to show me where the different watering places were in the valley by land marks, and we struck out south-east from the fort in the direction of the middle fork of the Gila river. The first night we camped on what was then called the Butterfield route, some thirty-five or forty miles from the fort. This season there were a great many emigrants passing over this route from Texas and Arkansas to California, and Gen. Crook said the Apaches were giving them much trouble on this part of the road, and if they continued to be so bad he would have to send one or two companies of soldiers out there for the protection of the emigrants. The second morning out we passed a ranch owned by a man named Davis, who had lived there two years. He told me that the Apaches had never given him any trouble from the fact that he had gotten the good will of the chief when he first went there by giving him numerous little presents of different kinds.

He told me that although isolated from the world, he

Gen. George Crook.