ther, had been
known among the Apaches as the abode of the dead. Here, they said, the
departed spirits of their ancestors whispered among the granite caves
and pinnacles every evening with the coming of the night wind.

But from now on they forgot the tribal legends and looked upon the
place as their inviolable refuge.

Time after time the blue-clad troopers chased them as far as the base
of the cliffs, but never pressed them farther. For Cochise had
developed into a consummate strategist and, for the first time in
their history, the Apaches learned the art of making a stand against
superior forces.

To this day the rolling hills under those pinkish granite precipices
show traces of the camps which the troopers occupied during successive
sieges, only to abandon them on learning that their turbaned enemies
had stolen away in some other quarter to resume their raiding all
along the border.

In some of the canyons which lead up toward the ragged crests of naked
rock one can still pick up old brass cartridge-shells, the relics of
grim battles where the soldiers always found themselves at a
disadvantage, targets for the frowzy, naked savages who slipped and
squirmed among the granite masses above them like rattlesnakes.

Far to the southward the Sierra Madre reared its lofty crests toward
the flaring sky; and there Cochise established another sanctuary where
his people could rest and hunt when the chase became too hot in
Arizona. His breech-clouted scouts discovered some dry placer diggings
here, and he bade the squaws mine the dust which he exchanged with
crooked-souled white traders for ammunition.

And now, having mastered the art of flight as he had mastered the art
of raiding, the war-chief of the Chiracahua Apaches waged his vendetta
against the white men more remorselessly than any of his forefathers
had done in their time.

But few men are absolutely consistent and Cochise had some
idiosyncracies, which it is just as well to note in passing, for they
give an inkling of a side of his character that was instrumental in
bringing an end to the whole bloody business.

For one thing he could not enjoy torturing his prisoners. He tried
that once on a Mexican down Agua Prieta way. After the custom of his
nation he pegged out the luckless prisoner near an ant-hill, with his
mouth propped open by a wooden gag and a trail of honey leading into
it.

But when he settled down that night to enjoy the torments of the man