ill bring you back."

On the advice of Jeffords this course of action was agreed to; and
four Apaches took General Howard down into the valley as far as the
point where the Sulphur Springs ranch buildings now stand.

Jeffords and the aide bided here on the heights with the Indians. And
on the second day, true to Cochise's prophecy, a band of renegades
came riding hard up the gorge. The spot where the Indians were
encamped was a saddle at the summit, some hundreds of feet lower than
the adjoining ridges. Now as the fugitive warriors threw themselves
from their lathered ponies, announcing that two troops of cavalry were
close behind them, the aide of General Howard witnessed one of those
spectacles which are easier to tell than to believe.

With the announcement of this emergency, the camp moved. In the same
time that it takes to say the foregoing sentence, it moved--men,
women, children, and every bit of impedimenta. It was like one of
those magic transformations of which we used to read in fairy-tales
when we were children.

One moment the Apaches were squatting among their lodges; and in the
next moment people and goods and wickiups were gone; the place was
bare.

Every warrior and squaw and child seized what objects were nearest at
hand, overlooking none, and scampered off with them. Within a few
minutes of the arrival of the fugitives, the entire band was scattered
among the boulders and pinnacles on the higher portion of the ridge;
Cochise was disposing his warriors to the best advantage to repel the
attack.

But the cavalry made no advance beyond the canyon mouth, and there was
no fight. When General Howard returned at the end of the next day he
saw the manner in which the war-chief had deployed his men and was
struck with admiration. No general, he said in telling of the
incident afterward, no matter how highly schooled in the arts of
modern warfare, could have disposed of his forces to better advantage
than this savage had done.

Then General Howard, his aide, and Captain Jeffords were given one of
those primitive lodges and settled down here among the lofty heights
of Cochise's stronghold, isolated from all white men, surrounded by
the most bloodthirsty savages in America, rubbing elbows with naked
warriors who had spent the years of their manhood perfecting
themselves in the fine arts of ambush and murder.

Cochise saw to it that they were well supplied with robes and
blankets; by his orders they wer