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Show unlike any that were familiar to him. They were grand and beautiful beauti-ful beyond description. At about the gam time, eoon after noon, it appeared in the same location, and the famishing brutes seemed not to realize that they were unreal, so vivid was the picture painted on the sky. When they made their final camp that night on the hot sands, which they supposed would be their grave, little did they know that they were within a few milc3 of the main body that had halted at a small oasis supplied with abundant grass and water. The purpose was to continue the search for the missing troop till something definite was known of its fate. Early on the morning of the rescue the perishing dog, Carlo, aroused himself from the stupor of death and, throwing his nose out onto the air, made signs of uneasiness. In a few moments he ambled to his feet and slowly made off in a straight direction, whining all the time. The men were too weak and indifferent to follow. The dog found the camp of the main body and was recognized. After being refreshed with food and water, he set out on his own trail, baying and giving many other joyful manifestations of pleasure and, in fewer minutes than it takes to tell this, the troopers were in the saddle following at full speed. The meeting of the rescuers and the rescued passes description. Carlo, the intelligent and faithful brute, was tenderly cared for the balance of his life by the soldiers at the post, in fact, no dog ever had such a home as he, and when, at last, old age foreclosed, he was buried on a high knoll that overlooks the valley and the soldiers insisted on giving him a soldiers' burial. This all happened some ten years ago. The sergeant told the story then, and last winter while Doctor Condon was recovering from a severe accident derived from the capracious conduct of an automobile, he whiled away the dreary days of convalescence, and shortened the weary hours, by transcribing the story in his own style. Doctor Condon's poem will appear in the Standard tomorrow, and our readers must not overlook it as it has unusual merit. ' SERGEANT'S STORY IN THE STANDARD. Fifteen years ago the quest and capture of Geronimo, the bloodthirsty blood-thirsty chief of the Apaches, was a hair-raising story that filled many pages in newspapers and magazines. The old chief was finally captured cap-tured by" General Miles and died in a federal prison a few months since. The scattered ranches in Arizona and New Mexico were in a constant fever of apprehension so long as that villianous savage was nt large, and several times, after his final capture, the government govern-ment refused to pardon him, though many overtures and pledges were made. He was brought to bay with all his tribe and beaten down near the Mexican line and interested persons contended that the capture was made on Mexican territory and sought to create an international question between this country and our neighbor. The 6tory of Geronimo's later career makes one of the bloodiest bloodi-est chapters in recent Indian history. At last his depredations became be-came intolerable and United States troops, under General Miles, were sent out to capture or destroy him and his band of cut-throats. Geronimo had always been a fearless and resourceful rascal and an all-around match for his most cunning antagonist, until General Miles finally persuaded him that he was his superior L courage and expediency. But the wiley old chief gave our troops a lesson in tact and maneuver before he was run to earth. One day he would engage our troops in a certain place, and when night came, under cover of darkness, he would steal away with his warriors and, without with-out warning, fall upon farm houses and ranches, capturing and destroying de-stroying stock that could not be carried away, putting to death everything human along his route, not even sparing the women and children, and lighting the night over his blackened trail with the blaze of harvests and burning buildings; and the next day he would be fifty or sixty miles distant and ready for a fight. His ponies were fleet and durable. The depredators devoured and destroyed everything before them, leaving noe subsistance for their pursuers. General Miles selected some of the best riders and toughest Indian fighters he could find and started out on the bloody trail of Geronimo, resolved to tame the untamable savage. Day after day the troopers followed the wary Geronimo, fighting his one day and being unable to find him the next, and he seemed as elusive as a shadow. One day, near the cIobo of the campaign, General Miles and his troopers, in order to cut off the retreat of the enemy, evidently intending in-tending to escape into Mexico, took a straight line across the desert in order to circumvent him. During the second day out on the desert a portion of the command became detached from the main body and, having no guide, became lost and for several days wandered about utterly bewildered. It was not long before their water was exhausted, exhaust-ed, also their rations, and there was no feed for their horses and pack animals. These all died of thirst and hunger, and the terrible heat. Some of the men, becoming exhausted, laid down and died. A fine pack of dogs of various breeds had been taken along and all died of thirst except a large collie named Carlo. All these days a merciless, intolerable sun was beating down upon them, and the radiation from the hot sands- made the nights more dreaded even than the day. The few survivors of those days and nights on the desert will never forget them while they live. Sergeant Forsythe is one of the few now living who pulled through that fearful ordeal. All his life since childhood had been spent in the army and a few years ago, on account of the infirmities of age, he was retired on a pension and now lives on a small neat ranch near Fort Bayard. Doctor Condon, then United States surgeon at that post, having somehow heard that the sergeant was one of the survivors of the desert episode and captors of Geronimo, invited him to his quarters and asked him to relate the story. Slowly, but most interestingly, the doctor says, the sergeant's recitation went on, unnoted the hours wore away, neglected the bluebird sang in the branches overhead, J and the shadows that fell under the trees grew longer and longer 1 unheeded, so stirring was the narrative. The story is so pitifully ' gruesome that much of it is left out on this account. The sergeant described the mirage that appeared every afternoon as the most astonishing picture, and deceiving, that the imagination can conceive. He said the cities seemed to be Oriental and the water fronts were |
