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Show THE BOWLDER WAS ALIVE. An Apache Stratagem That Kearly Cost a Government Courier His Life. "Talking of Indians and their stratagems," strata-gems," saidD. A". Marston, lately of the United States cavalry, "they are pas masters in the arts of skulking and da ceiving. An Apaohe will lie behind a soapweed on - the open prairie, and you may ride past 200 or 300 yards away and never have an idea that there is a redskin within 50 miles of you unless he decides to risk a shot at you. As you pass the soapweed he works his body around so as to keep it always in line with the plant and you. Even on the open prairie, with no more shelter-than that afforded by some little inequality of surface, he will sift dust over his body, flatten himself out, face downward, down-ward, against the ground, and lying as motionless as a stone will escape the observation of any except sharp and practiced eyes. Sometimes in a group of cactus or Spanish bayonet, his buckskin garments blending with the hues of the plants, his face and neck concealed by the head of a Spanish bayonet, he will stand like a post, indistinguishable to the inexperienced eye, even at close quarters, from the grotesque plants about him. "A queer experience of this kind occurred oc-curred to me in my service in Arizona during General Crook's last campaign against the Apaches. Tom Merriam of my troop and myself were detailed to carry dispatches from Camp Bowie to Camp Grant, up on the Rio Benito. It was a dangerous service at that time, and we had to keep a sharp lookout and be ready to fight or run at a moment's notioe, for there was no knowing at what point on the route the Apaches might not be lying in wait to jump us as we came along. "We were on our return to Camp Bowie and had just crossed the wooded canyon where the cold spring is and were coming out upon the open prairie that stretches down to the San Pedro river, when through the branches of a low tree I saw what I took to be an Indian In-dian on the plain, about a half mile ahead. But on spurring my horse forward for-ward so as to get a better look nothing was to be seen save the bare prairie, with no sign of man or beast upon its expense. "As we rode along I spoke of the matter to Tom, who laughed at what he called my scare, which he said caused me to see imaginary Indians. We came opposite a low, gray bowlder upon the prairie 200 paces or so from the trail. . I don t remember ever to have seen that rock before, ' said Tom, who had been over the route several times. 'How in the devil did it get there? I'll ride over and take a look at it!' And he reined his horse and rode toward the object I followed him, a few yards behind. be-hind. "His horse had scarcely taken a dozen doz-en steps when the seeming gray rock moved slightly upward, and there came from its lower edge a flash and report with the scream of a big caliber ball that flapped Tom's coat with its wind and caused his horse to plunge so suddenly sud-denly that Tom, one of the best riders in the troop, not being on the lookout for such a happening, was thrown. Ai the same instant an Apache leaped from beneath the gray blanket that had served serv-ed him to masquerade as a bowlder and ran like a deer for the canyon, leaping to left and right as ho wcav x-0 avoid tn,e shots that Tom and I sent after him from our repeating carbines. t "We knocked up the dust about his feet and made him do some talldodgin to the whistling of our bullets, but tha was all, for we. didn't hit him. To have chased him would have been folly, first, because we were bearing dispatches in haste and needed the last ounce of reserve re-serve force in our horses, and, secondly, because with the start he had we should not have overhauled him - in his run for the canyon, into which we could not have followed him. So we took the trail again and rode our way with another wrinkle added to our experience of Indian In-dian trickery and cussedness." New York Sun. |
