170 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[July 31, iW- 
'an’ the two caballeros were so stuck up an’ 
proud, an’ insultin’ to me that I thought I would 
show them a thing or two. I guess I did.’ 
“After a couple of days’ travel, the valley nar¬ 
rowin’ an’ runnin’ streams beginnin’ to tumble 
into it from the high mountains, we began pros¬ 
pectin’. I guess we were all of a month gettin 
up to the head waters of the^iver, but we found 
nothin’ more than a few colors of gold. 1 he 
mountains were full of game; deer, turkeys, 
quail, an’ quite a few bear an’ lions, but we 
didn’t see any fresh signs of Apaches. There 
were no end to the old ruins of a people who 
had lived there hundreds, maybe thousands of 
years ago. We found ’em along every little 
water course, an’ the higher up in the moun¬ 
tains we went the more plentiful they became. 
There wasn’t anything big, like the Casa Grande; 
just the ruined stone walls of houses ten or 
twelve feet square, an’ strange to say, the build¬ 
ers of ’em had made little level pieces of farmin 
land in the arroyos instead of goin’ down an 
plantin’ their stuff in the bottom of the valley. 
Here they built a stone wall across a wash an’ 
filled it with earth for their corn raisin’. We 
spent one whole day diggin’ up the floor of 
some of the houses but found nothin’ more 
than broken pottery of a poor, rough kind. 
“From the head of the Yaqui we had a fearful 
long, steep climb to the top of the range, in 
places travelin’ through as fine, big pine woods 
as there are anywhere. We were two days get¬ 
tin’ to the summit, which must be ten or eleven 
thousand feet high. It was fearful cold and 
blowy up there an’ there was snow on the 
ground. We put in a miserable night; packed 
the shiverin’ burros as soon as day broke, and 
started down the east slope of the range. Not 
half a mile from where we had camped we 
came upon a fresh trail in the snow, the tracks 
of thirty or forty Injuns headin’ down toward 
the plains of Chihuahua. By the print of their 
moccasins we knew that they were Apaches, for 
no other tribe wears the turned-up-toe foot gear 
like theirs. They had passed down the day be¬ 
fore an’ were headin’ northeast. We cut their 
trail and turned southeast, an’ along toward 
night struck a fine little river which we learned 
later was the Piedras Verdes. You bet, after 
the cold an’ snow, the warm air an’ the flowers 
blossomin’ along the stream was fine. But those 
tracks we had seen up in the range sure worried 
us. The Apaches had gone out on a raid, of 
course, but if they chanced to cross our tracks 
on their way back we were in for a scrap. ‘An 
of course they’ll see ’em,’ said Irish, who had 
been a government scout before he got stuck 
on prospectin’, an’ so knew the Apaches from 
a to z. ‘It don’t make no difference if they 
go back two weeks or a month from now, said 
he, ‘or whether the snow is gone or not, or if 
a week’s rain has washed our trail. When they 
come to it they’ll see it, an’ when they see it 
they’ll follow it, an’ then somethin’ will be hap¬ 
penin’. From now on we better take turns 
standin’ guard, an’ we better camp on high or 
open ground.’ 
“That’s what we did, beginnin’ that night to 
make sure. The first thing we noticed in the 
mornin’ was a big mound, a hundred feet square, 
maybe, that had lots of broken pottery scattered 
around it, fine pieces, thin an’ smooth, an’ painted 
in all sorts of colors. We spent the day pros¬ 
pectin’ the bars down stream, one of us keepin’ 
watch against any surprise, but nothin’ was 
doin’, we didn’t get a color. The next day we 
prospected the other way, passin several more 
mounds which showed that there had once been 
a big settlement there. It wasn’t a wide valley, 
not over three-quarters of a mile at most, an 
narrowin’ considerable up stream. 
“The third day we moved camp about five 
miles up river an’ there we found a lot of caves 
in both walls of the valley, an’ in some of the 
caves were ruined houses. The first one we 
went into was the largest of all we explored, 
but we never got to examine many of ’em. This 
particular big one was all of a hundred feet 
across the mouth, an’ ran back into the cliff that 
far. From floor to roof it was maybe twenty 
feet high. Climbin’ the steep incline from the 
valley to the cave level an’ suddenly seein’ the 
whitish an’ crumblin’ walls of the old houses 
back in the dark shadows kind of made us hold 
our breath, it was all so old an still an queer. 
Standin’ in front of the houses was what at first 
we thought a regular giant olla. It was shaped 
like one, bellyin’ out from the base to half its 
height, an’ then taperin’ to the top. but goin’ 
up an’ examinin’ it, we found it wasn’t an olla 
at all, but a grainery, made by coilin’ a big 
grass rope, one layer on top of another, an 
settin’ each one in a kind of colecha stuff, some¬ 
thin’ like this Casa Grande here is built of, only 
it didn’t have any gravel in it. The walls of 
the thing were about ten inches thick. It was 
about fourteen feet high, an’ as wide as that 
in the middle, had a three-foot hole in the top, 
one of that size near the bottom, an smaller 
holes in it here an’ there. Inside of it we found 
a handful or so of corn an’ a few beans. 
“Examinin’ the house ruins, we found fourteen 
ground floor rooms, but marks on the cave roof 
showed that they had been two-storied. These 
walls were of cement, too, an’ laid up just as 
we white folks build concrete walls, a layer at 
a time. In the doorway of every room was cut 
what represented an ear of corn. That was the 
sign mark of that tribe, I guess, just as the 
paintin’ of the buffalo on their lodges was the 
sign mark of some of the plains tribes. Pokin’ 
around a bit here an’ there we found a few 
pieces of pottery, some stone axes, a few arrow 
heads of obsidian, an’ some yucca sandals. We 
tried to dig down through the floor of one 
room —it was of cement an’ almost as hard as 
rock, but the dust we raised made us cough so 
hard we had to give it up. 
“That evenin’ old No Talk surprised us by 
makin’ a talk: ‘Everybody knows that these here 
old time folks had lots of gold, an’ diamonds, 
an’ such like vallable stuff, an’ I believe there s 
some of it buried herabouts. You fellows go 
on prospectin’, I’m goin’ to dig down in the 
ruins of some of these caves,’ said he. 
“Well, it seemed as if we all had a hunch 
that way, too. Early in the mornin’ we went 
at it, choosin’ a cave that was small an had 
only three houses. As usual, we took all the 
burros along. Most of our stuff was buried here 
an’ there about camp. We weren’t takin’ any 
more chances than could be helped. 
“There was no end of dust an’ rubbish on 
the floor of the cave. We cleaned out a room 
that was about ten by twelve feet by runnin^ 
outside every two or three minutes an’ diggin’ 
the powdery stuff from our noses an throats. 
When it was nice an’ clean we went to work 
with our picks, an’ it was sure a hard job to 
break through the cement floor even with them. 
The stuff under the floor was soft enough. It 
wasn’t earth but the dry, powdered stuff that 
the walls of the houses had been built of by 
mixin’ it with water. We hadn’t taken out 
more than half a yard of it when we exposed 
a mummy. Yes, sir, a mummy, just like them 
old Egyptian ones you read about. There ’twas, 
a smallish man, all dried up, shrunken some 
but perfectly natural. He was sort of drawed 
up, arms crossed, an’ layin’ on his side. 1 here 
was some cloth wrapped around his middle, an 
some more cloth on top of him that all crum¬ 
bled up. His hair was fine an’ soft, an’ not 
near so dark as the hair of the Injuns now- 
a-days. But he didn’t have any gold with him. 
Nothin’ at all but a small olla an’ some shell 
trinkets. 
“That was kind of discouragin’, but we kept 
on shovelin’ an’ in the course of the mornin’ 
uncovered two more mummies, one a man, 
t'other a woman, both of small size. ‘Well, 
No Talk, you satisfied now?’ I asked. He 
grunted, an’ when we trailed out of the cave 
an’ down to the creek to wash, he came along 
without a word. 
“While we were workin’, Pedro had herded 
the burros an’ stood watch, an’ while settin’ 
on top of the cliff he shot three turkeys out 
of a flock that chanced to come his way. The 
boys were cookin’ ’em, an’ I was standin watch 
when away down the valley I thought I heard 
cattle bawlin’. ‘Shucks!’ said I, ‘there’s no cat¬ 
tle here in these mountains,’ but I kept listenin’ 
an’ sure enough I heard the bawlin’ again, an 
then I saw dust raisin’ about a mile below our 
camp. I hurried down to the creek an’ in no 
time we put the fire out, cached the turkeys, 
an’ roundin’ up the burros drove ’em back 
through a wash an’ around to the top of the , 
bluffs. I 
“We were just in time; sneakin’ out to the ^ 
edge of the cliff we saw what we were expectin’« 
to see: a lot of Injuns drivin’ a bunch of cattlej 
an’ loose horses up the valley. They were onj 
the east side of the river an’ so were we, but 
our camp was on the west side, an’ they couldnt. 
see the few things scattered around it on account 
of the thick brush growin’ along the river. The 
question with us was, Would they pass on up 
the valley without noticin’ the dust an’ stuff we 
had thrown out of the cave, or our trail to an’ 
from the creek? 
“Well, sir, while they were a half-mile away 
they spotted the dust heap whitenin’ the bushes 
an’ the slope below the cave, an’ while some 
rode circle an’ stopped the herd, about a dozen 
slipped from their horses an’ started straight 
out toward the cliff. That meant they were 
goin’ to climb to the top an come along i 
toward us, an’ that we were in for a fight 
There was nothin’ to do but fight, no use 0 
tryin’ to get away from ’em with our burros 
or on foot. We tied the animals in the hea< 
of the wash an’ got behind some rocks abou 
a hundred yards from ’em, dowm stream an 
close to the edge of the cliff. 
“It wasn’t more than five minutes after w 
got settled that the first one of ’em showed up 
Irish spotted him, an’ when he fired, the Inju 
gave a fearful screech, made three jumps ou 
from a tree, an’ keeled over. All of us wer 
crouchin’ down, backs to the cliff. We didn 
