Crooked Trails

by Frederic Remington

  MASSAI'S CROOKED TRAIL

  IT is a bold person who will dare to say that a wilder savage ever livedthan an Apache Indian, and in this respect no Apache can rival Massai.

  He was a _bronco_ Chiricahua whose _tequa_ tracks were so long anddevious that all of them can never be accounted for. Three regiments ofcavalry, all the scouts--both white and black--and Mexicans galore hadtheir hack, but the ghostly presence appeared and disappeared from theColorado to the Yaqui. No one can tell how Massai's face looks, orlooked, though hundreds know the shape of his footprint.

  The Seventh made some little killings, but they fear that Massai was notamong the game. There surely is or was such a person as Massai. Hedeveloped himself slowly, as I will show by the Sherlock Holmes methodsof the chief of scouts, though even he only got so far, after all.Massai manifested himself like the dust-storm or the morning mist--ashiver in the air, and gone.

  The chief walked his horse slowly back on the lost trail in disgust,while the scouts bobbed along behind perplexed. It was always so. Timehas passed, and Massai, indeed, seems gone, since he appears no more.The hope in the breasts of countless men is nearly blighted; they nolonger expect to see Massai's head brought into camp done up in an oldshirt and dropped triumphantly on the ground in front of the chief ofscouts' tent, so it is time to preserve what trail we can.

  Three troops of the Tenth had gone into camp for the night, and theghostly Montana landscape hummed with the murmur of many men. Supper wasover, and I got the old Apache chief of scouts behind his own ducking,and demanded what he knew of an Apache Indian down in Arizona namedMassai. He knew all or nearly all that any white man will ever know.

  "All right," said the chief, as he lit a cigar and tipped his sombreroover his left eye, "but let me get it straight. Massai's trail was socrooked, I had to study nights to keep it arranged in my head. He didn'tleave much more trail than a buzzard, anyhow, and it took years tounravel it. But I am anticipating.

  "I was chief of scouts at Apache in the fall of '90, when word wasbrought in that an Indian girl named Natastale had disappeared, and thather mother was found under a walnut-tree with a bullet through her body.I immediately sent Indian scouts to take the trail. They found thetracks of a mare and colt going by the spot, and thinking it would bringthem to the girl, they followed it. Shortly they found a moccasin trackwhere a man had dismounted from the mare, and without paying moreattention to the horse track, they followed it. They ran down one of myown scouts in a _tiswin_ [An intoxicating beverage made of corn] camp,where he was carousing with other drinkers. They sprang on him, got himby the hair, disarmed and bound him. Then they asked him what he haddone with the girl, and why he had killed the mother, to which hereplied that 'he did not know.' When he was brought to me, about dark,there was intense excitement among the Indians, who crowded arounddemanding Indian justice on the head of the murderer and ravisher of thewomen. In order to save his life I took him from the Indians and lodgedhim in the post guard-house. On the following morning, in order tosatisfy myself positively that this man had committed the murder, I sentmy first sergeant, the famous Mickey Free, with a picked party oftrailers, back to the walnut-tree, with orders to go carefully over thetrail and run down the mare and colt, or find the girl, dead or alive,wherever they might.

  27 NATASTALE]

  "In two hours word was sent to me that the trail was running to thenorth. They had found the body of the colt with its throat cut, and werefollowing the mare. The trail showed that a man afoot was driving themare, and the scouts thought the girl was on the mare. This proved thatwe had the wrong man in custody. I therefore turned him loose, tellinghim he was all right. In return he told me that he owned the mare andcolt, and that when he passed the tree the girl was up in its branches,shaking down nuts which her old mother was gathering. He had riddenalong, and about an hour afterwards had heard a shot. He turned his mareloose, and proceeded on foot to the _tiswin_ camp, where he heard laterthat the old woman had been shot and the girl 'lifted.' When arrested,he knew that the other scouts had trailed him from the walnut-tree; hesaw the circumstances against him, and was afraid.

  "On the night of the second day Mickey Free's party returned, having runthe trail to within a few hundred yards of the camp of Alcashay in theForestdale country, between whose band and the band to which the girlbelonged there was a blood-feud. They concluded that the murdererbelonged to Alcashay's camp, and were afraid to engage him.

  28 THE ARREST OF THE SCOUT]

  "I sent for Alcashay to come in immediately, which he did, and Idemanded that he trail the man and deliver him up to me, or I would takemy scout corps, go to his camp, and arrest all suspicious characters. Hestoutly denied that the man was in his camp, promised to do as Idirected, and, to further allay any suspicions, he asked for my pickedtrailers to help run the trail. With this body of men he proceeded onthe track, and they found that it ran right around his camp, then turnedsharply to the east, ran within two hundred yards of a stage-ranch,thence into some rough mountain country, where it twisted and turned forforty miles. At this point they found the first camp the man had made.He had tied the girl to a tree by the feet, which permitted her to sleepon her back; the mare had been killed, some steaks taken out, and somemeat 'jerked.' From thence on they could find no trail which they couldfollow. At long intervals they found his moccasin mark between rocks,but after circling for miles they gave it up. In this camp they foundand brought to me a fire-stick--the first and only one I had everseen--and they told me that the fire-stick had not been used by Apachesfor many years. There were only a few old men in my camp who werefamiliar with its use, though one managed to light his cigarette withit. They reasoned from this that the man was a bronco Indian who hadbeen so long 'out' that he could not procure matches, and also that hewas a much wilder one than any of the Indians then known to be outlawed.

  "In about a week there was another Indian girl stolen from one of myhay-camps, and many scouts thought it was the same Indian, who theydecided was one of the well-known outlaws; but older and better men didnot agree with them; so there the matter rested for some months.

  "In the spring the first missing girl rode into Fort Apache on a finehorse, which was loaded down with buckskins and other Indian finery. Twocowboys followed her shortly and claimed the pony, which bore a C C Cbrand, and I gave it up to them. I took the girl into my office, for shewas so tired that she could hardly stand up, while she was haggard andworn to the last degree. When she had sufficiently recovered she told meher story. She said she was up in the walnut-tree when an Indian shother mother, and coming up, forced her to go with him. He trailed andpicked up the mare, bound her on its back, and drove it along. The coltwhinnied, whereupon he cut its throat. He made straight for Alcashay'scamp, which he circled, and then turned sharply to the east, where hemade the big twisting through the mountains which my scouts found. Aftergoing all night and the next day, he made the first camp. After killingand cooking the mare, he gave her something to eat, tied her up by thefeet, and standing over her, told her that he was getting to be an oldman, was tired of making his own fires, and wanted a woman. If she was agood girl he would not kill her, but would treat her well and alwayshave venison hanging up. He continued that he was going away for a fewhours, and would come back and kill her if she tried to undo the cords;but she fell asleep while he was talking. After daylight he returned,untied her, made her climb on his back, and thus carried her for a longdistance. Occasionally he made her alight where the ground was hard,telling her if she made any 'sign' he would kill her, which made hercareful of her steps.

  "After some miles of this blinding of the trail they came upon a whitehorse that was tied to a tree. They mounted double, and rode all day asfast as he could lash the pony, until, near nightfall, it fell fromexhaustion, whereupon he killed it and cooked some of the carcass. Thebronco Indian took himself off for a couple of hours, and when hereturned, brought another horse, which they mounted, and sped onwardthrough the moonlight all night long. On that
morning they were in thehigh mountains, the poor pony suffering the same fate as the others.

  "They stayed here two days, he tying her up whenever he went hunting,she being so exhausted after the long flight that she lay comatose inher bonds. From thence they journeyed south slowly, keeping to the highmountains, and only once did he speak, when he told her that a certainmountain pass was the home of the Chiricahuas. From the girl's accountshe must have gone far south into the Sierra Madre of Old Mexico, thoughof course she was long since lost.

  "He killed game easily, she tanned the hides, and they lived as man andwife. Day by day they threaded their way through the deep canons andover the Blue Mountain ranges. By this time he had become fond of theWhite Mountain girl, and told her that he was Massai, a Chiricahuawarrior; that he had been arrested after the Geronimo war and sent Easton the railroad over two years since, but had escaped one night from thetrain, and had made his way alone back to his native deserts. Since thenit is known that an Indian did turn up missing, but it was a big band ofprisoners, and some births had occurred, which made the checking offcome straight. He was not missed at the time. From what the girl said,he must have got off east of Kansas City and travelled south and thenwest, till at last he came to the lands of the Mescalero Apaches, wherehe stayed for some time. He was over a year making this journey, andtold the girl that no human eye ever saw him once in that time. This isall he ever told the girl Natastale, and she was afraid to ask him more.Beyond these mere facts, it is still a midnight prowl of a human coyotethrough a settled country for twelve hundred miles, the hardihood of theundertaking being equalled only by the instinct which took him home.

  29 SCOUTS]

  "Once only while the girl was with him did they see sign of otherIndians, and straightway Massai turned away--his wild nature shunningeven the society of his kind.

  "At times 'his heart was bad,' and once he sat brooding for a whole day,finally telling her that he was going into a bad country to killMexicans, that women were a burden on a warrior, and that he had made uphis mind to kill her. All through her narrative he seemed at times to beovercome with this blood-thirst, which took the form of a homicidalmelancholia. She begged so hard for her life that he relented; so heleft her in the wild tangle of mountains while he raided on the Mexicansettlements. He came back with horses and powder and lead. This last wasin Winchester bullets, which he melted up and recast into .50-calibreballs made in moulds of cactus sticks. He did not tell how many murdershe had committed during these raids, but doubtless many.

  "They lived that winter through in the Sierras, and in the springstarted north, crossing the railroad twice, which meant the Guaymas andthe Southern Pacific. They sat all one day on a high mountain andwatched the trains of cars go by; but 'his heart got bad' at the sightof them, and again he concluded to kill the girl. Again she begged off,and they continued up the range of the Mogollons. He was unhappy in hismind during all this journey, saying men were scarce up here, that hemust go back to Mexico and kill some one.

  "He was tired of the woman, and did not want her to go back with him,so, after sitting all day on a rock while she besought him, the old wolftold her to go home in peace. But the girl was lost, and told him thateither the Mexicans or Americans would kill her if she departed fromhim; so his mood softened, and telling her to come on, he began thehomeward journey. They passed through a small American town in themiddle of the night--he having previously taken off the Indian rawhideshoes from the ponies. They crossed the Gila near the Nau Taw Mountains.Here he stole two fresh horses, and loading one with all the buckskins,he put her on and headed her down the Eagle Trail to Black River. Shenow knew where she was, but was nearly dying from the exhaustion of hisfly-by-night expeditions. He halted her, told her to 'tell the whiteofficer that she was a pretty good girl, better than the San Carloswoman, and that he would come again and get another.' He struck herhorse and was gone.

  30 THE CHIEF OF SCOUTS]

  "Massai then became a problem to successive chiefs of scouts, a bugbearto the reservation Indians, and a terror to Arizona. If a man was killedor a woman missed, the Indians came galloping and the scouts lay on histrail. If he met a woman in the defiles, he stretched her dead if shedid not please his errant fancy. He took pot-shots at the men ploughingin their little fields, and knocked the Mexican bull-drivers on the headas they plodded through the blinding dust of the Globe Road. He even satlike a vulture on the rim-rock and signalled the Indians to come out andtalk. When two Indians thus accosted did go out, they found themselveslooking down Mas-sai's.50-calibre, and were tempted to do his bidding.He sent one in for sugar and coffee, holding the brother, for such hehappened to be, as a hostage till the sugar and coffee came. Then hetold them that he was going behind a rock to lie down, cautioning themnot to move for an hour. That was an unnecessary bluff, for they did notwink an eye till sundown. Later than this he stole a girl in broaddaylight in the face of a San Carlos camp and dragged her up the rocks.Here he was attacked by fifteen or twenty bucks, whom he stood off untildarkness. When they reached his lair in the morning, there lay the deadgirl, but Massai was gone.

  "I never saw Massai but once, and then it was only a piece of his Gstring flickering in the brush. We had followed his trail half thenight, and just at daylight, as we ascended a steep part of themountains, I caught sight of a pony's head looking over a bush. Weadvanced rapidly, only to find the horse grunting from a stab wound inthe belly, and the little camp scattered around about him. The shirttail flickering in the brush was all of Massai. We followed on, but hehad gone down a steep bluff. We went down too, thus exposing ourselvesto draw his fire so that we could locate him, but he was not tempted.

  "The late Lieutenant Clark had much the same view of this mountainoutlaw, and since those days two young men of the Seventh Cavalry, Riceand Averill, have on separate occasions crawled on his camp at the breakof day, only to see Massai go out of sight in the brush like a bluequail.

  "Lieutenant Averill, after a forced march of eighty-six miles, reached ahostile camp near morning, after climbing his detachment, sincemidnight, up the almost inaccessible rocks, in hopes of surprising thecamp. He divided his force into three parts, and tried, as well aspossible, to close every avenue of escape; but as the camp was on a highrocky hill at the junction of four deep canons, this was foundimpracticable. At daylight the savages came out together, running likedeer, and making for the canons. The soldiers fired, killing a buck andaccidentally wounding a squaw, but Massai simply disappeared.

  "That's the story of Massai. It is not as long as his trail," said thechief of scouts.