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Now, as they trekked along the heights, they paused at times to send bands of warriors down into the flat lands which lie along the course of the Santa Cruz. Here were ranches and a few small settlements. It was the custom of the raiders to steal upon these places, always in force superior to that of their enemies, camouflaging themselves by bits of brush and handfuls of earth which they stuck among the folds of their turbans and spread over their bare backs until one looking at them from a distance of twenty-five yards would never suspect the presence of lurking warriors.

In this manner they lay along the roadside biding the wagon-trains and stages, or crept up on ranch-houses, or wormed their way toward sleeping prospectors at the hour of dawn. And when they felt sure that the issue was safely in their hands they opened fire.

During the Civil War times they put the Butterfield stage line out of business and were an important factor in determining the northern route for the carrying of the United States mails to California; they wiped out the ranches of the valleys until cattle-raising and agriculture ceased entirely; they raided the pueblo of Tubac until its people finally fled for safety to Tucson and then they burned the deserted buildings. They made a howling waste out of southeastern Arizona.

Travel was suspended; there was no ranching and nearly every mine in this portion of the territory was abandoned. Of northern Sonora they made a source of supply for their horses and drove whole herds out of Mexico, using the surplus animals for food, keeping the rest for mounts until these knuckled under from hard treatment.

During the years that followed the Civil War those fat days came to an end. Fresh troops were sent out from Washington. Mangus Colorado was captured by a detachment of cavalry and, according to the story of one present, was killed in his blankets by the troopers who guarded him. White settlers, stung to reprisals by the barbarity of successive massacres, hunted down several bands of the Apaches at their rancherias and wiped them out in night attacks, men, women, and children. Cochise found himself faced with a new set of conditions and changed his tactics to meet them.

It was the habit of the Apaches to rest between the long forced marches of their raids, choosing always a spot high in the mountains where the mescal plant grew. Here they would gather the roots of the thorny vegetable, bury them in the earth, kindle roaring fires over them, and bake them. Thus they got the sugar which their wasted bodies needed; and during the days at these camps they gained the rest which their aching bones craved.

But the white man’s cavalry, guided by scouts recruited from the Touto Basin Apaches and from settlers who knew the country, began tracking the renegades to their aerial refuges, and sometimes massacred whole bands of them. Failing to steal upon them, the cavalry always managed to get them on the run once more, and that meant scant rations when full bellies were long overdue.

In this manner the soldiers and the settlers were making the Chiracahuas too hot for Cochise and his people.

Then the war-chief led his tribe across the Sulphur Springs valley to the northern end of the Dragoon Mountains where the peaks rise straight from the mesquite flat lands, two thousand feet of sheer walls whose summits command a view for many miles; whose pinnacles and overhanging rocks give endless opportunity for hiding and ambush. In this sanctuary they found rest between raids during the early seventies; and the place is known to this day as Cochise’s Stronghold.

Here one time a force of several hundred soldiers made camp in the lowlands, and strung a series of strong outposts through Middle Pass, cutting off the northern part of the range from all the rest of the world, holding it inside a ring of armed men. It was such a siege as the warriors of the Middle Ages used to wage, starving their walled-in enemies to surrender. For weeks the soldiers bided and sometimes got glimpses of the turbaned heads of Apache warriors who were gazing down on them from the rocks above.