An Incident of the Black Forest and the Apache Indians

AN INCIDENT OF THE BLACK FOREST AND THE APACHE INDIANS OF ARIZONA. BY ANDREW L. RODGERS. The Black Forest of the Mogollon (Mokeane) mountains, is situated near the eastern boundary of Arizona, running north and south some hundred miles, and perhaps fifty miles east and west. It extends from the San Francisco Peak on the north to the White Mountains on the south. This section of the forest in places is so dense with evergreen trees that the eye cannot penetrate it to any great distance, and in getting on a high eminence or butte, nothing can be seen but a black mass of trees as far as the eye can reach. At the time of which I write (twenty years ago) I had charge of a large flock of sheep, and had penetrated this forest some thirty-five or forty miles from civilization. We pitched our camp — I say we because my wife was with me—on a small stream called Quakenasp Creek; and there I built a small cabin, intending to make a permanent encampment there as the grass was good and water plentiful. But no sooner had I got the cabin nearly completed than a feeling came over me to take the back track and leave the place as soon as possible. I mentioned the matter to my wife, who tried to talk me out of the idea, saying how unwise it seemed after working so hard to make her comfortable and then pick right up and leave without even staying in the house one night! But her remonstrance was of no avail. The feeling to leave grew stronger, so that acting on the impression I had received we took our scanty

belongings and made all possible haste to the vicinity of the colonists that were then located at what is now known as the Mormon Dairy—here we stopped with a feeling of relief. A few days afterwards we learned to our horror what our fate might have been had I not heeded the premonition to move. For just a day or two after we had left the cabin of the dense and lonely pinewoods, a skirmish took place between the United States soldiers and a band of Apache Indians on or near the place where our cabin stood; and being routed from there the Indians followed our trail some twenty-five miles to a place called Antelope Tank, and left some of their wounded to die in a cabin I had built on our way out. The Indians had gone on the war path and had been followed and overtaken by the troops; several were killed and wounded^ and some soldiers were shot. And the trouble only ended when the Indians were run down and taken back to their reservation where Fort Apache now stands. What would have been our fate had it not been for the impression I had received to move is plainly foreshadowed by the fate of a number of ranchers over in Toreto Basin, whom this same band of renegade savages surprised and shot down before they could get out of the way; for what could I have done, a lone man against a horde, even though I was armed with a good rifle? And the Indians made doubly wicked, if that be possible, because some of their number had been killed and others wounded, would have known no such thing as mercy in this case, and our fate would doubtless have been worse than death. So call that impression to move out of the forest what you may, but my wife and I have ever since thought it was nothing but a kind Providence that warned us to escape from what would most likely have been a horrible death at the hands of the Indians.