Chapter 9

Major John Espy was fit to be tied, as his mother used to say. He was so upset, he was bordering on the edge of an attack of apoplexy. The two reconnaissance patrols he had sent out had both been gone for over three weeks. They should have returned to the fort by now, even if they had not found anything. He was torn between sending a patrol out to find them and hunkering down in the fort, daring the Apaches to attack him. Finally, in a rare moment of clear thinking, he called in his chief scout and asked his opinion.

"Yes, sir, Major Espy, sir. I am sure that both patrols have been wiped out to the man, otherwise one of the scouts would have returned by now. I do not know if either patrol found a village, but it is certain that Apaches found them. Do you want a scout to go looking for them?"

The scout was relieved when Major Espy said, "No, there is no need for that. I am sure that you are correct, Standing Bull. What can we do to rid ourselves of these troublesome Chiricahuas?"

"In my view, sir, Major Espy, sir, there is only one thing that we can do to get rid of them. We must go after them with our entire force and stay on their heels for months until they have reached the point of starvation. We must keep constant pressure on them so that the men cannot hunt and the women cannot grow crops or search for edible wild food. I believe that is the only way the Chiricahuas can be defeated. We must give them the choice of starve or fight, nothing else will give us the victory you want."

"Thank you, Standing Bull. I'll contact you later with my decision on this matter. You are dismissed."

Meanwhile, Black Wolf was entirely occupied with recovering from the wound given him by Snarling Bear. The wound turned out to be more serious than any of the Indians had realized. They had simply bound up the long gash with a piece of cloth cut from Snarling Bear's shirt, since he would no longer have any use for it. Unfortunately, the wound had become infected, and the Indians had no effective treatment for it, but neither did the White doctors, for that matter. Black Wolf had been forced to lie on his blankets for three weeks while the infection ran its course. Were it not for Black Wolf's youth and superlative physical condition, he would surely have died. However, he received continuous care from his wives and never suffered for lack of food or water. Furthermore, the shamans were not able to do any harm, so he ultimately recovered from the sickness, though he was weak for a couple of weeks afterward.

During this time, 6 more family groups had joined Black Wolf's band. They had heard of the success he'd had fighting the Army, and they wanted to be part of that. They were welcomed into the band and made to feel at home right away. The men were a little disappointed that Black Wolf was too sick to lead them on a major raid immediately, but they, too, were concerned by his illness. Black Wolf promised to stage another raid as soon as his strength returned.

Black Wolf was hoist on his own petard with this promise. Now, he had to find a place that they could attack with a reasonable certainty of success, but worth the effort. The people at the fort had finally gotten smart with their fuel gathering details and were sending out more guards than workers. It was no longer practical to stage a full scale raid against the work detail; a little sniping was all that could be done here, so where else could they look for targets?

All that Black Wolf could think of was to attack one of the two outposts that had been established to guard the supply routes to the fort. One of the outposts was located to the north of the fort and one was located to the east; there was no obvious advantage to attacking either one over the other. The choice must come from a consideration of which was the safer attack to launch.

The outpost to the north was slightly closer the their village than was the other outpost, but it was also slightly closer to the fort. That meant that the outpost to the north would be easier to defend by extra soldiers sent from the fort after the attack had started. Ah, maybe they could make use of this fact. Suppose that some of Black Wolf's band attacked the northern outpost, but the majority of the band ambushed the soldiers rushing to relieve the outpost under attack. They probably could not destroy either bunch of soldiers, but they could inflict a lot of damage before they retreated. That was what Black Wolf decided to do.

His proposal met with considerable joy when he announced it to the council. The one problem was that they really didn't have enough men to carry out the attack properly. However ... if the women were included in the war party, they would have enough rifles to make a strong statement with their attack! NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT! NO WOMEN IN A WAR PARTY! WHAT HERESY WAS BLACK WOLF SPOUTING? SURELY, HE COULDN'T BE SERIOUS! And so it went for hours, until some of the men stopped shouting and started thinking.

Then the reasoned arguments began in earnest. Black Wolf proposed that the women, led by one or two men to make sure that they did everything correctly, attacked the outpost to draw the reaction troops from the fort. All the rest of the men would form the war party that ambushed those soldiers, surely, the more difficult of the two fights. It took 3 more days of discussion, otherwise known as heated arguments, to carry the day, but Black Wolf finally had his way, and women were included in the attack plans.

The first step was to determine which of the men would be "unlucky" enough to lead the women in their attack. Obviously, there would be no glory in this battle; it was just to make a lot of noise so that the troopers would come running out of the fort. Black Wolf had discussed his plan with Snake before it was ever presented to the council, so Snake was willing to be the man who was "talked into" leading the women on that part of the raid. The other man on that part of the raid was selected somewhat by default, he was a very young man just ready to make his first raid against the Whites. Snake could break him in while he was "babysitting" the women.

The discussion now got down to planning the serious part of the raid—the attack against the relieving soldiers. Ah, here was where the glory would happen. There was a lot of excitement and joy in parceling out the various tasks to be performed during the ambush. It took two more days to come up with a solution which made everybody happy, but everything was finally settled.

Meanwhile, Snake had already talked to Morning Mist about the details of the women's part in the raid. She was not caught off guard, since Black Wolf and Snake had already presented the idea of the raid to her. She was very happy, because this was the culmination of Black Wolf's promise to let the women take part in a raid. If the women performed as well as Black Wolf expected, there would be less resistance to letting the women join in on future raids.

Morning Mist presented the idea of the joint raid to one or two women at a time to get them used to the idea without getting the whole camp into turmoil with the excitement of the women. Morning Mist hoped that this would be the first step toward bringing social equality to the women of the band. She had no delusions of an overnight breakthrough in attitude, but she was working toward a gradual reshaping of attitude. There always had to be a first step, and she was going to make sure that this was a good one!

The day of the big raid dawned bright and with a clear sky. The presence of a bright sun was key to the success of the plan: they expected the soldiers to use the heliograph to call for help from the fort. They traveled by horse to reach the first point of conflict; even the women rode, though not all of them liked the experience. They had also copied the use of a pack mule from the hated Army to carry their extra food and ammunition. When they were all in position, Snake gave the signal for his 13 women to begin the assault.

Meanwhile, Black Wolf led the men to the preselected ambush site to wait for the relief column to come from the fort. They got into position and immediately began to wager on how long they would have to wait for the Army to arrive, how many soldiers there would be, how many soldiers each Apache would kill, and any thing else they could think of.