Press enter after choosing selection

Human Trailers

Human Trailers image
Parent Issue
Day
21
Month
August
Year
1903
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

Apache Indians Who Possess the Bloodhound's Instinct.

 

How Their Remarkable Skill as Man Hunters Is Utilized.  Tracking Outlaws Across the Desert.

 

The recent trailing of Outlaw Bud McKinney across hundreds of miles of Arizona desert land to Bakersfield, Cal., where the murderer met death at the hands of a posse, shows that the Apache Indians have not forgotten their old time skill as man hunters. In the days of Geronimo the American soldiers were many times astonished at the skill of these human bloodhounds in following a trail which would puzzle the sharpest white man. Unerringly the Apaches would paddle across the desert, their soft moccasins making not the least sound, and they would track their quarry even when the surface of the plains apparently showed not the slightest sign of any human being having passed. This faculty still clings to the Apache tribe despite long years of reservation life.

 

One of the most expert trailers of the southwest was a San Carlos Apache named Josh. Apache Kid had a partner dubbed Amigo, who abducted a woman from the San Carlos reservation. The commander of the fort promised a sergeantcy of scouts to Josh if he would kill or capture Amigo, but added the stipulation that if he failed to secure him he would lose his job.

 

Josh accepted the proposition philosophically and disappeared from the fort. For several weeks nothing was heard from him. One day as the commander was looking over some papers in his office a shadow fell across his sunlit desk. As there had been no sound to indicate the approach of any one, the commander at once concluded that it was an Indian. He looked up and saw Josh.

 

"Did you get him ?" asked the colonel.

 

"Yes, colonel, me got him," answered Josh imperturbably. And then from out of a sack in his hand rolled the abductor's head on the commander's desk. For weeks the scout had followed the trail of Amigo and at last had secured an opportunity of shooting Apache Kid's partner. It occurred to him that the best proof of his being in line for promotion would be ' the abductor's head.

 

This same Josh has rendered valuable assistance to the Arizona ranger under Captain Burton F. Mossman in trailing desperadoes in the southwest. Josh and Mossman and a small company of rangers followed the Smith gang of bandits for twenty-two days after Smith had murdered two of the company of rangers. The weather was at its worst. It rained repeatedly and obliterated the trail, and a snowstorm came up that impeded the progress of the pursuers, but Josh found the trail again and again, and for eight days of the twenty-two the outlaws were pressed so hard that they had to wander horseless in the mountains. Several of them were wounded, and only a few of them were able to make their escape, owing largely to the cunning of the Indian trailer.

 

[Image caption: The Abductor's Head Rolled Out.]

 

The work of these trailers is the more remarkable from the fact that outlaws in the southwest always take to the burning desert waste or skulk in the lonely, sun baked mountains with their parched gulches and sterile canyons. Even a veteran plainsman fairly familiar with the region will easily lose his way in these places and die of hunger or thirst before he can work his way out. But the Indians never get lost and never fail in their skin at reading the desert signs aright. Apparently this skill at man hunting is inborn and will never desert the tribe. Certain it is that the reservation Apache of today when called upon can do as remarkable work as his brother trailer of the days of the savage Geronimo or Apache Kid.