Meantime General Crook had been reassigned by the President to the command of the Department of Arizona, which he had left nearly ten years previously in a condition of peace and prosperity, with the Apaches hard at work upon the reservation, striving to gain a living by cultivating the soil. Incompetency and rascality, in the interval, had done their worst, and when Crook returned not only were the Chiricahuas on the war-path, but all the other bands of the Apache nation were in a state of scarcely concealed defection and hostility. Crook lost not a moment in visiting his old friends among the chiefs and warriors, and by the exercise of a strong personal influence, coupled with assurances that the wrongs of which the Apaches complained should be promptly redressed, succeeded in averting an outbreak which would have made blood flow from the Pecos to the Colorado, and for the suppression of which the gentle and genial tax-payer would have been compelled to contribute most liberally of his affluence. Attended by an aid-de-camp, a surgeon, and a dozen Apache scouts, General Crook next proceeded to the south-east corner of Arizona, from which point he made an attempt to open up communication with the Chiricahuas. In this he was unsuccessful, but learned from a couple of squaws, intercepted while attempting to return to the San Carlos, that the Chiricahuas had sworn vengeance upon Mexicans and Americans alike; that their stronghold was an impregnable position in the Sierra Madre, a “great way” below the International Boundary; and that they supplied themselves with an abundance of food by raiding upon the cattle-ranches and “haciendas” in the valleys and plains below. Crook now found himself face to face with the following intricate problem: The Chiricahuas occupied a confessedly impregnable position in the precipitous range known as the Sierra Madre. This position was within the territory of another nation so jealous of its privileges as not always to be able to see clearly in what direction its best interests lay. The territory harassed by the Chiricahuas not only stretched across the boundary separating Mexico from the United States, but was divided into four military departments--two in each country; hence an interminable amount of jealousy, suspicion, fault-finding, and antagonism would surely dog the steps of him who should endeavor to bring the problem to a solution.