Because he was in charge of Tom Moore, his place was with the packers. They were a merry set, around their fires after supper: Charley Hopkins and old Jack Long, of Tucson; and “Hank ’n Yank”――who were Hank Hewitt and Yank Bartlett; and “Long” Jim Cook (who had a brother “Short” Jim Cook); and Jim O’Neill, and “Chileno John,” and José de Leon, and Lauriano Gomez who sang Spanish songs; and others. They looked rather rough and they talked rather rough――but such stories they had to tell, of their adventures in California and Arizona and Mexico, and up in British Columbia! The soldiers strolled over, to sit and listen and swap yarns. The general and officers listened, too, now and then, and laughed. Altogether it was a much more pleasant camp than a Chiricahua rancheria. According to soldiers’ and packers’ talk this General George Crook had made a hit. He had suddenly arrived, last June, in Tucson by stage from San Francisco, to take command of the new Department of Arizona. His regular rank was lieutenant-colonel in the Twenty-third Infantry, but as he had been brevetted or given honorary rank of major-general for gallant service in the Civil War, he of course was called “General.” Up in the far Northwest, where he had commanded the Department of the Columbia, he had done such good work against the Shoshones or Snakes that the Government had now sent him down to see what he could do with the Apaches. He had set right to work. “A powerful active sort of man,” he was, declared Tom Moore. After having questioned all the post commanders and many scouts, about the trails and other conditions, he had started out from Tucson with five companies of cavalry and a company of scouts, both white and red, and a great pack-train, to make a big circle of some six hundred miles: east one hundred and ten miles to Camp Bowie at Apache Pass in the Chiricahua Mountains, thence north two hundred miles across the mountains to Camp Apache and the White Mountain reservation, thence west two hundred and fifty or three hundred miles to Fort Whipple at the town of Prescott, which was the department headquarters. Lieutenant Bourke’s Troop F of the Third Cavalry it was which had surprised the Geronimo and Nah-che band and made them leave their meat; and there had been other skirmishes. At Camp Apache the general had talked to the White Mountain Apaches.