During the next few days General Crook proved to be a most remarkable man indeed. At first sight, nobody would take him for a general in the United States army. He wore no uniform――just a plain canvas suit; he rode a mule, and he preferred a shot-gun to a rifle. He was not above talking to anybody, as he chose. Only when you saw how straight and decisive he was, would you suspect him to be a soldier and an officer. Nothing was too small for him to notice, and nothing too hard for him to do. He could talk in the sign language and he could read a trail. He could speak Snake and Spanish and some Apache; and he knew almost as much about Arizona as Tom Moore or Jack Long did. He was up in the morning, even by two o’clock, as soon as the cooks. All day, as he rode in the advance, he constantly asked the names of trees and bushes and flowers, and mountains and streams――and he never forgot. He was a tremendous hunter, and could stuff the beasts and birds that he killed, and he had studied wild animals until he could tell many curious things about them. He liked to explore by himself, with gun and fishing-rod, and never was lost. He drank only cold water――no tea or coffee. He could do without drinking at all, and without eating, either. In fact, Tom Moore and Archie MacIntosh agreed, he could “out-Injun the Injuns”! The pack-train was his particular hobby. “He fetched a lot o’ notions down from Idyho an’ Californy,” explained old Jack, with wag of head; “an’ by jinks, he began to tear things loose as soon as he struck Tooson. Nothin’s too good for the pack-train. Consequence is, now we’ve got critters an’ men who’ll go anywhar a dog’ll go, an’ be fresh for an’ arly start next mornin’. He’s sort o’ pack-train daddy, I reckon.” Jimmie did not ride clear through to Fort Whipple at Prescott. At Camp Verde, the post fifty miles this side of Whipple, the general sent off dispatches for some of the posts south, and told Jimmie that this was a good chance to reach Camp Grant, where he belonged. “But if you do fight the Apaches, can I help?” ventured Jimmie. He loved the bronzed, lean, untiring, wise General Crook, so brief of speech, so kind in manner, so fatherly and yet so soldierly; who quickly learned whatever he didn’t happen to know already, and who somehow got things done without any loud orders.