When the supply wagons arrived, General Terrasas sent an orderly to Lieutenant Baylor and invited him to send his men to draw ten days' rations. While I was standing in my shirtsleeves near the wagon one of the Mexican soldiers stole from my belt a fine hunting knife that I had carried ten thousand miles over the frontier. I discovered the loss almost immediately and reported it to Lieutenant Baylor, who, in turn, mentioned it to General Terrasas. The Mexican general at once had his captains form their respective companies and had every soldier in camp searched, but the knife was not found. The thief had probably hidden it in the grass. The Mexican volunteers remained with General Terrasas until after the defeat of Victorio, and one of them told me afterward he had seen a Mexican soldier scalping Apaches with it. Just one year later an orderly of General Terrasas rode into the ranger camp at Ysleta and presented Lieutenant Baylor, then a captain, with the missing weapon and a note stating that Terrasas was glad to return it and to report that the thief had been punished. While at Boracho we were joined by Lieutenant Shaffer, the Twenty-third United States Cavalry (negroes), Lieutenant Manney, Captain Parker and sixty-five Apache scouts. These latter were Geronimo's Chiricauhaus, who later quit their reservation and wrought such death and destruction in Arizona, New Mexico, and Old Mexico. From the first General Terrasas viewed these Indian allies with distrust, and as soon as we had scouted southeast from Boracho to Los Pinos Mountains, about seventy-five miles distant, and learned that Victorio's trail turned southwest toward Chihuahua, General Terrasas called Captain Parker, Lieutenants Baylor, Shaffer and Manney to his camp and informed them that, as the trail had taken a turn back into the state of Chihuahua and was leading them away from their homes, he thought it best for the Americans to return to the United States. I was present at this conference and I at once saw my chance for a scrap with old Victorio go glimmering. But there was nothing to do but obey orders, pack up and vamoose. While on scouts after Victorio's band I met many United States officers, and often around the camp fire discussed this old chief. The soldiers all agreed that for an ignorant Indian Victorio displayed great military genius, and Major McGonnigal declared, with the single exception of Chief Crazy-horse of the Sioux, he considered Victorio the greatest Indian general that ever appeared on the American continent. In following this wily old Apache Napoleon I examined twenty-five or more of his camps. Victorio was very particular about locating them strategically, and his parapets were most skillfully arranged and built. If he remained only an hour in camp he had these defenses thrown up. He had fought in over two hundred engagements, but his last fight was now very close at hand.