Then the Sergeant, knowing his men as a schoolmaster his pupils, left behind: fat Corporal Conn whose asthmatic wheezings and puffings had already brought forth many a muttered curse upon his head; Private Hill who couldn't see an inch beyond his nose in the dark and who had fallen over every bush and rock in the trail since they entered the cañon; and two other men whose physical condition was such that he doubted their ability to make the climb which he knew was ahead of them. Not one of these accepted the detail without as vigorous a protest as soldierly duty made possible. Bless you no! Each of them felt himself an object of especial pity, fat Conn even claiming that the higher he climbed the less the asthma troubled him. Then the command once more drove into the blackness ahead, following the lithe Apache up a mountain side which seemed almost perpendicular. Each man carried two belts of cartridges about his waist with a third swung from his shoulder. Most of them wore the Apache moccasin which gave forth no sound as they moved along. At last they reached the summit of the mountain breathless and tired. Before them was a mighty cañon, the cañon of the Salt River. To their left four granite peaks, the "Four Peaks" of the maps, pierced the skyline like videttes on guard over the cañon. From its bed, two thousand feet below, the dull murmur of the river, as it dashed along its rocky way, came softly to the soldiers' ears. It was the dawning of December 27, 1872. The soldiers were a detachment of the Fifth United States Cavalry, Major Brown in command. At a little spring some twenty miles away they had left their supplies and pack train. Their Christmas holidays had been spent in pursuit of several bands of Apaches, and the scouts had reported that a large band of them was located in a cave on the Salt River cañon. A pack mule had died in camp that day, and the Indian scouts were allowed to make a great feast upon its remains that they might set out on the expedition with full stomachs. For years efforts had been made to concentrate the Apaches, who had been the scourge of Arizona and the Southwest, upon one or two reservations where, under guard, they could be watched and kept in bounds. In the summer of 1872 General George Crook, after having held numerous councils with the Apaches, issued an ultimatum to the effect that, if those who were outside of the reservation did not return by the fifteenth of the coming November, active operations would begin against them. After that date every Indian found outside the reservation was to be treated as a hostile and dealt with accordingly. The Apaches knew Crook only too well, for the "Old Grey Fox," as they called him, had always kept his word with them in the past. Promptly on the day set General Crook took the field against the outlaw Apaches and hunted them down relentlessly day and night.