The warm sun had made Geronimo and Victorio sleepy, so that neither warrior felt like moving unnecessarily. But their conversation was lively enough. "The days of our fathers are truly gone, and I do not believe they will ever be again," said Geronimo. "Even war as we once knew it is no more. There was a time when Apaches fought more for adventure and plunder than anything else. But now, since the white men have become our enemies, both sides fight only to kill." "That is how Cochise fought the white men for ten long years," Victorio remarked. Geronimo said bitterly, "But finally even he made terms. He promised to fight no more if his Chiricahuas were permitted to stay in their homeland, the Chiricahua Mountains. General Howard, with whom Cochise treated, pledged his word that they might. "Yet, less than eighteen months after Cochise has gone to join his ancestors, all his people have been rounded up by troops and shipped to a new reservation. It is somewhere here in New Mexico, and the Chiricahuas do not like it. Many have already deserted to go back on the warpath. Many more will desert. There will be much trouble." Victorio said bitterly, "The white soldiers are great fools. If they had left the Chiricahuas alone, there would have been no trouble. But has there ever been a time when white soldiers did not promise us one thing and give us another?" "Why do you think I followed you to this place where you and your people have fled?" Geronimo queried. "I will not live with the other Apaches in that stinking country called the San Carlos Reservation which the white men saw fit to give them. And there are too many soldiers being stationed in Arizona. I knew that I and those few who came with me could not hope to fight them. It is good here." [Illustration] "It is good here," Victorio agreed. "But only because the white soldiers are so stupid. In Arizona, every group of soldiers starting on an Apache trail had many mules to carry provisions. Thus they were able to stay on the trail for many days or even weeks. Here in New Mexico, each soldier has only his own horse. When they set out to pursue us, they may continue only until their horses are too weary to go on. Then the soldiers must turn back." "There is small need to fret about them," Geronimo said confidently. "For many years we have run away from all the soldiers in Arizona and New Mexico too. They will not catch us now." [Illustration] Victorio said, "It is not the soldiers who worry me, but a white man who is now in charge of the San Carlos Reservation. His name is John Clum, and he is no more like the ordinary white man who comes to oversee Indians than a jack rabbit is like an elk. He has treated the Apaches fairly, and as a result they have grown to respect him. Some of the bravest and best Apache warriors have joined his Indian police force. And he has vowed to put you and me, whom he calls renegades, on the reservation too."