It was that band of marauding Apaches which we saw crossing the Gila River that furnished the cause for the Geronimo war, which broke out soon afterwards. It was not until March, in 1886, that General Crook captured Geronimo and his band of Chiricahua Apaches, who escaped from him while they were being taken to Ft. Bowie. The chief and band were recaptured by General Nelson A. Miles in Mexico some months afterwards and sent to Fort Pickens, Florida. Geronimo and fourteen of his band were afterwards taken to Ft. Sill, Indian Territory. Here the cunning old Chief spent most of his time playing monte with the soldiers. XXIV. IN THE DOME OF THE SKY. There are three ways of reaching the summit of Pike’s Peak--walking, riding a burro, or seated comfortably in one of the coaches of the Cog Road. It was three o’clock in the afternoon when the car was pulled out of the yards at the foot of the Peak. The strongly-built little engine puffed like a living thing, obedient to the task of drawing its heavy load. The wheels moved rapidly, and we ascended the steepest mountain railroad in the world. It wound about the mountain sides in little curves, climbing, always climbing higher and higher, until we shuddered at the dizzy heights as we looked down into the great yawning chasms thousands of feet below. The air grew cooler in the deep mountain defiles densely wooded with fir, pine, cedar and quaking asp. A great fire once swept up these gorges and burned away the fir and pine in patches; in their place came the quaking asp, growing here and there in thickets. Along the slopes and in the dells, wild flowers grew with the luxuriant profusion of a semi-tropical clime. There were columbines and tiger lilies growing at an altitude of ten thousand feet. Nature has done some queer things in the mighty rocks which stand sentinel guard along the route. One great boulder is named the Hooded Monk, because of its resemblance to the human head in a monk’s cowl. There is a Gog and Magog. The Sphynx, the Lone Fisherman, and many other images of man, bird and beast, wrought by nature’s hand in stone. We glided by one of the loveliest glens in all the mountains; it was called Shady Springs. Here the oriole, the raven and the big blue jay of the mountains have builded their nests and take their morning baths in waters clear as crystal from a spring that gushed from fern and moss covered banks. Farther on to the right a stream plunges in wild, mad swirl of clear waters and dashing from rock to rock in foamy white, forms Echo Falls. An elephant’s head in bass relief was here to be seen wrought in stone. We rounded Cameron’s Cone and Sheep Mountain and soon began the ascent of the “Big Hill,” which has a rise of 1,300 feet to the mile. Nearing timber line, the road ahead appears to be almost at an angle of 45 degrees.