In February 1861, the twelve-year-old son of an Arizona rancher, John Ward, was abducted by the Apaches. Ward followed their trail and reported the incident to patrols at Fort Buchanan, accusing a group of Chiricahuas led by the notorious warrior Cochise. Despite a lack of evidence, Sergeant George Bascom organized a patrol and met with the Apache leader, who, unsuspecting, had brought along his wife, brother, and two sons. Despite Cochise's assurances that he had not taken the boy and his offer to help in the search, Bascom immediately held Cochise's family hostage and demanded the boy's return. An enraged Cochise escaped from the meeting tent under gunfire and vowed revenge. What followed would ignite a war on the Southwestern American frontier between the Chiricahuas and the U.S. Army, lasting twenty-five years. In the days following the initial clash, innocent bystanders—Apache, white, and Mexican—would be taken hostage and nearly all would be brutally slaughtered. Cochise would lead his people bravely for ten years of this war. Thousands of lives would be lost, the economies of Arizona and New Mexico would be devastated, and, in the end, the way of life of the Chiricahua would cease to exist. In a gripping narrative often read like a traditional western novel, Terry Mort explores the clash of these two radically different cultures in a masterful account of one of the bloodiest conflicts in the history of the American frontier.
