COCHISE WHISPERS

I bury numb fingers into the Forest Lawn’s well-defined crack (a bit of an anomaly — many of the cracks here tend to be wide, grainy thrashfests). Next, on Fazio-Rhichard’s Pair a Grins, thin, but biting, face holds give way to tenuous friction and ever sparser bolts. A buffeting desert wind twists away the soft winter warmth and threatens to pry me from nonexistent holds. I breathe deeply, 15 feet out. It’s tempting to rush, pull close to the rock to stretch for a distant hold, but I rehearse the slab-climber’s mantra — heels down, butt out, small steps. ...

Twenty minutes later, Becca reaches the belay, and we scurry to the summit. From here, the Stronghold reveals itself. A granite maze lording over the Chihuahuan Desert.

For the latter half of the 1800s, the smell of gunpowder and blood drifted across southeast Arizona’s arroyos and alkaline flats. The region was locked in a struggle between white settlers backed by federal troops, and the Native American tribes. No tribe resisted the crush of “progress” longer or more fiercely than the Chiricahua Apache and their leader, Cochise.

While many tribes settled into reservations or government camps, the Chiricahua, infamous for their battle skill and unique brand of stomach-churning violence, continued to launch raids south into Mexico. Still, save a few isolated incidents, Cochise left the white settlers alone, a courtesy largely reciprocated by the Federal Government (at least in part because of the encroaching Civil War). Then, in 1861, an unknown raiding party kidnapped a rancher’s 12-year-old son; the Army quickly blamed and then imprisoned Cochise, who broke free and fled to the Stronghold, despite being shot three times during his escape. The ensuing violence escalated into a 15-year war of bilateral atrocities: any Apache — man, woman, or child — caught in the open was shot on sight. Wounded US soldiers were left lying atop red-ant mounds. Cavalry troops were found with their severed genitals stuffed in their mouths.