Cochise was a name that struck terror in hearts across the Southwest. Yet in the autumn of 1872, Brigadier General Oliver O. Howard and his aid-de-camp, Lieutenant Joseph Alton Sladen, entered Arizona s rocky Dragoon Mountains in search of the elusive Chiricahua Apache chief. Accompanied only by a guide and two Apache scouts, they sought to convince Cochise that the bloody fighting between his people and the Americans must stop. Cochise had already reached that conclusion, but he had found no American official he could trust.

Slade, Howard s devoted aide, maintained a journal during...