Victorio moved his people east to the Candelaria Mountains, which straddled the road from Chihuahua City to El Paso. His strength grew from 60 warriors to more than 125 as Mescaleros left their reservation to join him. Early in November, Mexican citizens from Carrizal picked up the trail of one of Victorio’s raiding parties and dispatched fifteen men to follow. Victorio had laid an ambush in a pass where the road crossed the mountains: all fifteen men were killed. Alarmed by their failure to return, Carrizal dispatched a search party of thirty-five men.

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They suffered the same fate.

The Carrizal Massacre led the veteran Mexican Indian fighter, Gen. Geronimo Treviño, to launch a formidable campaign to destroy Victorio. As Major Morrow had predicted, Victorio crossed back into New Mexico early in January 1880.

In an almost identical replay of his previous strategy, Victorio wove a devious course through the San Mateo Mountains, the Black Range, and the Mogollons. But he could not shake Morrow’s pursuers, who relentlessly tracked him and flushed him from strong positions, causing a few casualties and the loss of stock and camp equipment. More important, the trackers kept Victorio’s followers in a constant state of insecurity.

Once again, Morrow’s command exhausted themselves and their animals in the punishing mountains. Colonel Hatch declared California’s lava beds a lawn compared to these mountains. Morrow himself gradually broke down, physically and emotionally. On February 8, 1880, in a rare outburst of frustration, he confided to a fellow officer:

I am heartily sick of this business and am convinced that the most expeditious & least expensive way to settle the Indian troubles in this section is to employ about 150 Apache Indian scouts and turn them loose on Victorio without interference of troops except general instructions from the officer conducting the campaign. I have had eight engagements with the Victorio Indians in the mountains since their return from Mexico and in each have driven and beaten them but there is no appreciable advantage gained, they run but make a stand at another point where possibly ten men can stand off a hundred, kill a number and lose none…. I leave here tomorrow and will stick to Victorio’s trail so long as a serviceable animal or an able soldier is left but I still think that the pursuit is an unprofitable one and Indians should be employed on the principle of fighting fire with fire.

Morrow continued what he considered his hopeless campaign, both in the Black Range and, later, east of the Rio Grande. Victorio had crossed the river and taken refuge in the San Andres Mountains. They were close to the Mescalero Reservation, and he entertained hope of arranging a peace through the agent there. At the same time, though, as Mescalero warriors joined his band and left, he fended off the efforts of the agent to make contact.

Meanwhile, Hatch’s superior, Brig. Gen. John Pope, who commanded the Department of the Missouri, conceived a plan to end the war. Asking for help from the Department of Texas, he was allotted Col. Benjamin Grierson and elements of the 10th Cavalry. The first objective would be the Mescalero agency. Hatch would march from the west and Grierson from the east; they would join forces in April to disarm and dismount the Mescaleros that were on the reservation there.

Although he defended his charges, the Indian agent there had to admit that some Mescaleros had joined Victorio. In fact, Victorio relied on the Mescalero Reservation for recruiting and reprovisioning.

Strengthened by a troop of the 6th Cavalry and Lieutenant Gatewood’s Apache scouts from Arizona, Hatch had already, in late February, called together all twelve troops of the 9th Cavalry and organized them into three battalions. Morrow commanded the strongest, accompanied by Hatch. Capt. Henry Carroll led another, and Ambrose Hooker the third.

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