As Hatch prepared for the move late in March, he received intelligence that Victorio had been camped in the San Andres Mountains for more than a month. Before marching to rendezvous with Colonel Grierson at the agency, Hatch hoped he could converge his battalions on Hembrillo Canyon, the site of reliable springs, and destroy his enemy. If any Indians escaped to the east, Grierson, moving west from Fort Concho in central Texas, could intercept them.

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Hatch almost succeeded. Ordered to approach Hembrillo Canyon from the east, Captain Carroll paused on April 7 for water at a spring that turned out to be so loaded with gypsum that it all but unfitted both men and horses. Plagued by vomiting and dysentery, his troopers could barely function. Dividing to seek pure water, they found none until Carroll himself, with two troops, discovered Hembrillo Springs—and Victorio. The Indians had fortified the springs and quickly surrounded Carroll, who, after detaching horse holders, brought only fifty sick men to the fight. Still, the unequal contest raged all night.

Carroll’s force would almost certainly have been annihilated: he himself was badly wounded, as were seven of his men, two mortally. But at daybreak, Capt. Curwen McLellan with his troop of the 6th Cavalry and Gatewood’s scouts—sent ahead by Hatch because water shortage slowed the main command—swept into the canyon from the summit of the San Andres and drove the Apaches back into the mountains.

Laboring up the mountains from the south with Morrow’s battalion, Hatch received word by courier from McLellan of the fight raging on the slopes above Hembrillo Canyon. The colonel veered at once to the west and attacked over the top of the mountains, hoping to trap the Indians between Morrow and McLellan. The move was understandable, but it was a mistake. No sooner had he changed direction than Victorio’s people flowed down the south slope of the San Andres and then continued moving away from the mountains, hiding silently as the troops marched nearby. Some turned west to cross the Rio Grande and hide in the Black Range, and the rest headed for the Mescalero Reservation.

Reporting this engagement, Hatch telegraphed a brief, confusing narrative of troop movements, but pronounced Victorio “thoroughly whipped.” General of the Army William T. Sherman directed that his congratulations be conveyed to Hatch. The victory, of course, had been Victorio’s, not Hatch’s, and Captain McLellan and his Arizona troops and scouts had conducted the only serious fighting. Even in his more detailed annual report, Hatch presented a version that is difficult to untangle.

Official reports obscured the Hembrillo Canyon action with accounts of the main purpose of the expedition—disarming and dismounting the Mescaleros. As planned, Hatch and Grierson met at the Mescalero agency on April 12: Hatch with 430 men, Grierson with 280. Combined, their force was larger than the total number of Apaches enrolled at the agency. The agent regarded most of the Mescaleros as peaceful, but had to bow to Hatch’s superior authority.

The disarming on April 16 went badly. About 320 Indians had been assembled, many of them women and children. The disarming had scarcely begun when firing broke out, and the Indians stampeded up the side of a mountain. Grierson’s cavalry charged in pursuit, bringing down several Indians with carbine fire. Between thirty and fifty escaped to join Victorio, and the rest returned quietly to their camp by evening. The soldiers recovered only a few arms, but Hatch left behind a strong guard while he turned again to chasing Victorio. Grierson returned to Texas.

After more than eight months of exhausting flight and struggle, Victorio and his people were tired. They scattered into the Black Range and the Mogollons. Victorio’s son Washington, an aggressive daredevil, pushed west with a handful of warriors to try to liberate their families at San Carlos and sign up more recruits, but troops of the 6th Cavalry turned him back decisively. Victorio himself, with the main band, endured the usual tortuous pursuit by Major Morrow and other units of Hatch’s regiment. By mid-May the troops had exhausted their mounts, which were so broken down that the soldiers had to withdraw to Ojo Caliente and resume the chase on foot.

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