On March 2, 1890, a group of five "drunken" Apaches killed a wagon driver named Herbert and stole two large horses, about ten miles west of Fort Thomas and the San Carlos reservation.

At the time, Fort Thomas was home to Troop K of the 10th Cavalry Buffalo Soldiers, under the command of Lieutenant Powhatan Clarke, a Medal of Honor recipient who fought in Geronimo's War.

[3][2][4] As soon as the army learned of the ambush, Lieutenant Clarke was ordered by the Department of Arizona's commander, Major General Benjamin Grierson, to take ten men "into the field" on an expedition where "every possible effort [was] made to capture or destroy the murderers."

Some time after that, Sergeant Alexander Cheatham, I Troop, 10th Cavalry, led reinforcements, a wagon and several mules, packed with food, to the expedition from San Carlos after a nighttime march of forty-five miles.

A veteran of the American Civil War, and over twenty years on the frontier, Sergeant Cheatham was able to track Lieutenants Clarke and Watson's men over rugged desert and mountain terrain in the dark.

When the soldiers and the scouts closed to within fifty yards of the cave's entrance, they prepared to make a charge but the Apaches decided to surrender, having lost three killed or wounded out of five men.

General Grierson later said; "This [skirmish] is one of the most brilliant affairs of its kind that has occurred in recent years and has had a very quieting effect upon, and will no doubt prove a lasting lesson to, the Indians of the San Carlos Agency.

On March 10, just three days after the Cherry Creek engagement, General Grierson "authorized the arrest and removal of seventy-six Indians, relatives and friends of Kid and other Apaches, who were known to be in sympathy with the fugitives."

General Grierson reported that he "did this as a measure of precaution and asked that [his] action be approved by the honorable Secretary of War, that proper arrangements might be made for their care and sustenance at Fort Union to which post they were sent under suitable guard.