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What we might term the Apache “roadside bomb” technique – by analogy with today’s IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan – is typical of the use of apparently innocuous terrain for ambushes. One ambush of this type was sprung in the aftermath of a major defeat inflicted upon Victorio by Apache scouts on May 24, 1880, in the Black Range in the vicinity of the Palomas river. Several groups of Apaches fled southwards to Mexico, and on May 29 one of these groups spotted a party of five men with a wagon moving towards Cooke’s Canyon.

Nana had come up from Mexico in July 1881, and had commenced raiding far and wide across southern New Mexico. From Fort Wingate, Capt Charles Parker was leading 19 men from Company K, 9th Cavalry and a Mexican scout, as one of a number of detachments of the 9th sent out from Forts Stanton, Cummings, Bayard, Craig and Wingate in an attempt to find the Apaches. On August 11, Parker received a report that Nana had attacked a party of civilians 28 miles to his south and approximately 40 miles from Sabinal, between the Sierra Lucero and the Rio Grande.

After several failed attacks he retreated for several miles, and sent to Fort Cummings for support. Colonel Buell left the fort with a large detachment of the 9th Cavalry under the command of LtCol Nathan Dudley, accompanied by a Gatling gun and a Hotchkiss mountain howitzer. By the time this force arrived, the Apaches were, of course, long gone, having scattered and re-formed some 20 miles further south in the Potrillo Mountains. All Buell saw during the pursuit was a distant dustcloud making its way into Mexico, and when he reached the Potrillos he found that after using the waterhole at their camp site the Apaches had poisoned it with horse entrails.