In September 1886, Amyntor Blair McMillan, a young lawyer, takes his wife, Helen Howard, and their infant son, Phoenix, on a streetcar to Fort Sam Houston near San Antonio. Amyntor, proud of his Southern heritage, has arranged a special visit to see the famous Apache prisoners being held there. The captives include Geronimo; his son, Chapo; Naiche, son of the great chief, Cochise; and the woman warrior Lozen. 

Though Amyntor is outwardly condescending toward his wife’s curiosity, he is secretly just as eager to see the legendary figures. As they travel, he anticipates the social triumph of being granted special access, never considering that he will need to speak Spanish to communicate with the Apaches.

The narrator and his family, now joined by Cruz, arrive at a remote cabin in the Dragoon Mountains of Arizona, a place once known as the Sierra de la Peñascosa and now called Cochise Stronghold. After settling in, the narrator and Cruz share a quiet moment under the stars, discussing Cruz’s life in Guadalajara with his mother and her new family. 

During dinner, the family discusses the purpose of their trip. The younger children believe they are there to play “Apaches,” but Cruz perceptively suggests the narrator was drawn to the area because its landscape is reminiscent of an “abandoned” Mexico. The family plans to visit the ghost town of Tombstone the next day.

In his New York home, President Grover Cleveland meets with his secretary of war, William C. Endicott. Endicott reports that General Nelson Miles has cornered Geronimo in Mexico and is awaiting surrender terms. Cleveland, a man of rigid moral principle, insists Geronimo must surrender unconditionally and be tried as a criminal in Tucson, which would almost certainly lead to a hanging. Endicott argues that lying to Geronimo with a false promise is necessary to secure the capture and would be a political victory. Cleveland refuses to compromise his administration’s integrity. 

Later, Cleveland’s wife, Frances, suggests that bringing the famous Apache to Washington for a photo opportunity would be a far better political move and would help them win the Senate.

The narrator’s family drives the old dirt road to Tombstone, passing through several “ghost towns” that are little more than failed tourist ventures. The narrator finds Tombstone to be an “asphyxiatingly ridiculous” and ahistorical theme park. He reflects that the town’s narrative of white pioneers creating civilization from nothing erases the deep history of the land, which contains the ruins of Mogollon, Apache, Spanish, and Mexican societies. He finds it strange that a country with such a diverse population promotes a sanitized, all-white founding myth.

In March 1917, General James Parker returns to active duty at Fort Sam Houston to assist in the US expedition into Mexico to pursue the revolutionary leader, Pancho Villa. 

Parker recalls being stationed at Sam Houston more than 30 years earlier as a lieutenant in the Fourth Cavalry accompanying his direct superior, Captain Elpenor Ware Lawton, and the captive Apache warriors, including Geronimo, on their way to Florida. Filled with nostalgia, he bypasses a meeting with his new officers and takes his young secretary to the fort’s quadrangle, pointing out the exact storeroom where Geronimo was held. He notes that even then, before he grew his belly, they called him “El Gordo” Parker. He remembers the prisoners as courageous killers.

The narrator and Cruz hike to the ruins of Fort Bowie in Apache Pass, the heart of Apachería and the site of an important spring. The narrator recounts the Bascom Affair of February 1861, which ignited a decade of war. An inexperienced US Army officer, Second Lieutenant George N. Bascom, falsely accused Chief Cochise of kidnapping a rancher’s son, Felix Ward. During a parley, Bascom seized Cochise’s brother Coyuntura, two other Apache warriors, and Cochise’s wife. Cochise cut through the tent canvas and fled; only a single bullet hit him as he ran. During this first skirmish, one of the Chiricahua warriors was killed inside the tent in an act of betrayal. This act shattered the uneasy peace between the Apaches and the US Army, leading to a bloody cycle of hostage-taking and retaliation that would devastate the region.

An unnamed woman speaks to a blond man as he digs a grave. She tells him about the deceased, a musician named Damián, who was the illegitimate son of a choirmaster in Puebla. Because his father worked long hours, Damián was raised by the nuns of the Convento del Carmen. His first wet nurse was a captive Apache woman, a fact which led the convent’s inhabitants to create a song claiming he had “Earth, stone, and Apache blood” (250) in him and that the Sierra Madre was his true mother. The woman notes that Damián grew up happily among the nuns, who taught him everything from reading to mending.

General Nelson Miles sends Lieutenant Charles B. Gatewood, a sickly officer known for his good relations with the Apaches, on a solo mission into Mexico to find Geronimo. Traveling with two Apache scouts, Gatewood learns that Geronimo’s band has vanished after seeing US soldiers in the town of Carretas. 

Following faint hoofprints, Gatewood’s party finds a column of 25 starving and ragged US cavalrymen led by a gaunt Lieutenant James “El Gordo” Parker. Parker’s men had become lost while searching for Geronimo. The two lieutenants and their small groups join forces.

Continuing his account of the Bascom Affair, the narrator describes the escalation of the conflict at Apache Pass in February 1861. After a five-day standoff, Mangas Coloradas arrived bringing 200 warriors on horseback to join Cochise’s 120 or so loyal fighters, who together attacked the mail depot where Lieutenant Bascom’s men were holed up. The battle ended in a stalemate, with the US soldiers successfully defending their position. 

Believing his own family members had been killed, Cochise retreated, but not before torturing and hanging his four gringo hostages. Days later, Bascom discovers the bodies and retaliates: He released the women and Apache boys he had taken and ordered the warriors hanged from the same cottonwood. This event sparks a brutal, 10-year war that depopulates the Arizona Territory of American settlers.

The woman continues Damián’s story. After his father, the choirmaster, took a job in Saltillo, Damián joined a band with a German musician. They played a new hybrid of local ballads and Austrian waltzes that came to be known as polka. Damián played a makeshift drum and cowbell and acted as a master of ceremonies. The band became popular, naming themselves the Northern Bavarians. When political instability drove their young audience away, they renamed themselves the New Mexicans and set out as a traveling company to play for towns in the western territories, a land they considered a different world from the rest of Mexico.

In the Sierra Madre, a starving Captain Elpenor Ware Lawton and his lost Fourth Cavalry troops are finally found by Lieutenant Parker’s column, guided by Lieutenant Gatewood and his Apache scouts. 

Lawton, whose orders are to arrest or kill Geronimo, dismisses Parker and Gatewood’s arguments for negotiation. Gatewood states that Geronimo believes he cannot be killed in combat, making an attack futile. Lawton rejects this as superstition and orders them to prepare to fight. However, the battalion surgeon declares Gatewood, who has severe rheumatism, medically unfit for duty. Gatewood departs toward the mountains; Lawton rides after him and concedes the argument for merely seeking Geronimo out.

The narrator’s family visits Willcox, where the local museum’s main exhibit on the Chiricahua features photos of actor Tommy Lee Jones, who learned some of the language for a film. The narrator reflects on how the language’s only memorial is now a Hollywood movie. Later, he describes the segregated cemetery at Apache Pass, where only the graves of three Apache children, including a son of Geronimo, are adorned with flowers. He contrasts the known fate of Mangas Coloradas, who was tortured and decapitated, with that of Cochise. The only chief to die undefeated, Cochise died on June 8, 1874, and was buried in a secret location in the mountains by his people and his only white friend, Tom Jeffords, his grave never to be found.

The woman recounts how Damián found the Sierra Madre to be everything he had imagined, complex and merciless. The New Mexicans had traveled into the mountains toward Sonora, and Damián reveled in the landscape. She recalls his humorous stories about the political chaos in Mexico during that time, where news of coups and new presidents arrived so frequently that one government lasted less time than one of their dances. She describes towns in Chihuahua so close together that the joke only worked if you knew the geography, and how the band eventually had to abandon their cart for mules to cross into the mountains.

The narrator, Cruz, and the narrator’s two younger children, Amelia and Cosme, visit the Chiricahua Mountains, Cochise’s supposed burial site. Despite warnings of an approaching storm, they hike to a large grotto. A violent storm breaks, trapping them inside as a flash flood rushes through the cave. They cling to the rock wall until the storm subsides. 

A park ranger finds them, provides them with emergency blankets and hot chocolate, and informs them the park has been closed for over two hours. The shared ordeal deepens the bond between Cruz and his younger siblings, who huddle with him for comfort on the drive back to the cabin.

The woman explains how Damián left the New Mexicans. In the remote mountain town of Basaraca, the band played a dance attended by a wealthy woman and her nine daughters. The woman was so impressed with Damián that she offered him a job as a music instructor on her nearby hacienda, Tesorababi. She enticed him by mentioning that her Apache neighbors harvest a unique “mosquito honey” (later revealed to be wasp honey). Seeing this as his chance to finally connect with his spiritual mother, the Sierra Madre, and the Apaches, Damián accepted the offer.

In 1916, hiding in a cave from US troops, Doroteo the Younger, also known as Pancho Villa, recounts a memory from his youth. As a boy, he was a mule driver’s son working for Lieutenant Charles “Don Carlitos” Gatewood during the final pursuit of Geronimo. He describes the tense peace talks between them. Villa recalls being mesmerized by Geronimo, who was frail but radiated a terrifying intensity. Geronimo inspected the young Villa, joking that they should take him with them. Villa remembers the fury he felt after leaving, wishing he had been brave enough to go with the Apaches.

In June 1916, during peace talks between Mexico and the US at Fort Sam Houston, General James Parker reunites with General Estrada, a Mexican officer. They had met 30 years earlier as lieutenants during Geronimo’s surrender. Estrada, then secretary to the Mexican prefect Colonel Francisco Aguirre, had witnessed Aguirre’s tense confrontation with Captain Lawton’s forces over custody of Geronimo. Aguirre ultimately relented but insisted Estrada accompany the Americans to ensure Geronimo was truly imprisoned. Parker recalls a detail from a letter by Lieutenant Gatewood: during the standoff, when Aguirre moved his hand to his pistol, the whites of Geronimo’s eyes flushed black with blood.

The woman recounts Damián’s life at the Tesorababi hacienda. The ranch had an uneasy trading relationship with a local Apache band, exchanging cattle for wasp honey. The foreman warned Damián that the Apaches were dangerous and unpredictable. An Irish miner later advised him that the Apaches only revealed themselves when they wanted to trade, and that refusing them could be fatal. The miner suggested Damián go to Chihuahua, where the government provided rations to some Apache bands to discourage them from raiding. This policy only redirected the raids toward Sonora.

Thirty years after Geronimo’s surrender, General Estrada shares his own recollections of Colonel Francisco Aguirre. Aguirre, angry that the US Fourth Cavalry was taking Geronimo out of Mexico, confronted Captain Lawton’s forces with 200 of his own men. Lawton, whose troops were starving and exhausted, managed to de-escalate the situation. During a tense meeting, Geronimo and Aguirre nearly drew their pistols on each other before Lieutenant Gatewood intervened. Aguirre backed down but insisted that Estrada accompany the American column to guarantee that Geronimo would be permanently imprisoned and never return to Mexico.

The woman explains that Damián, undeterred by warnings, began traveling into the mountains with his accordion to find the Apaches. He would play near their camps until, after several days of observation, they would invite him to eat. He found them to be more playful than their reputation suggested; they found his solemn story about having an Apache wet nurse hilarious. He was careful not to mention that his nurse had been a captive, fearing their legendary wrath. The Apaches were so proud and isolated that they likely assumed there were free Apache bands living in central Mexico.

General Nelson Miles communicates with Captain Lawton via heliograph. Lawton insists that Geronimo will only surrender if he can speak directly with Miles, but Miles refuses, preferring to have Geronimo shot. 

Via telegraph, Miles then clashes with Secretary of War William C. Endicott in Washington. Endicott relays President Cleveland’s direct order: Geronimo’s surrender must be unconditional, and he must be handed over to the sheriff in Tucson to be tried and hanged. Miles attempts to stall, arguing for continued military custody to prevent the prisoners from escaping, buying time for Lawton to secure the captives.

The woman describes how Damián eventually befriended a group of mountain Apaches. They accepted him, and he learned some of their language and songs. He concluded that they were not stubborn, but simply lived in insulation, convinced of their own superiority. The woman tells the gravedigger that this pride is what makes Apaches so similar to the Mexicans and gringos: They are all tribes who believe the land belongs to them, locked in a conflict where only one can win. As the gravedigger finishes his work, the woman covers Damián’s body, lamenting that he was fated to be killed by the very people who had metaphorically nursed him.

The narrator reflects on the renaming of the important mountain pass from the Spanish “Paso de Guadalupe” to the English “Skeleton Canyon” after the Gadsden Purchase. He connects the name “Guadalupe” to the syncretic Mexican mother goddess Tonantzin, who symbolizes life and creation. In contrast, “Skeleton” represents only death and what remains after life. The narrator sees this linguistic shift as a microcosm of the colonial process, where a European military language erases a deeper, mixed history.

In an official deposition, Lieutenant Estrada recounts his journey with Captain Lawton’s Fourth Cavalry as they escorted Geronimo and his band out of Mexico. He notes the ragged condition of the American troops, the incredible speed and discipline of the Apache families, and his tense interactions with the warriors. 

At Skeleton Canyon, he witnesses the elaborate military parade staged by General Miles. During the final surrender talks, Estrada realizes Miles is lying to Geronimo, promising a return to Arizona after two years of imprisonment in Florida. A letter handed to Estrada by Miles’s aide-de-camp confirms that Geronimo’s exile from Mexico is permanent.

The narrator reflects on the fate of the Chiricahuas after the surrender. He tells the story of Juh, Geronimo’s cousin and a great chief who was always free and always at war. Shortly after Geronimo’s surrender in 1886, Juh fell off his horse into a ravine during a storm, his memory largely forgotten. 

The narrative then follows the line of the last free Chiricahua warrior, Apache Juan, who lived peacefully with his family until 1924, when he and his family were murdered by Mexican rurales for a false bounty. His infant son survived and was adopted by a Mexican doctor. The boy grew up to be a nationally decorated schoolteacher, his Apache identity completely erased, marking the final death of the free Apachería. The narrator concludes that by forgetting the Apaches, Mexicans were left “motherless.”