There is an interesting discrepancy in the records left by Sladen and Howard regarding what transpired at this daytime camp.  It is a minor point, but one that demonstrates how even eye witnesses to an event can recall the details in different ways.

     It should be noted that General Howard's version of this event is more likely the correct one, since he wrote of the expedition in detail mere weeks following the conclusion of the campaign (in a newspaper article published by the Washington Daily Morning Chronicle on November 10, 1872).  Sladen on the other hand, while it is true he kept daily entries during the entire expedition, did not actually produce a running narrative of his experiences until much later.  It is likely that this particular detail was not preserved at the time of its occurrence, and that Sladen's memory of the event had grown dim by the time he attempted to tie everything together in a story like version.  In his response to Alice Rollins Crane's letter in 1896, Sladen tells the story more or less from beginning to end, with a good deal of detail.  Some of the things he wrote do not seem to fit well with some of the descriptions Howard gave in the article 24 years before, though, as mentioned, most discrepancies are minor.

     One of the most glaring is the account of how Howard's party made first contact with members of Cochise's band in the Dragoons.

     As Howard tells it:
 

     Sladen's recollection was that both Indian guides went looking for Cochise's band, and that Chie returned with the two Indian boys, leaving Ponce in an encampment they had discovered up in the heights.

      Later in the story, Sladen confuses two large boulders in Cochise's camp, seemingly combining them in his recollections as one rock.  It is quite clear, particularly when the camp's location is seen first hand, that there almost had to be two separate boulders, though both were within a few yards of each other.  More on this when we follow Howard's party into Cochise's camp . . .