I was looking at the silhouette of a boulder some fifty feet away from me and it looked excitingly familiar, but it was not what I had been looking for.  I pulled out the dog-eared copy of Crane's photo and studied the shapes.  The boulder that had caught my attention looked temptingly similar to a mushroom-shaped boulder at the extreme right of the photo -- but backwards.

    Could it be that the formation I'd been looking for had been photographed from the "backside"?

    My chest was now hammering with excitement as I urged myself not to get too far ahead of myself.  "Don't get your hopes up" I silently chanted, quickening my steps and hurrying to the huge rock and then around it, my eyes glued to the shape I'd recognized.  As I edged around it I allowed myself to widen my focus, watching lines take shape in the huge boulder grouping of which this rock was a part. 

   There's the wedge-shaped rock!  I shouted to myself -- and there's the saddle shaped rock above it!!!  This is it!  This is the "big rock"!

   My joy was impossible to contain.  I eagerly hiked further into the recess where I could get a full view of the enormous boulder formation and felt like cheering when it became inescapably obvious that it was the exact same formation that Alice Rollins Crane had photographed, in Tom Jeffords' presence, back in 1895 -- and not a rock or stone had changed in appearance.  The only difference was, of course, the vegetation including, unfortunately, a stand of trees that has grown up over these hundred some odd years that makes it impossible to photograph the monument from the exact spot where Crane had stood.

     By following the two insistent vultures, I had walked directly to the location of Cochise's 1872 campsite, and to the very rock where he had stood with General Howard when it came time to announce to the band that peace would be the way.  I took a few moments to thank the great chieftain and his messengers, and then I started taking pictures like mad.
 

The "big rock" then . . .

. . . and as it appears today, with Treaty Peak (Knob Hill) in background. Photo by George Robertson

     After a couple of hours absorbing the reverence of this place, I packed up and headed home, eager to send Ed Sweeney an email -- which I did the very next day.  The subject of the email was:  Found It!  The day after I sent the message, Ed called me on the phone, every bit as excited as I was.  Then and there he made up his mind to plan a trip to Arizona to see the campsite for himself.  In May of 2002, he flew in from Missouri and we met face to face for the first time.