Jeffords stayed near after the incident with Taza.  He was undoubtedly grief stricken at the idea of losing his friend to death -- and was most likely on edge about the prospect of managing Cochise's followers afterward.  He knew that Taza had been groomed from early life to be his father's successor, and although Apache leadership does not automatically pass to such a person, Jeffords had no doubt that the band would embrace Taza as their new chief.  Still, Cochise's influence upon his and other Apache bands had been phenomenal and was not likely to be found in anyone else, including Taza.  Future prospects must have been daunting.

     The end came for the greatest of all Apache war leaders on the morning of June 8, 1874.  The night before, Jeffords had paid his friend a visit, only to find the chief resigned to his fate. 
 

     
     The subject of Cochise's burial is one of those great mysteries that enrich the history of the southwest.  Jeffords was privy to the ceremony.  Indeed, according to what he told friends in later life, he took part in it -- the only white man allowed.  The details, however, are forever obscured by a wealth of conflicting accounts.  Jeffords gave only general descriptions of the rites and he protected the details,  particularly the site of Cochise's burial, for the rest of his life.  Cochise's son Taza gave an account at some time that conflicted somewhat with the story Jeffords gave, and still other contemporaries further blurred the truth by coming up with stories bordering on the ludicrous.  

     It is generally accepted that Jeffords gave the most reliable account.  He said that Cochise was prepared for burial by a trusted relative (probably his wife and/or sister), and that he was carefully bathed.  His hair was combed and he was dressed in his best clothes.  He was decorated with war paint and head feathers, then wrapped in the splendid red blanket that had been given him by Colonel Henry Hooker (most likely the same blanket he had spent so much time with during Howard and Sladen's visit).  He was then placed on his favorite horse which was guided "to a rough and lonely place among the rocks and chasms in the stronghold, where there was a deep fissure in the cliff.  The horse was killed and dropped into the depths; also, Cochise's favorite dog.  His gun and other arms were then thrown in; and, last, Cochise was lowered with lariats into the rocky sepulcher -- deep in the gorge."
 
 

     For Cochise's part, he kept his word, as given to General Howard, till the day he died.  The Apaches faithful to Cochise also kept his word (including both his sons, Taza and Naiche), while he lived.  Taza, after his famous father's death, attempted to carry on Cochise's promises in spite of the U.S. government's failure to uphold its end of the bargain.  Naiche, less a leader than either Cochise or Taza, eventually fell in with Juh and Geronimo and became a new worry for Arizona citizens in the years to come.

     It is fitting and right that Cochise did not live to see his reservation taken away from his people -- on the flimsy justification that a couple of drunken Apache brothers killed two whites in Sulphur Springs when they were refused more whisky.  It is only just that he spent his last days in his most beloved Dragoons, and that, just as depicted in the book "Blood Brother", he had a final word or two to share with his trusted American friend, Tom Jeffords.  

     The Chokonen band of the great Chiricahua Apaches lost their reservation in 1876 after a difficult period marked with interior dissent and growing discontent among whites that so much good land was being wasted on Indians.  When Apache brothers Pionsenay and Skinyea, drunk on liquor and spoiling for a fight, gunned down two whites at the Sulphur Springs store (the same buidling that had been used as Jeffords' first agency), it was the beginning of the end.  Though the offenders were hunted down (one of them killed) by Taza and Naiche, the U.S. government saw their chance to close the doors on the great Chiricahua reservation experiment and Cochise's band was callously hauled off to arid San Carlos.  Some did not go.  Some stole away, eluding the troops that had been sent to escort them, and would go on in the years to come to terrify Arizona citizens all over again.  Some, like Juh and Geronimo, would soon write their own chapters in the history of the southwest.