he fell hard for a slender young girl named alope. roberts: i think alope was, to use a kind of corny americanism, the love of his life. geronimo went to alope's father to ask for her hand in marriage and the old man said, "it's going to cost you a lot of horses." and i think it's dad saying, "she's too good for you." narrator: geronimo disappeared. when he returned several days later, he led a long string of horses. "this," geronimo later explained, "was all the marriage ceremony necessary in our tribe." within a few years, alope and geronimo had three children. as their young ones grew, the couple celebrated each stage of their lives with age-old rituals. alope pierced her babies' ears to make her children grow faster and bathed them in water steeped with wildflowers to make their skin strong. one day in the early 1850s, geronimo and his family joined other chiricahuas on a trading trip. the group camped on the outskirts of a mexican town called janos and the men headed in to trade. on the way back, the chiricahuas met distraught me