Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26)

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

  He withdrew below the edge of the hill from which he had been reconnoitering and transmitted a gesture of silence toward other men dressed in blue who sat their horses below him, and beckoned to an officer who quickly rode upward and dismounted. Presently the officer shared the secret with Sergeant Olson and the sun. He issued whispered orders and forty men rode down a narrow ravine and crossed a ridge into the canyon below Shoz- Dijiji. The sun, crossing the withers of Shoz-Dijiji’s horse, shone upon the warrior’s face and he awoke. He arose and mounted his horse.

  Sergeant Olson, looking .down from above, watched him. If he went down the canyon, all right; if he went up, all wrong — there were no soldiers up the canyon. Shoz-Dijiji circled the herd and started it up the canyon. This did not suit Sergeant Olson; anyhow, the only good Indian is a dead Indian. The noncommissioned officer drew his army Colt from its holster, took accurate aim and fired. Who could blame him?

  Two days before his bunkie had been shot down in cold blood at Cibicu Creek by an Apache scout who was in the service and the uniform of the United States. He had seen Captain Hentig murdered, shot in the back, by another scout named Mosby; he had seen Bird moved. He saw no other soldiers there, but he knew where there was one soldier there were others, usually many of them. He cocked his ears. Ah, what was that? From down the canyon came unmistakable evidence of the clumsy approach of clumsy white-eyes. They made enough noise, thought Shoz-Dijiji, to have been a great army, but he knew that they were not. All the members of the six tribes including their women and children could have passed along this same trail with a tenth the commotion — only the soft swish of their moccasined feet.

  Shoz-Dijiji hid his horse on the far side of the hogback and crept back to watch. He saw the soldiers come, and hate and disappointment surged through him in hot, savage waves as he watched them round up his hundred horses and drive them back down the canyon, while a detachment from the troop followed upward in search of Indians.

  Others went up the opposite side of the canyon to look for Olson; and as they found him Shoz-Dijiji mounted his horse below the edge of the hogback and rode down toward the valley, paralleling the course taken by the soldiers and his horses, loath to give them up, hoping against hope that some circumstance might give him the opportunity to win them back, ready to risk his life, if need be, for the price of Ish-kay-nay and happiness.

  Bitter were the thoughts of Shoz-Dijiji as he followed the troopers who had stolen his herd, for by the hoary standards of the Apache, ages old, it was theft and the herd was his. Had he not taken it by virtue of courage and cunning, winning it fairly? Had the soldiers been taking his herd for themselves there would have been less anger in the heart of Shoz-Dijiji, for he could accord to others the same rights that he demanded for himself, but they were not.

  Experience had taught him that the fool white-eyes took stock from the Indians and tried to return it to those from whom the Indians had taken it, profiting in no way. Therefore he believed that they did so purely for the purpose of persecuting the Indians, just as they had taken their water and their lands and ruined their hunting grounds, which was, in the sight of U sen and his children, but a part of the plan of the pindah lickoyee to exterminate the Shis-Inday.

  Did not all men know that the thing the pindah lickoyee called government had hired many hunters to exterminate the buffalo and all other game, thus forcing the Indians to remain on the reservations and beg for rations or starve? Bitter were the thoughts of Shoz-Dijiji as he followed the troopers down toward the plain.

  From behind a knoll near the mouth of the canyon the Black Bear saw the soldiers of “D” Troop drive the horses out upon the plain and toward the north. As he knew all the vast domain of his people Shoz-Dijiji knew this plain, knew it as he knew the wrinkles in the face of Sons-ee-ah-ray, knew the route the soldiers would take across it, knew the windings of the dry wash that cut deeply through it from the canyon’s mouth. He waited where he was until a rise of ground hid him from the troopers entering the plain below. Cautiously the Apache rode down into the wash and along its dry, sandy bottom where the steep, high banks hid him from the sight of the soldiers. Where the wash took a broad sweep to the east he urged his mount to a run. The sand beneath its feet gave forth no dust nor any sound.

  The soldiers, moving in a more direct line, were drawing away from him as Shoz-Dijiji raced, a silent shadow, toward the destination he had chosen. The wash turned toward the north and then again in a westerly direction, making a wide curve and coming again very close to the trail along which the soldiers were driving Shoz-Dijiji’s herd. Toward this point the Apache was racing, in his mind a bold plan, such a plan as only an Apache mind might conceive — of all warriors the most cautious, also, of all warriors, the most fearless when emergency demanded fearlessness.

  Other warriors might pit themselves gallantly and gloriously against great odds in defense of the weak, in furtherance of some lofty ideal or for the honor of a flag; but it remained for an Apache, armed with a six-shooter, a knife, a bow and some arrows, to seriously conceive the idea that he might successfully attack ten fully armed cavalrymen for the sake of some captured loot! But perhaps we are unfair to Shoz-Dijiji, for was there not also Ish-kay-nay?

  Where the trail came again close to the wash there was a way up its steep side to the plain above, a way that Shoz-Dijiji knew. It had been made by range stock crossing at this point. When the last of the soldiers had passed it they were startled by aloud Apache whoop and the bark of a six-shooter. Yelling, firing, Shoz-Dijiji charged straight toward the rear of the herd, straight toward the ten mounted troopers. The horses broke into a gallop, frightened by the yells and the shots. The soldiers, sure that there must be other hostiles hiding in the wash, fired at Shoz-Dijiji and then turned their attention toward the point where they expected the main force of the enemy to develop, toward the wash. Shoz-Dijiji, still yelling, drew away behind the racing herd.

  But only for a moment were the troopers disconcerted by the suddenness, by the sheer effrontery of the attack. A sergeant raised his carbine to his shoulder, his mount, well-trained, stood motionless as its rider slowly dropped the sights upon the bright bay gelding, already a long shot for a sharpshooter, even at a fixed target.

  The sergeant pressed the trigger. There was a puff of smoke from the black powder and the bright bay gelding lurched heavily to the ground, turning a complete somersault, hurling its rider far ahead. Over and over rolled Shoz-Dijiji, still clinging to his precious six-shooter, and came to his feet unhurt. A quick glance showed him the herd well out of his reach. No chance there to gain a new mount. To the rear he saw ten angry cavalrymen spurring toward him, firing as they came.

  Shoz-Dijiji was trained to think quickly, and as the bullets hurled up spurts of dust about him he vanished again into the wash that had given him up.

  15. HUNTED

  Following the battle at Cibicu Creek Juh and his warriors clung to the rear and flanks of the retreating cavalry, menacing, harassing, all through the two nerve-racking days of the march to Fort Apache. As his warriors surrounded the fort, firing constantly upon its defenders, Juh went among the Apaches on the reservation, telling them of the slaying of Nakay-do-klunni, of the great victory he had won at Cibicu Creek, promising them that if they would join him the pindah lickoyee would be destroyed to the last man and the Apaches would again rule supreme over their country; nor, in view of visual proof they had had of the retreat of the soldiers, was it difficult to assure them that their hour had struck.

  By morning Fort Apache was surrounded by yelling savages, pouring a rain of fire upon the breastworks that had been hastily thrown up by the troops. Scouting parties were abroad watching for the first sign of the reinforcements that might be expected to come to the rescue of the beleaguered post, and to destroy the civilians who attempted to escape.

  Consumed by hatred of the whites, incited by the fiery exhortations of their chiefs and medicine men to the extermination of the foe, these scouting parties sc
ourged the country surrounding Fort Apache with all the zeal of religious fanatics.

  At Seven Mile Hill they fell upon three men escaping from the post and after a brisk battle killed them and burned their wagon; a few miles south another party lay in wait for two civilians and shot them from ambush; they killed the mail carrier from Black River station, and shot old Fibs, who had the government beef contract, as he sat in his adobe shack, and ran off all his cattle.

  And while the warriors of Juh, chief of the Ned-ni, terrorized the country about Fort Apache his messengers rode to Geronimo and to Na-chi-ta urging the Be-don-ko-he and the Cho-kon-en to join him, and the beating of the es-a-da-ded broke the stillness of the Arizona nights as painted braves leaped and shouted in the frenzy of the war dance the length and breadth of Apacheland.

  Up from Fort Thomas rode the first reinforcements for Fort Apache, spurred on by the rumor that Colonel Carr and his entire command had been massacred, while from many a hilltop the Ned-ni scouts watched them and took word to Juh. Gathering their ponies and the stolen herds whose numbers had greatly augmented their own the Ned-ni set out toward the southwest to join with Geronimo and the Be-don-ko-he.

  Down toward the border, raiding, massacring, fighting off the pursuing troops, the savage horde moved with a rapidity that is possible only to Apaches in the uptorn, burning country across which they chose to lead the suffering troops. Na-chi-ta joined them with his Cho-kon-en, and there was Mangas and Naniy and Kut-le and many another famous warrior to bring terror and destruction to the pindah lickoyee, and with them went their women, their children and their herds.

  Northward, searching for his people, went Shoz-Dijiji, dodging, doubling, hiding like a beast of prey upon which the hunters are closing, for in whatever direction he turned he saw soldiers or signs of soldiers. Never had Shoz-Dijiji seen so many soldiers and they all seemed to be marching in the same direction, toward Fort Apache. The young war chief wondered what this movement of troops portended. Had the reservation Indians arisen, were his people on the warpath, or were the pindah lickoyee planning a surprise attack in force?

  Shoz-Dijiji could not know, he could only guess that something momentous was afoot, and that where the soldiers of the pindah lickoyee went there would be Apaches. So he kept to the direction the troops were taking, longing to. meet one of his own kind, watching always for signals. Patient is the Apache, but the strain of prolonged apprehension was telling upon the nerves of Shoz-Dijiji. Had it been only a question as to the whereabouts or the fate of the Apache people Shoz-Dijiji would have been less seriously affected; but the whereabouts and the fate of Ish-kay-nay were involved and that was by far a more serious consideration.

  It irked Shoz-Dijiji to think of returning empty-handed. He knew the raillery to which he would be subjected and which he must accept in silence. He had failed and so there was nothing to say, for in the pandect of the Apaches there is no justification for failure. It would still have been within the range of possibilities to have picked up some horses were it not for all these soldiers; and so to his other reasons for hating them there was added this other, the further frustration of his marriage plan.

  It was, therefore, a rather bitter, bloodthirsty savage who came suddenly face to face with a young white girl where no white girl, young or old, should have been upon this September day in Arizona, with the Apaches burning, killing, ravishing across half a dozen counties. She sat beneath the scant shade of a small bush in a ravine well removed from any trail, and that was why it happened that Shoz-Dijiji was face to face with her before he was aware that there was another human being near.

  At sight of him the girl sprang to her feet, drawing her Colt, an act that was duplicated with even greater celerity by the young brave, but neither fired— “Shoz-Dijiji!” exclaimed the girl, lowering the muzzle of her weapon. A sudden, friendly smile illuminated her face. Perhaps it was the smile that saved her from sudden death. Shoz-Dijiji was an Apache. His standards of right and wrong were not as ours, and further, he had only one set, and they applied to his friends — for his relations with the enemies of his people he had none. But there must have been something in that friendly smile that influenced him more surely than all the teachings of his elders, more potent even than all his natural inclinations.

  Shoz-Dijiji returned his six-shooter to its holster and smiled back at her.

  “Wichita Billings,” he said.

  “What in the world are you doing here?” demanded the girl. “Don’t you know that there are soldiers everywhere hunting the Cheeracows? Oh, I forgot! If you could only sabe.”

  “Here,” thought Shoz-Dijiji, “I may be able to learn what is happening between the soldiers and my people.” So, as often happens, the ignorant savage sabed when it was to his interest.

  “Me savvy,” announced Shoz-Dijiji. “Shoz-Dijiji talk English good.”

  “Why, you told me when I saw you before that you didn’t,” exclaimed the girl.

  Shoz-Dijiji smiled. “Me savvy,” he repeated. “Tell me where all these soldiers go? Where are my people that you call Cheeracows?”

  “They’ve gone out — they’re on the warpath — and they’re just naturally raisin’ hell.

  “Didn’t you know, or, Shoz-Dijiji, are you with a war party?”

  “No, Shoz-Dijiji alone. Been away. Come back. No find people. Shoz-Dijiji is looking for his people, that is all. You tell him. Where are they?”

  “They been mostly around Fort Apache,” said the girl. “There was a fight at Cibicu Creek and they killed a lot of soldiers. Then they attacked the fort. Old Whoa was leading them.”

  Shoz-Dijiji, watching the girl as she talked, was struck by her beauty. To him it seemed to have a wonderful quality that he had not noticed upon their previous meeting, even though he had then been impressed by her good looks. If he had not loved Ish-kay-nay with such fierce devotion perhaps he might have seen in Wichita Billings a mate well suited to a great war chief.

  “Were many Indians killed at Cibicu Creek?” asked Shoz-Dijiji. “Were their women there with them?”

  “I have not heard but just a little of the fight,” replied Wichita. “Captain Hentig and some of his men were killed and old Bobby-doklinny.”

  Shoz-Dijiji knew whom she meant, just as he had known that she referred to Juh when she spoke of Whoa — these white-eyes were most ignorant, they could not pronounce the simplest names.

  “Do you know if Geronimo went out?” he asked.

  “He wasn’t with Whoa at Cibicu but we just heard today that the renegades are on their way toward the border and that Geronimo has joined them. It sure looks like a hard winter. I wish to God we’d never left Kansas. Believe me, the East is good enough for Wichita Billings! Say, Shoz-Dijiji, are you sure you aint a renegade?”

  “Shoz-Dijiji friendly,” he assured her.

  “Then you better come in with me and give yourself up or the soldiers will sure get you. They aint askin’ no questions when they see a Cheeracow — they just plug him. You come on in to the ranch with me, there’s a detachment of ‘E’ Troop there now, and I’ll see that they don’t hurt you.”

  Shoz-Dijiji extended a slow hand and laid it on the girl’s arm. His face grew very serious and stern as his dark eyes looked into hers. “Listen, white girl,” he said. “Shoz-Dijiji said he is friendly. Shoz-Dijiji does no speak lies. He is friendly — to you. Shoz-Dijiji no harm you. Do not be afraid. But Shoz-Dijiji not friend to the white soldiers. Not friend to the white people — only you.

  “Shoz-Dijiji is war chief among the Be-don-ko-he. His place is with the warriors of his people. You say there are soldiers at the hacienda of your father. Go! Tell them that Shoz-Dijiji, war chief among the Be-don-ko-he, is here in the hills. Tell them to try and catch him.”

  The girl shook her head. “No, Shoz-Dijiji, I will not go and tell them anything. You are my friend. I am your friend. You saved me once. I do not care whether you are a renegade or not. I will not tell them you are here, and if I can help you
, I will.”

  Shoz-Dijiji looked at her in silence for what seemed a long time. He was puzzled. There was some quality possessed by the pindah lickoyee and the Mexicans that it was difficult for him to understand, objectively; yet, all unrealizing, he had just been instinctively practicing it himself. What she said recalled the action of the Mexican woodchopper that time at Casas Grandes; but he sensed no similarity between their friendly gratitude and his forbearance toward this beautiful enemy girl, or knew that his action was partially based on gratitude for a friendly smile and frank trustfulness. He thought he did not harm her simply because he did not wish to. He did not know that he could not have harmed her, that there was a force within him stronger even than his savage training.

  “You will help Shoz-Dijiji?” he asked. “You can bet your boots I will,” she assured him. “But how?”

  “All night, all day Shoz-Dijiji have no water. There were soldiers at every spring, at every water hole. Shoz-Dijiji wants water and a horse.”

  “Hungry, too?”

  “Apache always hungry,” laughed the brave. “You wait here,” she told him. “Where your horse?” he demanded.

  She raised her palms to the level of her shoulders and shrugged. “The old son-of-a-gun pitched me clean off,” she said. “That’s why I was a-sittin’ up here restin’. I been walking close to an hour and I’m dog-tired; but it’s only a short jag to the house now. I may have to sneak out with a horse for you, so don’t get worried if I ain’t back before dark.” She started away.