Geronimo turned his eyes upon Wichita. “Ink-tah,” he said.
“Geronimo says, ‘sit down,’” translated Shoz-Dijiji and the girl did as she was bid. Geronimo patted her hand and smiled.
“You will be safe with the Be-don-ko-he,” he said. “We are your friends.”
When Shoz-Dijiji had repeated the words in English, Wichita knew that they were true, yet at the same time it seemed beyond belief that she could be sitting at the side of the notorious Geronimo in the remote fastness of his hidden camp and yet be as innocent of fear as though safe within the protecting walls of her father’s ranch house. The thought came to her that perhaps she was safer here, since at least she was not menaced by the threat of hostile Apaches.
That night she slept in the tepee of the mother-in-law of Geronimo and as she dozed off to sleep she smiled as she thought of the terrors that that name had always conjured to her mind and of the surprise and incredibility that were certain to mark the reception of her story by her father and her friends when she was restored to them — sleeping in the tepee of the mother-in-law of Geronimo, not twenty paces from the war chief of all the Apaches.
20. COME BACK!
Through that strange medium for the dissemination of information that is one of the remarkable phenomena of the life of primitive peoples, word of the activities of the hostiles was carried to the stronghold of Geronimo.
The Be-don-ko-he knew of the attack upon San Carlos Agency which resulted in the killing of Sterling, chief of Indian Scouts, and several other whites; knew that Chief Loco, successor to the dead Victorio, had joined the hostiles with all his Chi-hen-ne, men, women and children, and that the whole band was heading south toward Mexico.
They had news of the fight in Horse Shoe Canyon, and learned of the killing of Yuma Bill and three Yuma scouts and three soldiers in that fight; followed the flight of the hostiles along the rough crest of Stein’s Peak Range, down into the San Simon Valley, and from there into the Chiricahua Mountains; knew that they had scattered there, only to meet at another point; saw them safely all the way through Whitewater Canyon, across the mountains, down Animas Valley toward Guadalupe Pass, and near there across into Mexico.
Shoz-Dijiji kept Wichita posted on all that transpired, but he would not start back with her toward her home until he was sure that the last of the hostiles was out of the country, for they had scattered twice and he was not sure that all had crossed the border. Too, there was the danger from the troops, but that was secondary because it menaced only himself. She tried to tell him that he would be safe from the soldiers as long as he was with her, for when she had told them that he had rescued her from the hostiles they would not only be friendly but would reward him, but he shook his head.
“They kill Shoz-Dijiji first; ask you about him after,” he said.
They were sitting beneath the shade of a tree upon the shoulder of the mountain, over-looking the camp of the Be-don-ko-he. In the distance they could see the wide plain stretching to other mountains.
The girl had noticed that Shoz-Dijiji always seemed to be where he could see to a great distance when he rested or rather idled, for he never seemed to be in the need of rest. Sometimes he scanned the horizon through a pair of field glasses. Finally he touched the glasses to call her attention to them.
“You know who belong these?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Your lover,” he said, laughing.
“My lover!” she exclaimed. “What do you mean? I have no lover.”
He looked at her intently for a moment. “You no love King?” he asked.
It was her turn to laugh. “He is only a friend,” she said. “Are those his glasses?”
“You no love him?” he insisted.
“Of course not.”
“Shoz-Dijiji know that, he kill him that time,” he said, quite simply.
Impulsively she laid a hand upon his arm. “Oh, Shoz-Dijiji,” she cried, “why do you want to kill everyone? You are such a good man. Why don’t you put away your weapons and come in to the reservation?”
“Shoz-Dijiji does hot want to kill everyone,” replied the brave. “Shoz-Dijiji does not want to kill you. If Shoz-Dijiji put away his weapons, no hunt, no fight; what for he live? Be reservation Indian?” There was a wealth of unveiled contempt in his voice. “Let agent cheat him, starve him? Let white man laugh at him, make fun of him? No!”
“But they would help you, Shoz-Dijiji. I would help you.”
“Yes, you would help me; but you would always feel sorry for me because I am an Indian. I do not want the help of the white-eyes. I do not think that they would help me. Have they ever helped the Indian? What can they give the Indian that Usen has not already given him? Only, they take away what Usen has given.
“What has the pindah lickoyee better than the Shis-Inday? Is he braver? Is he more honest? Can he teach the Indian how and where to find food and clothing? No, the pindah lickoyee would starve where the Indian grows fat. He would go naked where the Indian finds more clothing than he needs. Has he more sense? He has none. See what he has done to this country.
“Before he came there was plenty for all, but like a fool he set out to kill every living thing that Usen had put here. He robs the Indian of his food, but also he robs himself of food — food that cost only a little effort to obtain — food that, hunted as the Indian knows how to hunt, always increased in numbers.
“What has he done for us? He is trying to take away from us the ways of our fathers — our dances, our medicine men, everything that we hold sacred; and in return he gives us whiskey and shoots us wherever he finds us. I do not think the pindah lickoyee are such good men that they can tell the Indian how to be good.
“Around every post and agency the white men are always trying to ravish our women. The women of the Apache are good women. When they are not we cut off their noses. How many Apache women have you ever seen whose noses had been cut off? Do you think we want to come and live beside such men? Do you think there is anything that they can teach us that is better than our fathers taught us?
“You think it is bad to kill. Yes, it is bad to kill; but it is better to kill like men and braves, openly and upon the war trail, than to kill by lies. Our people are told great lies to get them to come into the reservations, and there they are starved; and if they leave the reservation to hunt for food for their women and children, without a pass from the agent who is robbing them, then the soldiers come and shoot them. No, Shoz-Dijiji never be reservation Indian!”
“I am sorry,” she said. “I never thought of it from your side. I can see that in some ways you are right; but in others you are wrong. All white men are not bad.”
“All Indians are not bad,” he replied quickly, “but the pindah lickoyee treat them all alike — bad.”
For some time they sat in silence, the Apache watching the girl’s face, his own expressionless.
What was passing behind that granitic mask? Once he extended a hand toward her as though to touch her, then he drew it back quickly and sprang to his feet.
“Come!” he said, almost roughly. “We go back to camp.”
Two days later Geronimo and Shoz-Dijiji thought that it would be safe to return Wichita to her home, and the young war chief and the girl set out upon the long journey, which was but a repetition of that which had ended at the camp of the Be-don-ko-he.
During the journey Wichita could not but notice that the brave scarcely let his eyes leave her face, a thing of which she had had a growing consciousness for at least two days before they left the camp. Had she not come to trust him so implicitly she would have found it difficult not to have acknowledged something of nervous apprehension as she felt his gaze constantly upon her; but he took no other liberties with her — just looked at her through those steady, inscrutable eyes.
Every journey must have an end and at last the two stood upon the very hill above her father’s ranch where they had stood upon another occasion. Shoz-Dijiji drew rein and
dismounted. “I will wait here until you are safe in the house of your father,” he said.
“You are not coming down with me?” she exclaimed, surprised.
“No.”
“I want you to, Shoz-Dijiji. I want my father to know you, and thank you for what you have done for me,” she insisted.
“Me no go,” he replied. The girl became suddenly conscious of a feeling almost of panic. Was she never to see Shoz-Dijiji again, this good friend, this best of friends? She realized, and the realization came as a distinct shock, that this man of another race had suddenly filled a great emptiness in her life — an emptiness the existence of which she had never before realized — and that life was going to be very different without him. Already she felt a great loneliness creeping over her.
She was standing beside him and now, she turned and came close, putting her two palms upon his breast. “Please, Shoz-Dijiji,” she begged. “Please come down — I do not want you to go away.”
The contact of her hands upon him broke the iron will of the Apache. The habitual mask behind which he hid his emotions dropped away — it was a new Shoz-Dijiji into whose face the girl looked. He seized her in his arms and pressed her close; his lips covering hers.
She struck at his great chest and sought to push him away; she held her head from him and he saw the horror in her eyes. Then it was that he released her.
“Shoz-Dijiji sorry,” he said. “For days he fight the great fire burning in his brain, burning up his heart. Shoz-Dijiji thought he was strong; he did not know how much stronger is love — until you touched him. But you are right. You are white — Shoz-Dijiji is Apache. White girl could not love Apache. That is right.” He vaulted to the back of Nejeunee. “Shoz-Dijiji sorry. Good-bye!”
She watched him ride away and the panic and the loneliness gripped her like fingers of flesh and blood that sought to choke life and love and happiness from her. She saw him disappear beyond a hill to the south and she took a step after him, her hands outstretched in dumb pleading for his return that her lips had not the courage to voice aloud. She stood thus for a minute and then her arms dropped limply to her side and she turned back toward her father’s house.
A few steps she took and then she wheeled suddenly about and extended her arms again, in supplication.
“Shoz-Dijiji!” she cried, “Shoz-Dijiji, come back!”
But Shoz-Dijiji, war chief of the Be-don-ko-he, did not hear.
THE END
APACHE DEVIL (1933)
CONTENTS
1. GERONIMO GOES OUT
2. SPOILS OF WAR
3. “NO SABE!”
4. GIAN-NAH-TAH RELENTS
5. THE SNAKE LOOK
6. THE WAR TRAIL
7. HARD PRESSED
8. GERONIMO AND CROOK
9. RED FOOLS AND WHITE SCOUNDRELS
10. TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR A HEAD
11. A RED HERO
12. “SHOZ-DIJIJI KNOWS!”
13. BACK TO SONORA
14. SKELETON CANYON
15. THE LAST OF THE RENEGADES
16. THE JACK OF SPADES
17. CHEETIM STRIKES!
18. THE APACHE DEVIL!”
19. THE LAST WAR TRAIL
1. GERONIMO GOES OUT
The silver light of Klego-na-ay, the full moon, shone down from out the star-lit heavens of an Arizona night upon the camp of the Be-don-ko-he Apaches; shone upon sleek copper shoulders; shone upon high cheek bones; softened the cruel lines of swart, savage faces — faces as inscrutable as is the face of Klego-na-ay herself.
Shone the silver moonlight upon Nan-ta-do-tash, the izze-nantan of his people, as he led them in the dance, as he prayed for rain to save their parched crops. As he danced, Nan-ta-do-tash twirled his tzi-ditinidi about his head, twirled it rapidly from front to rear, producing the sound of a gust of rain-laden wind; and the warriors and the women, dancing with Nan-ta-do-tash, listened to the tzi-ditinidi, saw the medicine man cast hoddentin to the four winds, and knew that these things would compel the wind and the rain to come to the aid of their crops.
A little to one side, watching the dancers, sat Shoz-Dijiji, the Black Bear, with Gian-nah-tah, friend of boyhood days, companion of the war trail and the raid. Little more than a youth was Shoz-Dijiji, yet already a war chief of the Be-don-ko-he, proven in many battles with the soldiers of the pindah-lickoyee; terror of many a scattered hacienda of Sonora and Chihuahua — the dread Apache Devil. The old men beat upon the es-a-da-ded, the primitive drum of buckskin stretched across a hoop; and to their cadence Nan-ta-do-tash led the dancers, his naked body painted a greenish brown with a yellow snake upon each arm; upon his breast, in yellow, a bear; and upon his back the zig-zag lines of lightning.
His sacred izze-kloth, passing across his right shoulder, fell over his left hip. Of a potency almost equal to this four-strand medicine cord of twisted antelope skin was the buckskin medicine hat of Nan-ta-do-tash by means of which he was able to peer into the future, to foresee the approach of an enemy, cure the sick, or tell who had stolen ponies from other people.
The downy feathers and black-tipped plumes of the eagle added to the efficacy and decoration of this potent head-dress, the value of which was further enhanced by pieces of abalone shell, by duklij, and a snake’s rattle which surmounted the apex, while in brownish yellow and dirty blue there were depicted upon the body of the hat clouds, a rainbow, hail, the morning star, the God of Wind, with his lungs, the black Kan, and the great suns.
“You do not dance with the warriors and the women, Shoz-Dijiji,” said Gian-nah-tah. “Why is it?”
“Why should I?” demanded the Black Bear. “Usen has forsaken the Shis-Inday. No longer does He hear the prayers of His people. He has gone over to the side of the pindah-lickoyee, who have more warriors and better weapons.
“Many times went Shoz-Dijiji to the high places and made big medicine and prayed to Usen; but He let Juh steal my little Ish-kay-nay, and He let the bullet of the pindah-lickoyee slay her. Why should I dance to the Kans if they are blind and deaf?”
“But did not Usen help you to find Juh and slay him?” urged Gian-nah- tah.
“Usen!” The tone of the Black Bear was contemptuous. “No one helped Shoz-Dijiji find Juh. No one helped Shoz-Dijiji slay him. Alone he found Juh — alone, with his own hands, he killed him. It was Shoz-Dijiji, not Usen, who avenged Ish-kay-nay!”
“But Usen healed the wound of your sorrow,” persisted Gian-nah-tah. “He placed in your heart a new love to take the place of the old that was become but a sad memory.”
“If Usen did that it was but to add to the sorrows of Shoz-Dijiji,” said the Black Bear. “I have not told you, Gian-nah-tah.”
“You have not spoken of the white girl since you took her from our camp to her home after you had saved her from Tats-ah-das-ay-go and the other Chi-e-a-hen,!” replied Gian-nah-tah; “but while she was with us I saw the look in your eyes, Shoz-Dijiji, and it told me what your lips did not tell me.”
“Then my eyes must have known what my heart did not know,” said Shoz-Dijiji. “It would have been better had my heart not learned, but it did.
“Long time have we been friends, Gian-nah-tah. Our tsochs, swinging from the branches of the trees, swayed to the same breezes, or, bound to the backs of our mothers, we followed the same trails across deserts and mountains; together we learned to use the bow and the arrow and the lance; and together we went upon the war trail the first time. To me you are as a brother. You will not laugh at me, Gian-nah-tah; and so I shall tell you what happened that time that I took the white-eyed girl, Wichita, back to the hogan of her father that you may know why I am unhappy and why I know that Usen no longer cares what becomes of me.”
“Gian-nah-tah does not laugh at the sorrow of his best friend,” said the other.
“It was not in my heart to love the white-eyed girl,” continued the Black Bear. “To Shoz-Dijiji she was as a sister. She was kind to me. When the soldiers of the pindah-lickoyee were all about
, she brought me food and water and gave me a horse to carry me back to my people.I knew that she did that because I had once saved her from a white-eyed man who would have harmed her. No thought of love was in my mind. How could it have been? How could I think that Shoz-Dijiji, an Apache, a war chief of the Be-don-ko-he, could love a girl of the pindah-lickoyee!
“But Usen deserted me. He let me look upon the face of the white-eyed girl for many days, and every day He made her more beautiful in my eyes. I tried not to think of love. I put it from my mind. I turned my thoughts to other things, but I could not keep my eyes from the face of the pindah-lickoyee girl.
“At last we came close to the hogan of her father; and there I stopped and told her to go on, but she wanted me to come with her that her father might thank me. I would not go. I dared not go. I, The Apache Devil, was afraid of this white-eyed daughter of the pindah-lickoyee!
“She came close to me and urged me. She laid her two hands upon my breast. The touch of those soft, white hands, Gian-nah-tah, was more powerful than the will of Shoz-Dijiji; beneath it crumbled all the pride and hate that are of the heritage of the Apaches. A flame burst forth within me — the signal fire of love.
“I seized her and pressed her close; I put my mouth upon her mouth. And then she struck at me and tried to push me away, and I saw fear in her eyes; and something more terrible than fear — loathing — as though I were unclean.
“Then I let her go; and I came away, but I left my heart and happiness behind. Shoz-Dijiji has left to him only his pride and his hate — his hate of the pindah-lickoyee.”
“If you hate the white-eyed girl now, it is well,” said Gian-nah.tah. “The pindah-lickoyee are low born and fools. They are not fit for an Apache!”
“I do not hate the white-eyed girl, Wichita,” said Shoz-Dijiji, sadly. “If I did I should not be unhappy. I love her.”
Gian-nah-tah shook his head. “There are many pretty girls of the Shis-Inday,” he said presently, “who look with bright eyes upon Shoz-Dijiji.”
Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26) Page 594
