"Geronimo knows that Sons-ee-ah-ray, the mother of his children, is a good woman. Why, then, do the white-eyed men talk thus to her?"
The War Chief shook his head. "I do not know," he said. "I do not understand the white-eyed men."
When the warriors of the Be-don-ko-he gathered, many of the older men appeared apprehensive. They looked sad and worried but the young men were excited and gay. Many of the latter were already painting their faces, but when Geronimo saw this he frowned and shook his head.
"Geronimo is going away," he said, "because he can no longer live under the conditions that the white-eyed men impose and still maintain his self respect; but he does not mean, as some of the young men seem to think, that he is going to take the war trail against the pindah-lickoyee.
"With his family he is going up somewhere around Fort Apache and live in the mountains where he will not have to see any white-eyes."
"We will go with you!" said many of the Be-don-ko-he.
"No," remonstrated Geronimo. "If you go with me the Agent will say that Geronimo has gone out again with his warriors, but if only Geronimo and his own family go the Agent cannot say that Geronimo has gone upon the war trail. "If you come with me they will send soldiers after us; and then there will be war, and already there have been enough of us killed. Therefore Geronimo goes alone.
"Shoz-Dijiji, my son, will remain here for a while and learn if the white-eyed men are going to make trouble because Geronimo has left San Carlos. If they do, he will bring the word to me; and then I shall know what next to do; but I shall not return to San Carlos to be treated like a fool and a child--no, not I, Geronimo, War Chief of all the Apaches!"
And so that night Geronimo, with all his family except Shoz-Dijiji, rode silently northward toward Fort Apache; and at San Carlos the Indians, the Agent and the soldiers slept in peaceful ignorance of this event that was so soon to lead to the writing of one of history's bloodiest pages. After Geronimo had left, Shoz-Dijiji sought out Gian-nah- tah with whom he had had no opportunity to speak since the moment of their altercation in the Hog Ranch. In the heart of the Black Bear was only love for this friend of his childhood; and while he knew that Gian-nah-tah had been very angry with him at the time, he attributed this mostly to the effect of the whiskey he had drunk, believing that when this had worn off, and Gian-nah-tah had had time to reflect, he would harbor no ill will.
Shoz-Dijiji found his friend sitting alone over a tiny fire and came and squatted down beside him. Neither spoke, but that was nothing unusual. Near by, before her hogan, a squaw was praying to the moon. "Gun-ju-le, klego-m-ay," she chanted.
At a little distance a warrior cast hoddentin into the air and prayed: "Gun-ju-le, chil-jilt, Si-chi-zi, gun-ju-le, inzayu, ijanale," Be good, O Night; Twilight, be good; do not let me die."Peace and quiet lay upon the camp of the Be-don-ko-he.
"Today," said Shoz-Dijiji, "I recognized the white-eyed man who sells fire-water to the Apaches. He is the man who tried to steal the white-eyed girl that day that Gian-nah- tah and Shoz-Dijiji were scouting near the hogan of her father.
"I thought that I killed him that day; but. today I saw him again, selling fire-water to GIan-nah-tah. He is a very bad man. Some day I shall kill him; but I shall do it when no one is around to see, for the white-eyed fools would put me in prison as quickly for killing a bad man as a good."
Gian-nah-tah made no reply. Shoz-Dijiji turned and looked into the face of his friend. "Is Gian-nah-tah still angry?" he asked.
Gian-nah-tah arose, turned around, and squatted down again with his back toward Shoz-Dijiji. The Black Bear shook his head sadly; then he stood up. For a moment he hesitated as though about to speak; but instead he turned, drew his blanket more closely about him, and walked away. His heart was heavy. During his short life he had seen many of his friends killed in battle; he had seen little Ish-kay-nay, his first love, die in his arms, slain by the bullet of a white man; he had seen the look of horror in the eyes of the white girl he had grown to love, when he had avowed that love; he had just seen his father and his mother driven by the injustices of the white conqueror from the society of their own kind; and now he had lost his best friend. The heart of Shoz-Dijiji, the Black Bear, was heavy indeed.
Wichita Billings was visiting in the home of Margaret Cullis at the post. The two were sitting in the modest parlor, the older woman sewing, the younger reading. Presently Wichita closed her book and laid it on the table.
"I can't seem to get interested," she said. "I don't feel very 'literary' tonight."
"You haven't been yourself all day," said Mrs. Cullis." Aren't you feeling well?"
"I feel all right, physically," replied the girl, "but I'm blue."
"About what?"
"0, nothing--I just feel blue. Didn't you ever feel that way when there wasn't any reason for it?"
"There usually is a reason."
"I suppose so. Perhaps it's in the air." There was a silence that lasted a minute or two. Lieutenant King's calling this evening."
"I'm sure that shouldn't make you blue, my dear girl," exclaimed Margaret Cullis, laughing.
"Well, it doesn't cheer me up much, because I know what he's going to say; and I know what I'm going to answer. It's always the same thing." "I can't see why you don't love him, Wichita. It would be a wonderful match for you."
"Yes, for me; but not for him. His people would be ashamed of me,"
"Don't be silly! There isn't any man or any family too good for you--I doubt if there is any good enough for you."
"You're a dear, but the fact remains that they are stiff- backed Bostonians with more culture than there is in the whole state that I came from and a family tree that started as a seedling in the Garden of Eden, while I got most of my education out of a mail order catalog; and if I ever had a family tree it must have been blown away by a Kansas cyclone while my folks were fighting Indians.
"And speaking of Indians, whom do you think I saw today?"
"Who?"
"Shoz-Dijiji!"
Margaret Cullis looked up quickly. Was it the intonation of the girl's voice as she spoke the name! The older woman frowned and looked down at her work again. "What did he have to say?" she asked.
"Nothing."
"Oh, you didn't see him to talk with?"
"Yes, but he wouldn't talk to me. He just fell back on that maddening 'No sabe' that they use with strangers."
"Why do you suppose he did that?" asked Mrs. Cullis.
"I hurt him the last time I saw him," replied Wichita.
"Hurt one of Geronimo's renegades! Child, it can't be done."
"They're human!" replied the girl. "I learned that in the days that I spent in Geronimo's camp while Chief Loco was out with his hostiles. Among themselves they are entirely different people from those we are accustomed to see on the reservation. No one who has watched them with their children, seen them at their games, heard them praying to Dawn and Twilight, to the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars as they cast their sacred hoddentin to the winds would ever again question their possession of the finer instincts of sentiment and imagination.
"Because they do not wear their hearts upon their sleeves, because they are not blatant in the declaration of their finer emotions, does not mean that they feel no affection or that they are incapable of experiencing spiritual suffering."
"Perhaps," said Margaret Cullis j "but you, who have lived in Indian country all your life, who have seen the heartless cruelties they inflict upon their helpless victims, who know their treachery and their dishonesty, cannot but admit that whatever qualities of goodness they possess are far outweighed by those others which have made them hated and feared the length and breadth of the Southwest."