They would have slain him had they had the opportunity. It was only fear or caution that prevented them and their kind from hunting down him and his kind and exterminating them; and it was through torture and mutilation that the Apache kept green in the hearts of his enemies both fear and caution. To most of them it was merely a well-reasoned component of their science of war, which is, after all, but saying that it was a part of their religion. To Geronimo it was something more.
VI - THE OATH OF GERONIMO
AROUSED by the shouts, the shots and the scent of the savages, the mules had, during the battle, staged a divertisement of their own. Some had kicked themselves free of restraining leather while others had but entangled themselves the more. Many were down.
Their taste for blood temporarily glutted, or for lack of more blood to spill, the Apaches turned their attention to the mules. While some cut loose those that were down, others rounded up those that were loose. In the meantime Geronimo and Juh had inspected the contents of the wagons which contained a general store of merchandise consigned to many a small merchant in the villages of northern Sonora.
Selecting what met their fancy or the requirements of their wild, nomadic life, they packed their spoils of war upon the backs of the captured mules and set out in a northeasterly direction toward the Sierra Madre. All that afternoon and all of the following night they pushed rapidly on until they emerged upon the eastern slopes of the Sierra Madre and looked down upon Chihuahua. Not until then did Geronimo order camp and a rest. A hundred miles behind them the ashes of the burned wagon train still smouldered. Ten miles in his rear a single scout watched the rear trail from a commanding peak and far ahead another scout overlooked Chihuahua.
Around the camp fire that day, while the mules browsed the lush grasses of a mountain meadow, the warriors recounted boastfully their deeds o derring do.
Geronimo, sullen and morose, sat apart Shoz-Dijiji, the camp duties of the neophyte completed, lay stretched in rest beside his savage sire. Geronimo, puffing at a cigarette, looked down at the boy.
"Shoz-Dijiji has done well," he said. These were the first words of approval that had fallen upon the youth's ears since he had taken the war trail. He remained silent. Geronimo puffed upon his cigarette before he spoke again. "Juh says that Shoz-Dijiji has a heart of water; that he did not join the other braves in torturing the wounded or mutilating the dead."
"Shoz-Dijiji killed three of the enemy," replied the youth; "one in a hand-to-hand fight. The coyote attacks the wounded and devours the dead. Which is braver?"
"You saw me after the battle," said Geronimo. "Am I a coyote?"
"You are a brave man," replied Shoz-Dijiji simply. "There is no one braver than Geronimo. Therefore I cannot understand why you waste your time with the dead and the wounded. These, I should think, you would leave to the squaws and the children. I, Shoz-Dijiji, take no pleasure in fighting with a dead man who cannot harm me. I should not think that Geronimo, who is so much braver than Shoz-Dijiji, would find pleasure in it."
"Listen, my son, to the words of Geronimo," said the war chief. "But seventeen times had the rains fallen upon me when I was admitted to the warrior class. Then I was a Ned-ni, as my fathers before me had been; but I loved Alope, the slender daughter of No-po-so of the Be-don-ko-he and she loved me. I gave No-po-so the many ponies that he had asked for Alope and took her with me. Then it was that I was adopted into the tribe of my good wife. I became a Be-don-ko-he.
"Three children came to us in the twelve years that followed and we were happy. There was peace between us and the tribes that were our neighbors. We were at peace with the Mexican towns in Chihuahua and Sonora.
"Happy, carefree, contented, the Be-don-ko-he, with all their women and their children, went down through Sonora toward Casa Grande to trade, but before we reached our destination we stopped at the Mexican village which we called Kas-ki-yeh, making our camp just outside the town.
"I had brought my mother with me, as well as Alope and our three children. With the other women and children they remained in camp under the protection of a few warriors while the balance of the braves went daily into the town to trade.
"Thus we had been living in peace and fancied security for several days when one evening as we were returning to camp we were met by several of our women and children. Their burning eyes reflected the sorrow and righteous anger that blazed within their breasts as they told us that during our absence Mexican troops had attacked our camp, slain the warriors that had been left to guard it, run off our ponies, burned our supplies, stolen our weapons and murdered many of our women and children.
"Mangas Colorado, chief of the Ned-ni, who was with us with a few of his people, was the ranking war: chief and to him we turned now, for this was war. He told us to separate and hide until darkness had fallen, and this we did, assembling again in a thicket by the river. Then it was, when all had come, that I discovered for the first time that my aged mother, my young wife, my three small children were among the slain.
"Without ponies, without weapons, our force reduced, surrounded by the enemy and far within his country, we were in no position to give battle. In silence and in darkness, therefore, we took up the long trail toward our own country, leaving our dead upon the field.
"Stunned by the sorrow that had overwhelmed me I followed behind the retreating tribe, just within hearing distance of the soft footfalls of moccasined feet. For two days and nights of forced marching I did not eat, I did not speak, and no one spoke to me--there was nothing to say.
"At last we arrived at our own kunh-gan-hay. There was the tepee that I had made for Alope, a tepee of buffalo hides. There were the bear robes, the lion skins, the other trophies of the chase that I had placed there for her. There were the little decorations of beads and drawn work on buckskin made by Alope's own slender fingers. There were the many pictures that she had drawn upon the walls of our home, and there were the playthings of our little ones.
"I burned them all. Also I burned my mother's tepee and destroyed all her property. It was then I took an oath to be revenged upon the Mexicans, to kill them wherever I found them, to give them no quarter and to show them no mercy.
"My mother, Alope, our three children have been avenged many times over, but the end is not yet. Now, perhaps, Shoz-Dijiji too will see the same pictures of the mind that Geronimo sees when the war trail crosses the path of the Mexicans--an old woman and a young woman lying in their blood, three little children huddled together in terror before the bullets or the gun butts of the Mexican soldiers stilled their sobs forever."
The wrinkled war chief arose and walked silently away. In silence Shoz-Dijiji sat--in silence and in thought.
And all during the long, arduous marches that followed he thought upon what Geronimo had told him until he too came to hate the enemies of his people with a bitterness that was but to be increased with each closer association with them, whether in war or in peace; but Shoz-Dijiji discriminated less between Mexicans and Americans than did Geronimo, for he knew that upon the whole the former had sinned against them less than the latter.
Always watching for attack from in front, for pursuit from the rear, the Apaches drove the laden mules northward toward home, keeping as much to inaccessible mountains as the limitations of the mules permitted; passing the few habitations that lay in their way silently by night, with the single exception of an isolated Mexican ranch not far from the border. This they attacked by day, slaying its owner, his wife and children.
Again Shoz-Dijiji and Gian-nah-tah conducted themselves well, thus having two engagements to their credit of the four necessary before they could be accepted into the warrior class; but again Shoz-Dijiji abstained from torture or mutilation, though he watched Juh, the butcher, with interest, if nothing more.