"The bad spirits have sent the white-eyed men to kill the Apaches," he explained, "so that Usen will have no one to guard him. Then they will be able to kill Usen."
"Then we should kill the enemies of Usen," said Shoz-Dijiji.
"It is right to kill them," said Victono. "Do they not kill us?"
Shoz-Dijiji knew that they did. He knew that when he was hunting, deep in his own country, he had ever to keep an alert eye open for wandering white men--hunters, prospectors, cowboys, soldiers--scarce one of whom but would shoot him first and inquire into his friendliness afterward, if at all.
In primitive places news travels with a celerity little short of miraculous. Thus it was that the day that Geronimo was transferred to the guardhouse at San Carlos the fact was known to the Be-don-ko-he in their hidden camp, deep in inaccessible mountains. Shoz-Dijiji spoke to Morning Star, wife of Geronimo, the only mother he had ever known.
"Sons-ee-ah-ray," he said, "I, Shoz-Dijiji, go to be near my father, Geronimo. The hearts of the pindah lickoyee are bad. Perhaps they have taken him away to kill him."
"Go!" said Morning Star. "If the pindah lickoyee harm Geronimo return quickly and bring the word. Then, if the hearts of the Apache braves have not turned to water, they will go upon the war trail and drive the white-eyed men from the land of the Shis-Inday forever. If they do not, then the squaws will spit upon them and take their weapons from them and go upon the war trail in their places."
So Shoz-Dijiji set out alone and afoot for the fort at San Carlos. Deep in his heart was a purpose that he had not confided to Morning Star or to any other, not even to Ish-kay-nay when he had bid her farewell. In the high places Shoz-Dijiji had had much opportunity for thought and for reflection, and more and more during those solitary hours among the silent rocks and the murmuring pines there had been borne into his consciousness a realization of the fact that he had first vaguely comprehended at the trial of Geronimo at Hot Springs, that his people were handicapped in their struggle against the white-eyed oppressor by their inability to understand his language.
Shoz-Dijiji had recalled the night that he had lain close beside the parked wagon train of the Mexican freighters and overheard their plans for the ensuing days, and because he knew their language it had been possible for his people to profit by what he heard. How great might be his advantage upon similar occasions in the conflict with the whites, if he understood their tongue, he thoroughly realized. Imbued with this thought as well as a desire to be near his father and learn more of what the whites intended for Geronimo, the youth made his lonely way toward San Carlos.
With a handful of parched corn, a few strips of jerked venison and a primitive water bottle of horse gut, he trotted silently along his untracked way. Always alert for signs of the enemy, no sound escaped his trained ears; no broken twig, no down-pressed bunch of grass, no turned stone escaped his watchful eyes; and all that he saw he read as quickly and as accurately as we read the printed page; but with this difference, possibly--Shoz-Dijiji understood what he read.
Here he saw where klij-litzogue, the yellow snake, had passed through the dust of the way an hour before; there was the spoor of shoz-lickoyee; and in the bottom of a parched canyon he saw signs of the pindah lickoyee. Two days before a white man had ridden down this canyon toward the plain upon the back of a mare with a white right hind foot and a black tail. All this Shoz-Dijiji read quickly from a spoor so faint that you or I would not have noticed it at all. But then, it was Shoz-Dijiji's business to know, as it is our business to know that if we ignore certain traffic signals at a crowded corner we may land in the receiving hospital.
On the second day Shoz-Dijiji crept to the summit of a low divide and looked down upon the frontier post of San Carlos, upon the straw-thatched buildings of adobe brick, upon the winding Gila and upon the straggling villages of the reservation Indians, and that night he slipped silently down among the shadows and merged with his people. There were many tribes there, but among them were Apaches whom Shoz-Dijiji knew, and these he sought, seeking word of Geronimo first. They told him that the chief was still chained in a guardhouse, but that he was well. What the white-eyes intended doing with him they did not know.
Shoz-Dijiji asked many questions and learned many things that night. With the braves he laughed at the white fools who fed the Apaches between raids while the blood of other white men was scarce dry upon them, and, who, while feeding them, sought to cheat them out of the bulk of the rations the Great White Chief had sent them; thus increasing their contempt for the whites, arousing their anger against them, and spurring them on to further outbreaks.
"Our women and our children are hungry," complained an old warrior, "and yet they will neither give us passes to go out on the hunting trail or issue us sufficient rations to sustain us. We see the agent growing rich and fat upon the money that should buy us beef. We see our war chief and our friends chained in prison. To make us content they wish to give us shovels and hoes and make us do the work of squaws. They wish us to go to school and learn the strange language of the white-eyes.
"We are men, we are warriors; it is not fit that men and warriors should do these things. It is our land, not theirs. Usen gave it to us and he gave the white-eyes other lands. Why do they not stay in the land that Usen gave them, as we have? We do not want them here."
Shoz-Dijiji heard a great deal of such talk, for the Indians, discontented, aired their grievances freely among themselves. They talked of little else, and the young bucks spoke continually of war. These matters did not, however, greatly excite Shoz-Dijiji. He knew that when the time came there would be war. There always was. What interested him more was the statement of the old warrior that the white-eyed men wished his people to learn their language. He spoke often upon this subject, asking many questions.
"You wish to learn the language of the pindah lickoyee?" demanded a scarred warrior who talked the loudest and the longest about war.
"Yes," admitted Shoz-Dijiji.
"That is labor," sneered the warrior. "The men of the Apaches do not labor. You should have been a squaw."
"The men of the Apaches make their own weapons wherewith to fight the enemies of their people, do they not?" inquired Shoz-Dijiji.
"That is the work of men, of warriors," exclaimed the other.
"The language of the white-eyes can be turned into a weapon against them if we understand it," said the youth. "Now they use it against us. That I saw at Hot Springs when Geronimo and the other warriors were made prisoners. It was all done with the talk of the white-eyes; no other weapon did they use. Had I known how to use that weapon--had Geronimo, or any other of us known--we might have defeated them, for we had the right upon our side."
"Shoz-Dijiji makes good talk," said an old man. "At the post they have a school where they wish us to send our children and to come ourselves to learn their language. There are but three children in this school and they are all orphans. If they had had parents they would not have been permitted to go. The pindah lickoyee will be glad to have you come."
And so it was that Black Bear attended the school of the pindah lickoyee and learned their strange language. He stayed and worked in the school after the class was dismissed that he might ask questions of the teacher and learn more rapidly. His teacher, the wife of an officer, pointed to him with pride and told her friends that the example set by Black Bear would probably do more toward pacifying and civilizing the Apaches than all the soldiers in the United States Army could accomplish.