Shoz-Dijiji was suddenly attracted by a sound coming from the south, a rhythmical sound that announced the approach of a loping horse. Two of the three men drew quickly behind a great boulder, the third behind another on the opposite side of the road. The Apache waited, watching. The loping horse drew nearer. He entered the lower end of the canyon and presently came within the range of Shoz-Dijiji's vision. Its rider was a girl--a white girl.
Even from where he lay he saw that she was very good to look at. As she came abreast of the three whites they rode directly into the road and barred her passage, and as she sought to wheel her horse one of them reached out and seized her bridle rein. The girl reached for a six-shooter that hung at her hip, a cold, blue Colt; but another of the three had slipped from his saddle and run to her side. Now he grasped her wrist, tore the weapon from its holster andragged the girl to the ground. It was all done very quickly. Shoz-Dijiji watched. His hatred for the men mounted.
He could hear the words that were spoken below and he understood them. He heard the girl call one of the men by name, demanding that they release her. He felt the contempt in her tone and a like sentiment for them in his own breast aroused within him, unconsciously, a sense of comradeship with the girl.
"Your old man kicked me out," growled the man she had addressed. "You told him to. I wasn't good enough for you, eh? You'll find I am. You're goin' with me, but you ain't a-goin' as Mrs. Cheetim--you're goin' as Dirty Cheetim's woman. Sabe?"
The girl seemed very cool. Shoz-Dijiji could not but admire her. The ethics of the proceedings did not interest him; but suddenly he became aware of the fact that his interest was keenly aroused and that his inclinations were strongly upon the side of the girl. He did not know why. He did not attempt to analyze his feelings. He only knew that it pleased him to interfere.
He heard the girl's reply. Her voice was steady, level, low. It had a quality that touched hidden chords within the breast of the Apache, arousing pleasant reactions.
"You are a fool, Cheetim," she said. "You know my old man. He will kill you if he has to follow you to Hell to get you, and you know it."
"They'll be two of us in Hell then," replied Cheetim. "Come on--git back on that cayuse." He jerked her roughly. The barrel of a rifle slid quietly from beneath the edge of a gray boulder at the top of the canyon's wall; there was a loud report that rebounded thunderously from wall to wall. Cheetim dropped in his tracks.
"Apaches!" screamed one of the remaining men and scrambled into his saddle, closely followed by his companion. The girl's horse wheeled and ran toward the south. Another shot and one of the fleeing men toppled from his saddle. The girl looked up to see a painted, all but naked warrior leaping down the steep canyon side toward her, She reached for her Colt, forgetting that it was gone. Then he was beside her.--She stood there bravely, facing him.
"Nejeunee," announced Shoz-Dijiji, which means friend or friendly; but the girl did not understand.--He held out his hand; this she understood. She took it, smiling.
"You sabe English?" she asked.
"No savvy," lied Shoz-Dijiji. He picked up the Colt, where it lay beside the dead Cheetim, and handed it to her.
"What your name?" demanded the girl.
"No savvy," said Shoz-Dijiji.
She pointed a finger at her own breast. "Me, Wichita Billings", she announced, and then she pointed the finger at him, questioningly.
"Huh!" exclaimed the Apache. "Shoz-Dijiji," and he pointed at his own deep chest.
Without a word he turned and left her, walking south toward the end of the canyon. The girl followed because in that direction lay the ranch of her father. When she came in sight of the Apache again he had already caught her horse and was leading it toward her. He handed her the bridle rein, pointed toward the ranch and started at a swinging trot up the side of the canyon. Being a wise girl and having lived in Indian country since she was born, Wichita Billings put spurs to her horse and disappeared around a bend in the canyon toward the squat, fortified ranch house that was her home.
Why the Apache had befriended her she could not guess; but for that matter Shoz-Dijiji could not guess either why he had acted as he had. He knew what Geronimo or Juh would have done. He wondered why he had not done likewise.
Halfway between the ranch and the canyon Wichita Billings met her father and two of his ranch hands. Faintly they had heard the shots from the direction of the canyon and knowing that the girl had ridden in that direction they had started out to investigate. Briefly she told them what had transpired and Billings was frankly puzzled.
"Must have been a reservation Indian on pass, he decided. Maybe some buck we give grub to some time."
Wichita shook her head. "I never seen him before," she said, "and, Dad, that siwash wasn't on no pass, he was on the warpath--paint, fixin's an' all. He didn't have nothin' on but a G-string an' moccasins, an' he was totin' a young arsenal."
"Ole Geronimo's been out quite some time," said one of the hands; "most likely it was one of his Cheeracows. Wisht I'd a-been there."
"What would you a-done?" inquired the girl, contemptuously.
"They'd a-been one more good Injun," boasted the man.
"Say, if you'd been there they couldn't no one of seen your coat-tails for the dust, Hank," laughed the girl as she gathered her horse and reined toward the ranch again. "Besides I think that buck was one pretty good Indian, alive; the way he took my part against Cheetim."
"They ain't only one kind of a good Injun," grumbled Hank, "an' that's a dead one."
From behind a distant boulder Shoz-Dijiji and Gian-nah-tah watched the four as they rode toward the ranch. "Why did you let the woman go?" asked Gian-nah-tah.
"Gian-nah-tah," said Shoz-Dijiji, "this I may say to you because we are long time friends and because Gian-nah-tah knows that the heart of Shoz-Dijiji is brave: Shoz-Dijiji will never take the war trail against women and children. That is for weaklings and women--not for a great warrior."
Gian-nah-tah shook his head, for he did not understand; nor, for that matter, did Shoz-Dijiji, though each of them pondered the matter carefully for a long time after they had returned to their respective posts.
Gian-nah-tah, following the instructions of Shoz-Dijiji, watched now carefully toward the ranch as well as for smoke signals from the east or west, or for flankers sneaking down through the hills from the north; and at last, far away in the west, a distant smoke rewarded his watching. Faintly at first it arose, a thin gray column against the azure sky, gained in volume, persisted steadily.
Gian-nah-tah crept to Shoz-Dijiji's side, touched him and pointed. The young warrior saw the distant shaft rising unwaveringly through the still, midday air, calling the scattered bands to the rendezvous, sending its message over an area as great as the whole state of West Virginia, to be received with as varied emotions as there were eyes to see it.
It told the savage vedettes where the soldiers of the pindah lickoyee were marching toward the border and where to gather to harass and delay them; it brought an oath to the lips of a grizzled man in dusty blue who rode at the head of a weary, dust-choked column, for it told him that the wily enemy had sighted him and that the clans were gathering to oppose him upon some well-selected field of their own choosing. To the far scattered cowman and miner it cried: "The hostiles are on the war-path!" and set them to barricading ranch house and cabin, oiling breech blocks and counting ammunition; it sent mothers to their knees in prayer, with crying children huddled about them.
It filled the heart of Shoz-Dijiji with joyous song, for it told him that he was soon to fight his first fight as a warrior against the hated warriors of the pindah lickoyee. It urged the main body of the fleeing Be-don-ko-he onward toward the border, torturing, burning, ravishing, killing as it went. For an hour the smoke column hung in the sky, a beacon of the hate, the cruelties, the treacheries, the wrongs that man inflicts on man.