"I do not believe that Shoz-Dijiji is dead," she said.
"If you did, would you go to Juh?"
"I would not care what became of me if Shoz-Dijiji were dead."
"He is dead," said the old man.
"The moon is not yet full," urged Ish-kay-nay.
"If Shoz-Dijiji has not returned when next klegc-na-ay rides across the heavens will Ish-kay-nay listen with favor to the words of Juh?"
"If Shoz-Dijiji has not returned then," she said wearily, "Juh may tie his pony before our tepee. Then Ish-kay-nay will know what to do. She does not give her answer before."
This word the old man bore to Juh and the two had to be satisfied with it, though Juh, knowing Ish-kay-nay of old, would have preferred something more definite as he had no stomach for another public rebuff.
Day after day early morning found an Apache girl standing solitary and sad upon a commanding mountain looking ever with straining eyes out toward the south--looking for a mighty figure, a loved figure, a figure that never came. Sometimes she stood there all day long, watching, waiting.
She hated to go to the tepee of her father, for the old man talked always of Juh and of her duty, of the honor of being the squaw of a great chief; and so she crept there late at night and hid in her blankets, feigning sleep, sleep that would not come. Often she went to another tepee where an aging man and an aging woman sat silent and sorrowing, to the tepee of Geronimo went Ish-kay-nay, mingling her voiceless agony with theirs.
One day old Nakay-do-klunni, the Izze-nan-tan, rode into camp of the Be-don-ko-he and Ish-kay-nay went to him, asking if he could learn from the spirits the truth about her lover; but Nakay-do-klunni was full of another matter and put her off, though not without a thought for business. Perhaps later, he told her, but it would require big medicine and that was expensive. She offered him her little treasures and he promised to see what he could do about it.
When she told her father what she had done he went to Juh and, later, Juh went to Nakay-do-klunni; but Nakay-do-klunni was full of another matter, though he did manage to lay it from his mind temporarily when Juh mentioned a pair of field glasses and a Colt with a mother-of-pearl grip.
"Send the girl to my tepee in the morning," he said to Juh, for that night he was too full of this other matter, and when the evening meal had been eaten and the warriors had gathered to smoke and make talk Nakay-do-klunni told them strange things.
"I had a dream," he said in a voice that all might hear. "The spirits of many izze-nan-tans came and spoke to me and with them were the spirits of all the war chiefs of the Apaches who are yah-ik-tee. And the izze-nantans gave me the power to raise the dead and make them live, and the war chiefs said that they would gather together the spirits of all the warriors who were dead and bring them to the Tonto Basin on a certain day, and that Geronimo, the war chief of all the Apaches, must come there and bring all the living warriors of the six tribes: the warriors of the Be-don-ko-he, of the Chi-hen-ne, of the Sierra Blanca, of the Chi-e-a-hen, of the Cho-kon-en, of the Ned-ni.
"When they are all gathered, the living and the dead, I, Nakay-do-klunni, Izze-nantan of the Shis-Inday, will make the dead warriors to live again so that their numbers will be as the needles upon the pine trees; when they take the war trail the earth will shake and when they raise the war cry the heavens will be rent asunder.
"Upon that night there will be a great feast and a great dance and Nakay-do-klunni will make strong medicine that will turn the bullets of our enemies from the breasts of our warriors; and upon the next day we will take the war path against the white-eyes and they will all be killed and the Shis-Inday will again hold undisputed sway over the country that Usen gave them.
"These are true words and to prove it Na-kay-do-klunni will teach the Be-don-ko-he the dance that the spirits of the warriors and their women taught Nakay-do-klunni, the dance that all the peoples of the Shis-Inday will dance upon the great night before they take the war trail against the white-eyes.
"The day is near. Seven times will the sun rise and no more before the day comes when the Shis-Inday will be rid forever of the hated white-eyes and all their kind. Then will the buffalo and the deer and the antelope come back to the country of the Shis-Inday from which the white-eyed men have driven them, and we shall live again as we did in the days of our fathers. I have spoken. Come and I will show you the dance, the spirit dance of your dead."
Arranging the warriors and the women in files radiating from a common center, at which he stood, and facing him, so that the formation resembled the spokes of a fellyless wheel of which the izze-nantan was the hub, he started the dancing while two old sub-chiefs beat upon es-a-da-deds. As they danced Nakay-do-klunni chanted weird gibberish and scattered the sacred hoddentin upon the dancers in prodigal profusion and the drummers beat with increasing rapidity.
Occasionally a wild cry would break from the lips of some dancer and be taken up by others until the forest and the mountains rang with the savage sounds. Until morning came and many had dropped with exhaustion the dance continued. The Be-don-ko-he had worked themselves into a frenzy of religious fanaticism, just as had the Cho-kon-en, the Chi-hen-ne and the other tribes that Nakay-do-klunni had visited, just as the old izze-nantan had known that they would.
XIV - "FIFTY APACHES"
IT was nearly noon of the following day before Ish-kay-nay could arouse the exhausted izze-nantan, for the spirit dance had drawn heavily upon his physical resources and, too, it had left him cross and surly; for the cha-ja-la is a hard task master to its devotees, even of a single evening, and Nakay-do-klunni had been steadily at it for weeks in his effort to arouse the scattered tribes. It meant much to Nakay-do-klunni for he had long since sensed the antagonism of the whites toward the members of his precious profession and he saw his powers, and also his emoluments, not alone waning, but approaching total eclipse, if something radical was not compassed to thwart the activities of the pindah lickoyee. Power and emoluments were the life of Nakay-do-klunni.
He glared fiercely at Ish-kay-nay. "What do you want?" he snapped.
"To know if Shoz-Dijiji lives and will return;" she said.
Her words reminded the medicine man of something, of a pair of field glasses and a pearl-handled Colt, and he relaxed. "Sit down," he mumbled. "Nakay-do-klunni make medicine, talk with spirits, you wait."
Ish-kay-nay sat down. The medicine man opened a beaded buckskin bag and took forth some pieces of lightning-riven wood, a root, a stone, a piece of turquoise, a glass bead and a square bit of buckskin upon which colored designs had been painted. All the time he mumbled strange words that Ish-kay-nay only knew were sacred, all powerful and terrible. Nakay-do-klunni did not know even this much about them.
He sprinkled hoddentin upon the potent paraphernalia of his wizardry, upon Ish-kay-nay, upon himself; he tossed it to the four winds. Then he pointed toward a bag that Ish-kay-nay clutched in her hand, and grunted. The girl understood, opened the bag and displayed a few bits of the blue-green dukliji, some colored beads--her treasures. Wide-eyed, tearless, she looked at Nakay-do-klunni, wondering, hoping that this would be enough to insure strong medicine from the great izze-nantan--if her all would be enough to bring her word of Shoz-Dijiji, of her lover.
Nakay-do-klunni scraped it all into his palm, examined it, dropped it into his own bag, then he closed his eyes and sat in silence, as though listening. For several minutes he sat thus and Ish-kay-nay was greatly impressed by this evidence of supernatural power, for was not Nakay-do-klunni even now in communication with the spirits? When he opened his eyes and looked at her little Ish-kay-nay came as near swooning as it is possible to conceive of an Apache. Her lips parted, panting, she awaited the verdict.