Leaping from his mount he ran forward and kneeled beside the woman. Very gently he put an arm beneath her and turned her over. Hot blood gushed against his naked arm. His heart stood still as he looked down into the face of Ish-kay-nay. Her eyes were half closed; she scarcely breathed; only her feeble moans betokened that her poor clay still clung tenaciously to the last, fast ravelling strand of life.
"Ish-kay-nay! My little Ish-kay-nay!" Shoz-Dijiji raised his canteen and poured a few drops of water between her lips. The act recalled the girl who had given him the canteen, and, too, that recalled something else-words that Geronimo had once spoken to him. "Wait," the old war chief had said, "until they have killed your women; then you will have the right to speak."
The savage soul of Shoz-Dijiji rose in protest against the cruelty, the wantonness of this act. What if it had been perpetrated during the darkness of night? What if it might have been but a chance shot? Did not Shoz-Dijiji well know that the revealing light of day, or her sex, would not have protected Ish-kay-nay? Had he not seen the soldiers fire into the tepees where the women and children were?
Revived by the water, Ish-kay-nay slowly opened her eyes and looked into his face. Her lips moved in a low whisper: "Shoz-Dijiji, I am coming!" she said.
"Shoz-Dijiji is here with Ish-kay-nay. Do not fear. You are safe."
The great, dark eyes of Ish-kay-nay opened wider with the return of full consciousness as she gazed wonderingly into the face of her lover.
"You are not dead! Oh, Shoz-Dijiji, he told me that you were dead."
"Who said that Shoz-Dijiji was dead?" he demanded. "Juh."
"Juh lied. Why did he tell you that?"
"So that Ish-kay-nay would go with him."
"You went?"
"I thought that Shoz-Dijiji was dead and I did not care then what happened to me. It made my father happy." The effort to speak sent the blood gushing again from the wound in her breast and Shoz-Dijiji tried to check the flow, to stay the hand of death. She tried to speak again. Slowly, haltingly the words came. "Tell Ish-kay-nay--that you--are not angry, Shoz-Dijiji--that you--still love--Ish-kay-nay."
"Ish-kay-nay did right," he said. "Only Juh did wrong. Shoz-Dijiji loves Ish-kay-nay. Shoz-Dijiji will kill Juh!" For a long time the girl lay silently in his arms, her breathing so faint that at times he thought that it had ceased. Terrible was the anguish of Shoz-Dijiji--silent anguish, all the more terrible because there was no outward manifestation of it--as he looked down into the half-closed, dimming eyes of little Ish-kay-nay.
Once she rallied and looked up at him. "My Shoz-Dijiji," she whispered, and then: "Hold me close!" There was fear in those three words. Never before had Shoz-Dijiji heard a note of fear in the voice of Ish-kay-nay. Very gently the savage warrior pressed the slender body closer. There was a long sigh and Ish-kay-nay went limp in his embrace.
Shoz-Dijiji, war chief among the Be-don-ko-he, buried his face in the soft neck and a single, choking sob convulsed his great frame.
XVII - THE TRAIL AND ITS END
DEEP in the mountains in a lone cave Shoz-Dijiji buried Ish-kay-nay, covered the soft contours of the girlish body with hard, cold rocks, piled more rocks before the entrance to the cave until it was choked; buried light and love and happiness in the grave with his sweetheart.
There, beside her grave he spent two days and two nights--days of mourning, nights of prayer. There he killed the pony he had ridden, that Ish-kay-nay might find a mount ready to carry her to the spirit world. This he did, though she was no warrior, nor a great chief, because to Shoz-Dijiji she was more than either. All the hoddentin he possessed he had sprinkled upon her before he covered her dear form, and with her he had buried his most sacred things: his tzi-daltai and his phylactery of buckskin with its precious contents, even the izze-kloth that Nan-ta-do-tash had blessed for him.
Upon the third day, alone, on foot, with no medicine to protect him from evil spirits or from the weapons or machinations of his enemies, he emerged from the hills, cruel, relentless, stark savage, and turned his face toward the south upon the trail Of Juh. For two days he had been without food and for one without water, yet he did not suffer. Forgotten were the sufferings of the flesh in the greater anguish of the soul. Terrible were the days that followed. Scant was food, scant was water; long and hideous were the marches, with only hate and vengeance to buoy his spirits, to goad on his flagging muscles. He lashed his legs with switches of mesquite until they bled; he ate lizards and snakes and prairie mice; he drank stinking water when he drank at all, for there were soldiers everywhere, at every spring and water hole, upon every trail, and he must go on, for beyond the soldiers was Juh, somewhere to the south, somewhere in that vast labyrinth of mountain and desert. No turned stone, no bent twig, no downpressed bit of grass escaped his eye, and each told its story of the passing of the Apaches, of the pursuit of the soldiers. He passed through the line of troops at last, not a difficult thing for an Apache in such rough country as this, and the spoor of the Ned-ni became plainer. He pushed on and discovered soldiers once more ahead of him. Their trail came in from the northeast and he could see that they had been moving rapidly, without pack animals. That night he passed them, a single troop of lean, gaunt fighting men, and he saw them cross the international boundary and enter Mexico.
By dawn he was a good ten miles in advance of them when he became aware of something moving just ahead of him. He saw it dimly from the bottom of a swale as it topped the rise above him. He moved even more cautiously than before, but the figure ahead made no noise either. It was a man on foot and Shoz-Dijiji knew that it must be an Indian; but there were enemies among the Indians as well as among the white men. This might be a Navajo scout and if it were--a terrible expression of cruel anticipation crossed the features of the Black Bear, the nearest he had come to smiling for many a bitter day.
When dawn came suddenly upon them Shoz-Dijiji was looking down from another hilltop upon the figure of an Indian. It was an Apache, but the red head band proclaimed him a scout in the service of the pindah lickoyee; also the quick eyes of Shoz-Dijiji discovered that the man was an old acquaintance from the White Mountain tribe. The Black Bear hailed him. The scout turned with ready carbine, but Shoz-Dijiji was behind a boulder. "Do not shoot," he said. "It is Shoz-Dijiji, the Be-don-ko-he." The other lowered the muzzle of his carbine and Shoz-Dijiji stepped from behind the boulder. "Where is Juh?" demanded Shoz-Dijiji. The other pointed toward the south. "There are Ned-ni a few miles ahead," he said, "but Juh is not with them. I talked with them two days ago. I am going to talk with them again. The soldiers will not stop this time at the border. They have orders to follow Juh and Geronimo until they catch them, no matter where they go. This I was going to tell the Ned-ni."
"You are going to join the warriors against the white-eyes?" asked Shoz-Dijiji.
The man shook his head. "No. I return to tell the fool white chief that the Ned-ni have gone in another direction."
"Good!" said Shoz-Dijiji. "But you need not go on. I will tell the Ned-ni where the soldiers are and what orders they have been given. Perhaps they will wait and meet the soldiers. There is a place where the trail runs between the steep walls of a canyon. There the soldiers will be cautious against an attack, but just beyond, where it looks safe again they will be off their guard and there the Ned-ni might wait for them--if you will lead them there. Eh?"