"Who, Shoz-Dijiji?"
"No, pony. I am Shoz-Dijiji," and he tapped his chest proudly. "Pony dead."
"Oh."
"You tell her by and by. Shoz-Dijiji no can send her pony back; he send back her white-eyed lover instead. You savvy?"
"Why, I'm not her--well, I will be damned!"
"Now I go. You move--Shoz-Dijiji shoot. This time he kill. You savvy?"
"Yes, go ahead; and you needn't think I'll try to get you after what you've done for me," and he glanced at the dead Ned-ni beside them. "But, say, before you go won't you tell me how and where and when you got a pony from Wichita Billings?"
"Me no savvy," stated Shoz-Dijiji, and turning, he leaped swiftly down the hillside to disappear a moment later from the sight of the astonished subaltern.
As Shoz-Dijiji had vanished among the hills so had the other warriors, and as the commanding officer reassembled his troop a crestfallen second lieutenant walked down a hillside and approached his captain. The "old man" was furious at himself because he had ridden directly into an ambush, because he had lost some good men and several horses, but principally because the hostiles had slipped through his fingers with the loss of only two of their number. And so he vented his spleen upon the unfortunate King, who had never guessed until that moment how much contempt, sarcasm and insult could be crowded into that single word MISTER.
He was relieved of duty and ordered into arrest, released and returned to duty, three times in the ensuing fifteen minutes after he rejoined the troop. His spirit was raw and sore, and he conceived for his superior a hatred that he knew would survive this life and several lives to come; but that was because he had been but a few weeks under the "old man." Before that campaign was over Lieutenant King would have ridden jubilantly into the mouth of Hell for him. But just then he did not know that his captain's flow of vitriolic invective and censure but masked the fear the older man had felt when he saw the youth's utter disregard of danger leading him straight into the jaws of death.
The old captain knew a brave man when he saw one and he knew, too, that the steadying influence of experience in active service would make a great Indian fighter of such as his second had proven himself to be, and in the depth of his heart he was very proud of the boy, though he would have rather his tongue had been cut out than to admit it in words. It was his way to win loyalty by deeds, with the result that his men cursed him--and worshipped him.
In the light of what Lieutenant King had heard of the character and customs of Apaches he found it difficult to satisfactorily explain the magnanimity of the very first one it had been his fortune to encounter. He found his preconceived estimate of Apache character hanging in mid-air with all its props kicked from under it, and all he could do was wonder.
Shoz-Dijiji was wondering, too. He knew that he had not acted upon impulse and perhaps that was why his action troubled him in retrospect. He tried to be sorry that he had not slain the hated pindah lickoyee, yet, when he thought of the happiness of the white girl when she learned that her lover had been spared, he was glad that he had not killed him. Too fresh was the wound of his own great grief to permit him to be callous to the possible grief of another in like circumstance, and in this case that other was a friend who had been kind to him. Yes, Shoz-Dijiji was satisfied that he had done right. He would have no regrets. As for the Ned-ni--well, he had earned death by his insult.
Following the fight with "B" Troop the little band of Ned-ni broke up once again into still smaller parties and scattered by ones and twos, so that there remained nothing in the way of a trail for the soldiers to follow. Shoz-Dijiji moved directly south into the Sierra Madre, searching for Juh. To every familiar haunt of the Apache went the silent, terrible figure, searching, ever searching; his sorrowing heart like lead in his bronze breast, his soul a torment of consuming fires of hate.
From many a commanding peak he scanned the country north and south, east and west, through the field glasses he had taken from the young officer, and then one day he came upon the spoor of an Apache in the soft earth beside a bubbling spring. You or I might not have been able to discern that a man had stepped there, but Shoz-Dijiji saw the dim print of an Apache war moccasin. He plucked some of the down-pressed grass and breaking it knew from the condition of the juices within that a man had stood there on the preceding day, and then he sought and quickly found the direction of the other's trail, leading toward the south.
Not again, no matter where it went, did Shoz-Dijiji lose sight of the spoor of him whom he followed. Early the next morning he left it momentarily while he ascended a peak and scanned the mountains to the south. Ah, at last! In the distance, tenuous, vapory blue, almost invisible rose a tiny waft of smoke. Indians! Apaches, doubtless. Ned-ni, perhaps. Juh! Be good, O Usef! Let it be Juh!
It was noon when Shoz-Dijiji passed silently and unseen the sentries of the Ned-ni and stalked majestically into the camp. His quick eyes took in every detail of the scene. He saw two of Juh's squaws and several of his children, but Juh he did not see. But Juh must be near. His long search was ended.
Warriors gathered about him, asking many questions; surprised to see him in the flesh, whom they had thought dead. He told them of the fight withthe white soldiers, of the scattering of the balance of the hostiles; that the troops might be following them down into Mexico. He did not ask for Juh; that was not his way. He waited. Perhaps Juh would come soon, but he was impatient. A terrible thought smote him.
"Were many of the Ned-ni killed when you fought the white-eyes?" he asked.
"No," they told him, "two warriors, whose bodies we brought along and buried, and a squaw was missing." They did not mention her name. Seldom do the Apaches call their dead by name. But there was no need--Shoz-Dijiji knew that they spoke of Ish-kay-nay.
"Was she killed by the soldiers?" asked Shoz-Dijiji.
"We do not know. Juh would not return to find out."
"Juh--he is not here," remarked Shoz-Dijiji, casually. That was as near as he would come to asking where Juh was.
"He is hunting in the mountains," said a warrior, waving an informatory hand in the direction of a rugged ridge above the camp.
Shoz-Dijiji walked away. He could not wait. He went from shelter to shelter, talking, but only to throw off suspicion, for he knew that some of them must guess why he was here. When he could, he slipped away among the trees and moved rapidly up the shoulder of the ridge, diagonally that he might cross the spoor of the man he sought, nor had he long to go before he picked up the imprint of a great moccasin, such a moccasin as Juh might wear.
A human tiger, then, he tracked his prey. Up rugged mountainsides ran the trail, across rocky hogbacks where none but an Apache eye might trace it, down into dank ravines and up again along the bold shoulder of a mighty peak. It was there that Shoz-Dijiji heard something moving just beyond the curve of the mountain ahead of him.
He stopped and listened. The thing was approaching, already he had interpreted it, the sound of moccasined feet moving through low brush. Shoz-Dijiji waited. Two seconds, three, five. The figure of a man loomed suddenly before him. It was Juh. The end of the hate-trail had been reached. Juh was returning to camp.
The chief saw and recognized Shoz-Dijiji instantly. He was armed with bow and arrows and a knife. Shoz-Dijiji carried these and a revolver in addition. The carbine he had cached before he entered the Ned-ni camp.
"What does the Be-don-ko-he here?" demanded Juh.
"I, Shoz-Dijiji, have come to kill a great liar. I have come to kill a great coward who cannot protect his women. I have come to kill Juh."
"You cannot kill Juh," said the older man. "Strong is the medicine of Juh. The bullets of the white-eyes cannot enter the body of Juh--they will bounce back and kill you. Nakay-do-klunni made this medicine himself. Go away, before it kills you."