"Nakay-do-klunni is dead," replied Shoz-Dijiji. "His medicine is no good."
"What he made for Juh is good."
"Shoz-Dijiji will throw away all his weapons except his knife," said the young warrior. "Let Juh do likewise. Then, with his knife Shoz-Dijiji will cut the vile heart of Juh out of his breast."
Juh was a big, strong man. He was afraid of no one in a hand-to-hand encounter, so the other's proposal met with instant approval. With a sneer he tossed aside his bow and arrows and Shoz-Dijiji similarly discarded all his weapons but his knife. Like great fighting cats the two drew closer. Juh taunted and insulted his adversary, after the code Apachean. He applied the vilest epithets to which he could lay his naturally vile tongue to the mother of Shoz-Dijiji, to his father, to his grandmother, to his grandfather, to all his forebears back to the first one, whose dam, according to Juh, had been a mangy coyote; then he vilified the coyote.
Shoz-Dijiji, grim, terrible, silent, crept stealthily toward his lifelong enemy. Juh mistook his silence for an indication of fear. He rushed upon the son of Geronimo thinking to bear him down by the suddenness and weight of his bull-like charge. His plunging knife was struck aside and the two closed, but Shoz-Dijiji gave back no single step. With as great effect Juh might have charged one of the ancient pines that soughed above them.
Each seeking to sink his blade in the flesh of the other, they surged and strained to and fro upon the rocky shoulder of the mountain. Below them yawned an abyss whose sheer granite wall dropped straight a thousand feet to the jagged rocks that formed the debris at its base.
"Pihdah lickoyee," growled the Ned-ni. "Die, son of a white-eyed man!"
Shoz-Dijiji, the muscles rolling beneath his copper hide, forced his knife hand, inch by inch, downward upon the straining, sweating warrior. Juh tried to break away, but a mighty arm held him--held him as he had been bound with thongs of rawhide.
In his efforts to escape, Juh dragged his antagonist nearer and nearer the edge of that awful precipice waiting silently behind him. Juh did not see, but Shoz-Dijiji saw, and did not care. Rather than permit his enemy to escape the Black Bear would go over with him--to death; perhaps to oblivion, perhaps to Ish-kay-nay. What did it matter? Closer and closer came the sharp point to the breast of Juh. "Speak the truth, Juh, for you are about to die." Shoz-Dijiji spoke for the first time since the duel had begun. "Say that Shoz-Dijiji is no pindah lickoyee."
"Juh speaks the truth," panted the other; "You are white." The Ned-ni, straining with every ounce of strength that he possessed, slowly pushed away the menacing blade. He surged suddenly to the right, almost hurling them both to the ground. It was then that he realized how close they had been to the edge of the abyss. A pebble, struck by his foot, rolled a hand breadth and dropped over the edge. Juh shuddered and tried to draw away, but Shoz-Dijiji, determined never to relinquish his hold until his enemy was dead, even if he must die with him, dragged him relentlessly to the verge again. There they toppled for an instant, Juh trying to pull back and the Black Bear straining to precipitate them both to the rocks below. Now Shoz-Dijiji's feet were upon the very edge of the precipice and his back was toward it. His time had come! Surging backward he threw his feet out over the abyss, bringing all his weight into his effort to drag Juh over with him. The chief of the Ned-ni, seeing death staring him in the face, voiced a single, piercing, horrified shriek and hurled himself backward. For an instant they rocked back and forth upon the brink, and then Juh managed to take a backward step and, for the second, they were saved.
Heaving, straining, dripping sweat that ran down their sleek bodies in rivulets, these men of iron who scarce had ever sweat before--so lean their thews and fatless--struggled, turning, twisting, until once again they stood upon the verge of eternity. This time it was Juh whose back was toward the awful gulf.
Now Shoz-Dijiji was seeking to push him over the edge. So rapt had each been in this pushing and pulling toward and away from the verge that one might have thought each had forgotten the rigid knife-hand clasped in the grip of the other. Perhaps they had, momentarily; but it was Shoz-Dijiji who remembered first. With a twisting, sudden wrench, he tore his wrist free from Juh's grasp.
"Die, Ned-ni!" he growled, glaring into the eyes of his foe. He drove his blade deep into the breast of Juh. "Die! Ish-kay-nay is avenged!"
Again and again the blade sank deep into the heart of the Chief of the Ned-ni, his arms dropped limp, he reeled and tried to speak, to beg for mercy. Then it was that Shoz-Dijiji, the Be-don-ko-he, put both palms against the bloody chest of his antagonist and pushed him backward. Screaming, Juh toppled from the rocky ledge and, turning and twisting, his body fell down, down to the jagged rocks a thousand feet below.
XVIII - THE WAR DANCE
A YOUNG man dismounted in the yard of the Billings ranch and approached the owner who, following the noonday meal, was tip-tilted in an arm chair against the adobe wall of the building, picking his teeth and conversing with his daughter.
"I don't reckon you're the boss?" suggested the young man.
"Yep," said Billings, "I reckon as how I am."
"I don't reckon as how you ain't needin' no hands?"
"What kin you do?"
"I kin ride some, and rope."
"Ben sick?" asked Billings, noting the other's pale face.
"Got lost. Pretty near cashed in. Reckon I would have ef a Siwash hadn't come along an' give me some water. He told me how to reach your ranch--that was nigh onto three weeks ago--then I run into a scoutin' party of reg'lars from the post an' they took me in with I 'em. I ben in the hospital ever since. Worse off'n I thought I was I reckon."
"Three weeks ago?" mused Billings. "You was tarnation lucky that Siwash wasn't no Cheeracow. Thet was jest about when they was goin' out."
"Thet's what gets me," said the youth, "he was a Cheeracow. He told me he was, an' not only that, but he was painted up all right enough for the warpath."
"I reckon you must hev had a touch of fever right then," said Billings, skeptically.
The other laughed. "No," he said, "I was all right in the head; but I'm here to tell you I was pretty near plumb sick when I stuck my ol' head up over the top o' that rise an' seen this here hostile lookin' me right in the eye with his ugly, painted mug. Say, I ken see him right now, a-sittin' there on his ewe neck roan. I did a back flip down thet hill an' pretty near kilt myself for sure." He grinned broadly at the recollection.
"Three weeks ago--a ewe neck roan," soliloquized Billings. "Did he have a blaze face?"
Wichita Billings could feel the flush that overspread her face and she was glad that she was standing a little to the rear of her father as she listened eagerly to the conversation.
"Yep," affirmed the young man, "he had a blaze face."
Billings half turned toward his daughter. "Now how in all tarnation did that Siwash git a-holt of that cayuse?" he demanded. "Musta took it out o' the c'ral right under the noses o' those there soldiers. I missed that critter the next mornin' an' I never ben able to see what in all tarnation become of him. Thet beats me!"
"Well, I reckon your hoss is down Sonora way somewheres by now," said the youth.
"Fed?" inquired Billings. "Nope."
"Dump your roll off at the bunk house and turn your hoss into the fust c'ral there," Billings directed. "I'll have the chink rustle you some grub. You ken go to work in the mornin'."
"What I can't understand," said Billings, when he had come back from the kitchen, "is why that Siwash' didn't plug that kid."