"Maybe they ain't all bad, Dad," said Wichita, who thought that she understood perfectly why Shoz-Dijiji had not killed the boy.
"No," admitted her father, "the dead ones ain't so bad."
His vengeance accomplished, Shoz-Dijiji was as a lost soul wandering in Purgatory, facing a goalless eternity. He ranged northern Sonora, a solitary figure, grim, terrible. He avoided Indians as sedulously as he did Mexicans, for the greatest wrong that had ever been done him had been committed by the hand of an Indian. He felt that all men were his enemies and that henceforth he must travel alone. He could not know that the wound, so fresh, so raw, the first hurt that ever had touched his inmost soul, might be healed by the patient hand of Time; that though the scar remained the wound would cease to throb.
He lived by the chase, supplemented by an occasional raid when he required such luxuries as sugar or tobacco, or necessities such as salt, flour or ammunition. Upon these occasions he walked boldly and in the broad light of day into isolated ranch house or village store, taking what he would; where he met with interference he killed, striking swiftly, mercilessly, otherwise he ignored the natives. They were as the dirt beneath his feet, for was he not an Apache, a war chief?
Pride of caste gripped him inflexibly, so that he felt only contempt for those who were not Apaches. Even though the words of Juh were constantly in his mind he pretended that they were not. He thought of himself more jealously than ever as a pure-blooded Apache; the wicked words of Juh were a lie: "You are white!"
Weeks came and went until they numbered months. "The Apache Devil" was notorious across Sonora and into Chihuahua. Whole regiments of Mexican troops were in the field, searching for him; but they never saw him. Strange tales grew up about him. He possessed the power of invisibility. He could change himself at will into a coyote, a rattlesnake, a lion. Every depredation, every murder was attributed to him, until the crimes upon his soul were legion.
Slowly the wound was healing. He was surprised, almost hurt, to discover a growing longing for the companionship of his kind. His thoughts, now, were more and more often filled with pleasant memories of Sons-ee-ah-ray, memories of Geronimo, of the other Be-don-ko-he who were his own people. He wondered how they fared. And then one morning he turned his face northward toward Arizona.
Old Nakay-do-klunni, the trouble maker, was dead; the renegades had returned to the reservations or been driven in scattered bands across the boundary into Mexico. The troops were enjoying a well-earned rest. They were building roads, digging boulders out of parade grounds, erecting telegraph lines up and down over red-hot mountains and white-hot plains, until an entire troop would not have rendered out a teacupful of fat. Always there were detachments scouting, patrolling.
Lieutenant King commanded a detachment thus engaged. A parched, gaunt, service sergeant was, nominally, second in command. He had forgotten more about soldiering and Indian fighting than all the shave-tail second lieutenants in the army knew, and Lieutenant King, by way of becoming a good officer, realized this and utilized the sergeant for the very purpose for which the "old man" had sent him along--as mentor, guide, instructor. However, the sergeant agreed when Lieutenant King suggested that it might not be a bad plan to patrol a little in the direction of Billings ranch, for the sergeant had delicious memories of the prune pies of the Billing's Chinese cook. Arizona nights can be quite the softest, loveliest nights in all the world, and Lieutenant King thought that this was such a one as he sat in the dark shade of a great cottonwood before the Billings ranch house where he could glimpse the half profile of the girl in the light filtering through a window from an oil lamp burning within the building. Beyond the girl, down beside the corrals, twinkled the camp fire of his men and, subdued, there floated to his ears the sound of voices, laughter, the music of a harmonica.
"There is something I want to ask you, Chita," he said, presently. He had discovered that everyone called her Chita, that it embarrassed her and everyone wlthin earshot when he addressed her as Miss Billings.
"Shoot," said Chita. He wished that she would not be so disconcerting. Sitting and looking at that profile that any goddess might well have envied put one in a mood--a delicious, exalted mood--but "shoot" and other conversational peculiarities tended to shatter illusions. He was silent, therefore, rearranging his thoughts to an altered mood.
"Well," she inquired presently, "what's eatin' you?"
King shook his head and grinned. It was no use. "What is consuming me," he said, "is curiosity."
"That's what killed the cat," she returned, laughing. "It ain't a good thing to encourage out this away."
"So I've heard. If one asks personal questions, one is apt to get shot, eh?"
"Yes, or if two asks 'em." she laughed.
"Well, please don't shoot me until you have told me if you know an Apache called Shoz-Dijiji."
"Yes, why?" He thought her tone suddenly constrained, and he noted how quickly she turned and looked him full in the eyes. Even in the dark he felt the intensity of her gaze. "We had a little brush with them just south of the border," he explained. "This fellow captured me. He could easily have killed me. In fact he was about to when he seemed to recognize me. He let me go because I was a friend of yours. He even killed another buck who tried to shoot me. He said you had been kind to him."
"Yes," said the girl. "He saved me once from a tin-horn who was tryin' to get fresh. After that I had a chance to help him once. I'm mighty glad I did."
"So am I--it saved my life. He sent you a message."
"Yes?"
"He said that he could not return your pony because it was dead, but that he would send your friend back alive instead--he seemed to take it for granted that I am your friend."
"Ain't you?"
"I hope so, Chita."
"'Twasn't such a bad swap at that," laughed the girl. "That ewe neck roan was a sort o' ornery critter anyways; but Dad did seem to set a heap o' store by it--anyways after it was gone. I never heered him do anything but cuss it before."
"He'll probably always think it worth more than a soldier," said King.
"I wouldn't say that, and I wouldn't give him no chance to think about it at all. I reckon Dad wouldn't be tickled more'n half to death if he knew I'd give a hoss to an Injun."
"You must have had a good reason to do it."
"I sure did--I wanted to; but there was really a better reason than that. This was the whitest Injun I ever see and I owed him something for what he'd done for me. I couldn't let a Injun be whiter than me, could I? Listen--I'll tell you all about It."
When she had finished she waited, looking up at King for an expression of his verdict upon her action.
"I think you did right, Chita," he said, "but I also think that the less said about it the better. Don't you?"
"I aint been publishin' the matter in no newspapers," she returned. "You pumped it out of me."
They sat in silence for a long time then, and as King watched her face, the easy, graceful motions of her lithe body, her slender fingers, her dainty ankles, he was drawn to her as he had never been drawn to a woman before. He knew her heart and soul must be as wonderful as her face and form; he had caught a fleeting glimpse of them as she spoke of Shoz-Dijiji and the loyalty that she owed him. What a wonderful creature she would have made had she been born to such an environment of culture and refinement as had surrounded him from childhood. He wanted to reach out and touch her, to draw her toward him, to ask her if he might hope. He was hopelessly, helplessly under the spell of her charms.
"I reckon, mister, I'll be hittin' the hay," she said, rising.
"Chita!" he cried. "Why do you do it?"