“I know now that I shall never see you again,” he said.”The pindah-lickoyee, who have never kept a promise that they have made to the Shis-Inday, will not keep this one. When you have laid down your arms they will kill you; as they killed Mangas Colorado.
“It is not too late even now to turn back,” continued the young man. “We have ponies, we I have arms, we have ammunition; and there are places in the mountains of Sonora where a few men could elude the pindah-lickoyee forever. Do not let, them take you to a strange country where they will either kIll you or make a slave of you.”
Geronimo shook his head. “No, my son,” he said, “that cannot be. The war chief of the pindah-lickoyee and the war chief of all the Apaches stood between his troopers and my warriors. We placed a large stone on the blanket before us. Our treaty was made by this stone, and it was to last until the stone should crumble to dust. So we made the treaty and bound each other with an oath. Geronimo will keep that treaty.”
Slowly Shoz-Dijiji turned and walked away. Far up among the rocks above the rocky camp site he went; and there he remained all night praying to Usen, praying to Intchi-Dijin, the black wind, asking for guidance, asking for wisdom; for Shoz-Dijiji, the Black Bear, did not know what to do.
When morning came he returned to the camp of the renegades; and there he found his people, sullen and morose, preparing to lay down their weapons and give themselves up as prisoners of war to the enemy that they feared, hated, and mistrusted.
He went to the pony herd and caught Nejeunee and brought him back to camp. Then he squatted beside a rock, and with a bronze forefinger laid the war paint of the Apache Devil across his face. Upon his head he placed his war bonnet of buckskin with its crest of feathers; about his neck he hung a single strand of turquoise and silver beads; in his ears were small silver rings, and covering his feet and legs were stout Apache war moccasins.
A belt of ammunition encircled his slim waist, and from it hung two pistols and a great butcher knife. He carried a rifle and bow and arrows.
The others saw his preparations, but they made no comment. When he was done he mounted Nejeunee — an Apache war chief tricked out In all the panoply of the war trail.
He rode to where Geronimo sat stolidly upon a pony waiting for the preparations for departure to be completed. The old war chief looked up as the younger man approached, but the expression upon his inscrutable face did not change as he saw the war paint and the weapons.
“My father,” said Shoz-Dijiji, “all night I have prayed. in high places, prayed to Usen and to Intchi-Dijin, asking them to give me some sign if they wished me to give myself up to the enemy and go into bondage with Geronimo and our people. But they gave me no sign, and so I know that they do not wish me to do these things; and I am satisfied.
“Therefore I ride out alone, the last of the Apaches, upon the war trail against the enemies of my people. While I live I shall devote my life to killing the pindah-lickoyee. I, Shoz-Dijiji, war chief of the Be-don-ko-he, have spoken.”
“Wait,” said Geronimo. “Wait until you have heard the words of Geronimo before you bind yourself to such an oath.
“We go into bondage. We shall never take the war trail again. Had it been otherwise I should never have told you what I am going to tell you now.
“All your life you have been as a son to me. I have loved you. I have been proud of you. It is because I love you, Shoz-Dijiji, that I am going to tell you this thing now. When I have told you you will know that you need not throw away your life fighting the pindah-lickoyee, fighting the battles of the Apaches.
“Shoz-Dijiji, you are not an Apache. You are not a Shis- Inday. You are a pindah-lickoyee.”
The eyes of the Apache Devil narrowed. “You are my father,” he said, “but not even you may call Shoz-Dijiji a pindah-lickoyee and live. That, Juh learned.”
Geronimo shook his head sadly. “Juh knew,” he said. “He was with me when we killed your father and mother in a pass in the Stein’s Peak Range. It was Juh who dragged you from the wagon and would have killed you but for Geronimo.”
“It is a lie!” growled Shoz-Dijiji.
“Has Geronimo ever lied to you?” asked the old war chief.
“Cochise swore before the council fire that I was as much an Apache as he,” cried the young man.
“Cochise did not lie,” said Geronimo. “You are as much an Apache as any of us in heart and spirit, but in your veins flows the blood of your white-eyed father.
“Twenty three times have the rains come since the day that I killed him; and I have kept my lips sealed because I loved you and because you were as much my son to me as though you were flesh of my own flesh; but now the time has come that you should know, for as an Apache every man’s hand will be turned against you, but as a pindah-lickoyee you will have a chance that no Apache ever may have.”
For a few moments Shoz-Dijiji sat in brooding silence. Presently he spoke.
“Pindah-lickoyee! White-eyed man!” he cried contemptuously, almost spitting the words from his mouth. “Had you told me that I am a coyote I could have carried my shame and faced the world, but to be a white man!” He shuddered.
“My son,” said Geronimo, “it is not the color of our skin or the blood that runs in our veins that makes us good men or bad men. There are bad Apaches and there are good white men. It is good to be a good Apache. It is not bad to be a good white man. Now, perhaps, it is better to be a good white man than even a good Apache. Times have changed. Usen does not look with favor upon the Shis-Inday. Time will heal your wound. Go and live among your own people, and some day you will thank Geronimo because he told you.”
“Never!” cried the Black Bear. “Good-bye, Geronimo. You have been a good father to Shoz-Dijiji. Now Shoz-Dijiji has no father. Shoz-Dijiji has no mother. Shoz-Dijiji has no people, for he is not an Apache; and he will not be a pindah-lickoyee. But he is still a war chief of the Apaches. He is the only war chief that goes upon the war trail. Now, I think, he is the only Apache left in the world. All the rest of you are pindah-lickoyee, for do you not go to live with the pindah-lickoyee? Only Shoz-Dijiji lives like an Apache.”
He wheeled Nejeunee about, and then turned on his blanket and faced Geronimo again.
“Good-bye, Shoz-Dijiji, last of the Apaches, war chief of all the Apaches, rides out upon the last war trail.”
Down the rocky hill side toward the south the pinto war pony bore his gorgeous master, while an old man, seeing dimly through blue eyes that were clouded by unaccustomed tears, watched the last martial gesture of his once powerful people until pinto stallion and painted war chief disappeared into the blue haze that lay upon the early morning trail that wound southward toward Sonora.
15. THE LAST OF THE RENEGADES
Geronimo had surrendered! For the first time in three hundred years the white invaders of Apacheland slept in peace. All of the renegades were prisoners of war in Florida. Right, at last, had prevailed. Once more a Christian nation had exterminated a primitive people who had dared defend their homeland against a greedy and ruthless invader.
Imprisoned with the renegades, and equally prisoners of war, were Apaches who had long been loyal and faithful servants to the government; but what of that! Who was there to defend a friendless people? — friendless and voteless.
Transported from the hot, dry uplands of their native country to the low, damp, malarial surroundings of their prison, the Apaches sickened and died; others, unable to endure confinement, suffering the pangs of homesickness, took their own lives.
And down in Sonora, in the inaccessible depths of the Mother of Mountains, Shoz-Dijiji and Nejeunee shared the hunting and the pasture with the cougar and the mountain sheep. They trod in the footsteps of God, where man and horse had never walked before. No man saw them and, for months on end, they saw no man.
Long” since had Shoz-Dijiji washed the war paint from his face. He was a hunter now, and upon the rare occasions that he saw other human beings he experienced no urge to kill them.
He had thought it all out during the long, lonely days and nights. Geronimo had made treaties with the Mexicans and with the pindah-lickoyee. He had promised that the Apaches would fight no more against them. That treaty, Shoz-Dijiji felt, bound him, for there were no other Apaches than he. He could not, as yet, think of himself as a pindah-lickoyee. He was an Apache - the last of the Apaches.
He promised himself that he would not kill again except in self-defense. He would show them that it was not the Apaches who broke treaties, but experience warned him that the only way to keep peace was to keep hidden from the eyes of man. He knew that the first one who saw him would shoot at him, if he dared, and that thereafter he would be hunted like the coyote and the cougar.
“Only we shall know that we are keeping the treaty, Nejeunee,” he said, and the pinto stallion, nuzzled his shoulder in complete accord with this or any other view that his beloved master might hold.
Accustomed to being much alone though he was, yet the man often longed for the companionship of his kind. He conjured pictures of camps beneath the pines and cedars of his beloved Arizona hills, of little fires before rude hogans of boughs and skins. He saw Geronimo and Sons-ee-ah-ray squatting there; and with them was Shoz-Dijiji, son of the war chief. These three were always laughing and happy. Gian-nah-tah came to the fire, and Ish-kay-nay. Sometimes these were little children and again they were grown to young man-and woman-hood. He saw many others. Squat, grim warriors, slender youths, lovely maidens whose great, dark eyes looked coquettishly at Shoz-Dijiji.
Most of these were dead. The others, bitter, sullen, had marched away into captivity.
Another figure came, but not to the camp fires of the Shis-Inday. This one came, always, riding a pony over sun scorched hills. Shoz-Dijiji took her in his arms; but she drew away, striking at him. He saw in her eyes, then, a look that he called the snake look. It made him sad and yet this picture came most often to his mind.
He wondered if the snake look would come if she knew that he was a pindah-lickoyee like herself. Perhaps she would not believe it. It was difficult for him to believe it himself. Had any other than Geronimo told him he would not have believed it, but he knew that Geronimo would not lie to him.
Well, she would never know it. It was a shame and a disgrace that he would hide from the knowledge of all men as long as he lived. A white-eyes! Usen! What had Shoz-Dijiji done to deserve this?
But, after all, he was white, he mused. From that fact he could never escape, and it was very lonely living in the mountains forever with only Nejeunee. Perhaps the white girl would believe him; and if she did would it not be better to go and live among the white-eyes as one of them?
He recalled how he used to pity any who had been born white. It would not have been quite so bad had he been born a Mexican, for he knew that there was Indian blood in many of the Mexicans he had known. It would have comforted him had he known that the grandfather of his mother had been a full blooded Cherokee, but he did not know that. He was never to know it, for he was never to know even the names of his father and mother.
He tried to argue with himself that it was no disgrace to be white. Wichita Billings was white, and he thought none the less of her; Lieutenant King was white, and he knew that he was a fine, brave warrior; and there had been Captain Crawford, and there was Lieutenant Gatewood. These men he admired and respected.
Yes, it was all right for them to be white; but still the thought that Shoz-Dijiji, war chief of the Be-don-ko-he, was white seemed all wrong.
He could not forget the pride that had always filled his heart because of the fact that he was an Apache. He had been a great Apache warrior. As a white man he would be nothing. If he went to live among them he would have to wear their hideous clothing and live in their stuffy houses; and he would have to live like the poorest of them, for he would have no money. No, he could not do it.
He thought about the matter a great deal. The lonelier he became the more he thought about it. Wichita Billings was constantly the center of his thoughts. His mind also dwelled upon memories of happy camping places of the past, and it seemed that the sweetest memories hung about the home camps of Arizona.
His lonely heart yearned not only for human companionship but for the grim country that was home to him. Something was happening to Shoz-Dijiji. He thought that he was sick and that he was going to die. He was homesick.
“I could go back and die in my own mountains,” he thought. The idea made him almost happy. He stroked Nejeunee’s soft muzzle and his sleek, arched neck. “How would you like to go home, Nejeunee?” asked Shoz-Dijiji. Nejeunee, after the manner of stallions, nipped the bronze shoulder of his master; but whether it was to signify approbation of the suggestion or was merely in the nature of a caress, only Nejeunee knew.
Lieutenant Samuel Adams King sat beneath one of the cotton wood trees that stands in front of the ranch house of the Crazy B Ranch, his chair tilted back against the bole of the tree. Near him sat Wichita Billings, her fingers busily engaged in the work that was commanding their attention. She might have been embroidering her initials upon a pillow slip or fashioning some dainty bit of lingerie, but she was not. She was cleaning a six-shooter.
“It sure seems tame around these parts now,” she remarked. “Do you know I almost miss being scared out of seven years’ growth every once in a while since the ‘broncos’ were rounded up and shipped to Florida.”
“I suppose you are cleaning that pistol, then, just as a sentimental reminder of the happy days that are gone,” laughed King.
“Not entirely,” she replied. “There are still plenty of bad hombres left- all the bad ones weren’t Indians, not by a jug full.”
“I suppose not,” agreed King. “ As a matter of fact I doubt if the Apaches were responsible for half the killings that have been laid at their door; and, do you know, Chita, I can’t bring myself to believe even yet that it was an Apache that killed your father. We got it pretty straight from some of the renegades themselves that at the time they were all with Geronimo in the mountains near Hot Springs, except those that were still in Sonora, and Shoz-Dijiji.”
“Well, that narrows it down pretty close to one man, doesn’t it?” demanded the girl, bitterly.
“Yes, Chita,” replied King, “but I can’t believe that he did it. He spared my life twice merely because I was your friend. If he could do that, how could he have killed your father?”
“I know, Ad. I’ve argued it out a hundred times,” said the girl, wearily; “but that thousand dollars reward still stands.”
“The chances are that it will stand forever, then,” said King. “Shoz-Dijiji didn’t come in with the other renegades; and, of course, you can:t get anything out of them; but it is better than an even bet that he was killed in Sonora during one of the last engagements. I know several bucks were killed; but they usually got them away and buried them, and they never like to talk about their dead.”
“I hope to God that he is dead,” said the girl.
King shook his head. He knew how bitterly she must feel — more bitterly, perhaps, because the man she suspected was one to whom she had given her friendship and her aid when he was bearing arms against her country.
He had not told her of his conviction that Shoz-Dijiji and the dread Apache Devil were one and the same; and he did not tell her, for he knew that it would but tend to further assure her of the guilt of the Apache. There were two reasons why he did not tell her. One was his loyalty to the savage enemy who had befriended him and who might still be living. The other was his belief that Wichita Billings had harbored a warmer feeling than friendship for the war chief of the Be-don-ko-he, and King was not the type of man who takes an unfair advantage of a rival.
Perhaps it galled this scion of an aristocratic Boston family to admit, even to himself, that an untutored savage might have been his rival in seeking the hand of a girl; but he did not permit the suspicion to lessen his sense of gratitude to Shoz-Dijiji or dim the genuine respect he felt f
or the courage and honor of that savage warrior.
For a time the two sat in silence, Wichita busy with her revolver, King feasting his eyes upon her regular profile.
“Everything on the ranch running smoothly?” he asked, presently.
Wichita shook her head. “Not like they did when Dad was here,” she admitted. “The boys are good to me, but it’s not like having a man at the head of things. Some of them don’t like ‘Smooth’ and I’ve lost several of my best men on that account. A couple of them quit, and ‘Smooth’ fired some. I can’t interfere. As long as he’s foreman he’s got to be foreman. The minute the boys think I’ve lost confidence in him he won’t have any more authority over them than a jack rabbit.”
“Are you satisfied with him?” asked King.
“Well — he sure knows his business,” she replied; “you’d have to hunt a month of Sundays before you found a better cow man; but he can’t get the work out of his men. They don’t feel any loyalty for him. They used to cuss Dad; and I’ve seen more than one of them pull a gun on him, but they’d work their fool heads off for him. They’d get sore as pups and quit; but they always came back — if he’d take them — and when he died, Ad, I saw men crying that I bet hadn’t cried before since they were babies.”
“That is like the old man,” said King, thinking of his troop commander. Gosh! How I have hated that fellow — and while I’m hating him I can’t help but love him. There are men like that, you know.”
“They are the real men, I guess,” mused Wichita; “they don’t grow on every sage brush, not by a long shot.”
“Why don’t you sell out, Chita?” King asked her. “This is no job for a girl — it’s a man’s job, and you haven’t the man for it.”
“Lord, I wouldn’t know what to do, Ad,” she cried. “I’d be plumb lost. Why, this is my life — I don’t know anything else. I belong here on a cow ranch in Arizona, and here I’m going to stay.”
“But you don’t belong here, Chita,” he insisted. “You belong on a throne, with a retinue of slaves and retainers waiting on you.”
Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26) Page 610