SHOZ-DIJIJI
THE years rolled by—happy, exciting years for the little boy, whether
sitting at the feet of Morning Star listening to the legends of their
people, or learning of the ways of the sun and the moon and the stars
and the storms, or praying to Usen for health, for strength, for wisdom,
or for protection, or being hurried to safety when enemies attacked. The
chase, the battle, the wild dances, fierce oaths, loving care, savage
cruelties, deep friendships, hatred, vengeance, the lust for loot,
hardship—bitter, bitter hardship—a little ease; these were the
influences that shaped the character of the growing boy.
Go-yat-thlay told him of the deeds of his forefathers—of Maco, the
grandfather of Go-yat-thlay, who had been a great warrior and hereditary
chief of the Ned-ni; of Delgadito and of Mangas Colorado. He taught him
how to make and use the bow and the arrow and the lance, and from fierce
and terrible Go-yat-thlay, who was never fierce or terrible to him, he
learned that it was his duty to kill the enemies of his people—to hate
them, to torture them, to kill them—and that of all the enemies of the
Shis-Inday the Mexicans were the most to be hated, and next to the
Mexicans, the Americans.
At eight the boy was more proficient at trailing and hunting than a
white man ever becomes, nor was he any mean marksman with his primitive
weapons. Already he was longing to become a warrior. Often, while
Go-yat-thlay talked to him, he sat and fondled the Spencer rifle that
the chief had taken from a dead soldier, his fingers itching to press
the trigger as he dropped the sights upon a soldier of the white-eyes.
It was in the spring of 1873 that a boy of ten, armed with bow and
arrows, moved silently up a timbered canyon along the headwaters of the
Gila. He was almost naked, but for loin cloth and moccasins. A strip of
soft buckskin, which the loving hands of Sons-ee-ah-ray had made
beautiful with colored beads, bound his brow and his straight, black
hair. In a quiver of mountain lion skin he carried his arrows behind his
left shoulder. He was tall for his age and very straight, his skin was
reddish-brown and of that wondrous texture that belongs alone to the
skin of healthy childhood; his movements were all grace, like those of a
panther.
A mile below him, upon the rocky spur of the mountains, lay the camp of
his people, the Be-don-ko-he Apaches, and with them were the Cho-kon-en
and the Ned-ni. The boy played that he was a scout, sent out by the
great Cochise, to spy upon the enemy. Thus always, surrounded by a world
of stern realities, he lived in a world of make-believe that was even
sterner—so is it with children.
The boy was alone in mountains filled with dangerous beasts—panthers,
lions, bears; and in a country filled with dangerous enemies—white men;
but he was not afraid. Fear was one of the things that he had not been
taught by Morning Star or Go-yat-thlay.
The fragrance of the cedar was in his nostrils, the thin, pure mountain
air filled his growing lungs and imparted to his whole being an
exhilaration that was almost intoxication. If ever there was joy in life
it belonged to this chief’s son.
He turned a rocky shoulder that jutted across the narrow trail, and came
face to face with shoz-dijiji, the black bear. Fear he had not been
taught, but caution he had. He had learned that only a fool risks his
life where there is nothing to be gained by the hazard. Perhaps the
ancient Caledonian warriors from whose loins his seed had sprung had not
learned this—who knows? At any rate the boy did not seek safety in
retreat. He stopped and fitted an arrow to his bow, at the same time
placing two more arrows between the second and third and third and
fourth fingers of his right hand, ready for instant use.
The bear had stopped in his tracks and stood eyeing the boy. He was of a
mind to run away, but when the bow twanged and a piece of sharpened
quartz tore into his neck where it joined his left shoulder he became
suddenly a terrible engine of revengeful destruction, and voicing
thunderously growl after growl, he rushed upon the boy with open jaws
and snarling face.
The lad knew that now it was too late to retreat and his second arrow,
following close upon the first, sank even deeper into the bear’s neck,
and the third, just as shoz-dijiji reared upon his hind legs to seize
him, entered between the ribs under the foreleg.
Then the black bear was upon him and together the two toppled from the
narrow trail and rolled down among the cedars growing below. They did
not roll far—fifteen feet, perhaps—when they were brought up by the
bole of a tree. The boy hit with his head and lost consciousness.
It was several minutes before the lad opened his eyes. Beside him lay
the dead body of shoz-dijiji; the last arrow had penetrated his savage
heart. The son of Go-yat-thlay sat up and a broad smile illumined his
face. He rose to his feet and executed a war dance around the body of
his vanquished foe, bending to the right and left, backward and forward
until his body was parallel with the ground; now leaping high in air,
now stepping with measured tread, he circled the dead bear time and time
again. Fierce shouts rose to his lips, but he held them in check for he
knew that the white soldiers were searching for his people.
Suddenly he stopped dancing and looked down at shoz-dijiji, and then
glanced back along the trail toward the camp that was out of sight
beyond the many turns of the winding canyon. Then he stooped and tried
to lift the bear, but his young muscles were not equal to the effort.
Withdrawing his arrows from the bear’s body and recovering his bow he
clambered to the trail and set off at a brisk trot toward camp. He was
sore and lame and his head ached, but what matter? Never had he been
more happy.
As he entered the camp he was discovered by some playing children.
“Come, son of Go-yat-thlay!” they cried. “Come and play with us!” But
the son of Go-yat-thlay passed them haughtily. He went directly to where
several warriors were squatting, smoking, and waited until they noticed
him.
“Where is Go-yat-thlay?” he asked.
One of the warriors jerked a thumb down the canyon. “Go-yat-thlay hunts
antelope in the valley,” he said.
“I, the son of Go-yat-thlay,” said the boy, “have killed shoz-dijiji. I,
alone, shee-dah, have done this thing; but alone I cannot bring in my
kill. Therefore will you, Natch-in-ilk-kisn, come and help bring in the
body of shoz-dijiji, yah-tats-an?”
“You no kill shoz-dijiji, you lie,” said Natch-in-ilk-kisn. “You only
little ish-kay-nay.”
The lad drew himself up to his full height. “The son of Go-yat-thlay,
the chief, does not lie—to his friends,” he added. Then he pointed to
the scratches and the blood upon him. “Think you I got these playing tag
with the other children?” he asked. “The meat of shoz-dijiji is good.
Would Natch-in-ilk-kisn rather have the wolf, the coyote and the vulture
eat it than to eat it himself?”
The warrior rose. “Come, little ish-kay-nay,” he said, laughing.
“Natch-in-ilk-kisn joked. He will go with you.”
That night was a proud night for the son of Go-yat-thlay; for at the age
of ten he had killed big game and won a name for himself. Henceforth he
was to be known to man as Shoz-Dijiji, and not just as ish-kay-nay—boy.
He had had a name for a long time of course, but, also of course, no one
ever mentioned it in his presence, since if the bad spirits ever learned
his name they could, and undoubtedly would, cause him a great deal of
trouble, even to sickness and death.
Go-yat-thlay was not Go-yat-thlay’s name either, for he too, as all
other Apaches, had a secret name that was really his though no one ever
used it; and though he lived to be eighty years old and was better known
all over the world than any Indian who ever lived, with the possible
exception of the Sioux medicine man, Sitting Bull, yet to this day no
white man knows what his name was, and few indeed were those who knew
him even as Go-yat-thlay. By another name was he known, a name that the
Mexicans gave him, a name that held in fear and terror a territory into
which could have been dumped the former German Empire and all of Greece,
and still had plenty of room to tuck away Rhode Island—Geronimo.
That night Go-yat-thlay was proud, too, for Shoz-Dijiji was all that the
proudest Apache father could expect of any son; and according to the
custom of the Apaches the boy was as much the son of Go-yat-thlay as
though he had been the blood of his own blood.
Before the lad was sent to bed he sat at the knee of the grim chieftain
and the man stroked the boy’s head. “You will be a brave in no time,
Shoz-Dijiji,” he said. “You will be a warrior and a great one. Then you
can go forth and spread terror among the pindah lickoyee, slaying them
where you find them.”
“You hate the white-eyes,” said Shoz-Dijiji. “They are men like we; they
have arms and legs, as do we, and they walk and talk. Why do they fight
us? Why do we hate them?”
“Many years ago they came into our country and we treated them well,”
replied Go-yat-thlay. “There were bad men among them, but also there are
bad men among the Apaches. Not all men are good. If we killed their bad
men then they killed us. If some of our bad men killed some of them they
tried to punish all of us, not seeking out just the bad men among us who
had made the trouble; they killed us all, men, women and children, where
they found us. They hunted us as they would wild beasts.
“They took away our lands that Usen gave us. We were told that we could
not hunt where our fathers had hunted since the beginning of the world;
where we had always hunted. But they hunted there, where they would.
They made treaties with us and broke them. The white-eyed men do not
keep their promises and they are very treacherous. I will tell you now
of just a single instance that you may not forget the perfidy of the
white man and that you may hate him the more. This happened many years
ago, while Mangas Colorado was still living.
“Some of the chiefs of the white soldiers invited us to a council at
Apache Pass. Mangas Colorado, with many others, went, believing in the
good intentions of the white chiefs. Just before noon they were all
invited into a tent where they were told that they would be given food,
but instead they were set upon by the white soldiers. Mangas Colorado
drew his knife and cut his way through the side of the tent, as did
several other warriors, but many were killed and captured.
“Among the Be-don-ko-hes killed then were San-za, Kla-de-ta-he,
Ni-yo-ka-he and Go-pi. Remember these names and when you see a white man
think of them and revenge them.”
It was another day. The squaws brewed tizwin. In a group sat the
warriors and the chiefs. Go-yat-thlay was still boasting about the
exploit of his little Shoz-Dijiji.
“He will make a great warrior,” said he to Cochise, hereditary chief of
the Cho-kon-en and war chief of all the Apaches. “I knew it from the
first, for when he was taken from the wagon of his people he did not
cry, although Juh dragged him out by one leg and held him with his head
down. He did not cry then; he has never cried since.”
“He is the child of the white man,” growled Juh. “He should have been
killed.”
“He looked like one of us, like a Shis-Inday,” replied Go-yat-thlay.
“Long time after I learned at the agency, when we had come back from
Sonora, that his mother was a white woman.”
“You know it now,” said Juh.
A terrible expression crossed the cruel face of Go-yat-thlay. He leaped
to his feet, whipping out his knife as he arose. “You talk much, Juh, of
killing Shoz-Dijiji,” he said in a low voice. “Ten times have the rains
come since first you would have killed him and you are still talking
about it. Now you may kill him; but first you must kill Go-yat-thlay!”
Juh stepped back, scowling. “I do not wish to kill Shoz-Dijiji,” he
said.
“Then keep still. You talk too much—like an old woman. You are not
Naliza; when Naliza talks he says something.” Go-yat-thlay slipped his
knife into his belt and squatted again upon his heels. With silver
tweezers he plucked the hairs from about his mouth. Cochise and Naliza
laughed, but Juh sat there frowning. Juh! that terrible man who was
already coming to be known as “the butcher.”
Shoz-Dijiji, from the interior of his father’s hut, heard this talk
among his elders and when Go-yat-thlay sprang to his feet and
Shoz-Dijiji thought that blood would be spilled he stepped from the
doorway, in his hands a mesquite bow and a quartz-tipped arrow. His
straight, black hair hung to his shoulders, his brown hide was
sun-tanned to a shade even deeper than many of his full-blood Apache
fellows. The trained muscles of his boyish face gave no hint of what
emotions surged within him as he looked straight into Juh’s eyes.
“You lie, Juh,” he said; “I am not a white-eyes. I am the son of
Go-yat-thlay. Say that I am not a white, Juh!” and he raised his arrow
to a level with the warrior’s breast. “Say that he is not white or
Shoz-Dijiji will kill you!”
Cochise and Naliza and Go-yat-thlay, grinning, looked at Juh and then
back at Shoz-Dijiji. They saw the boy bend the bow and then Cochise
interfered.
“Enough!” he said. “Go back to the women and the children, where you
belong.”
The boy lowered his weapon. “Cochise is chief,” he said. “Shoz-Dijiji
obeys his chief. But Shoz-Dijiji has spoken; some day he will be a
warrior and then he will kill Juh.” He turned and walked away.
“Do not again tell him that he is white,” said Cochise to Juh. “Some day
soon he will be a warrior and if he thinks that he is white it will make
his heart like water against the enemies of our people.”
Shoz-Dijiji did not return to the women and children. His heart was in
no mood for play nor for any of the softer things of life. Instead he
walked alone out of the camp and up a gaunt, parched canyon. He moved as
noiselessly as his own shadow. His eyes, his ears, his nostrils were
keenly alert, as they ever were, for Shoz-Dijiji was playing a game that
he always played even when he seemed to be intent upon other things—he
was hunting the white soldiers. Sometimes, with the other boys, he
played that they were raiding a Mexican rancheria, but this sport
afforded him no such thrill as did the stalking of the armed men who
were always hunting his people.
He had seen the frightened peons huddled in their huts, or futilely
running to escape the savage, painted warriors who set upon them with
the fury of demons; he had seen the women and children shot, or stabbed,
or clubbed to death with the men; he had seen all this without any
answering qualm of pity; but it had not thrilled him as had the
skirmishes with the soldiers of Mexico and the United States—ah, there
was something worthy the mettle of a great warrior!
From infancy he had listened to the stories of the deeds of the warriors
of his people. He had hung breathless upon the exploits of Victorio, of
Mangas Colorado, of Cochise. For over three hundred years his people had
been at war with the whites; their lands had been stolen, their
warriors, their women and their children had been ruthlessly murdered;
they had been treated with treachery; they had been betrayed by false
promises.
Shoz-Dijiji had been taught to look upon the white man not only as a
deadly enemy, but as a coward and a liar; even as a traitor to his
fellow whites, for it was not unknown to this little Apache boy that
there were many white men who made a living selling rifles and
ammunition to the Indians while their own troops were in the field
against them. It was no wonder Shoz-Dijiji held the whites in contempt,
or that to be called white was the bitterest insult that could be placed
upon him.
Today, as he moved silently up the sun-scorched canyon he was thinking
of these things and listening, listening, always listening. Perhaps he
would hear the distant thud of iron-shod hoofs, the clank of a saber,
and be the first to warn his people of the approaching enemy. He knew
that there were scouts far afield—eagled-eyed men, past whom not even
klij-litzogue, the yellow snake, could glide unseen; yet he loved to
dream, for he was a boy.
The dreaming that Shoz-Dijiji practiced did not dull his senses; on the
contrary it was thus that he made them more alert, for he lived his
dreams, rehearsing always the part of the great warrior that he hoped
some day to play upon the stage of life, winning the plaudits of his
fellows.
And so it was that now he saw something behind a little bush a hundred
feet away, although the thing had not moved or otherwise betrayed its
presence. For an instant Shoz-Dijiji became a bronze statue, then very
slowly he raised his mesquite bow as he strung his quartz-tipped arrow.
With the twang of the string the arrow leaped to its mark and after it
came Shoz-Dijiji. He had not waited to see if he had made a hit; he knew
that he had, also he knew what had been hiding behind the bush and so he
was not surprised nor particularly elated when he picked up ka-chu, the
jack rabbit, with an arrow through its heart; but it was not ka-chu that
he saw—it was the big chief of the white soldiers. Thus played
Shoz-Dijiji, the Apache boy.
As he came into camp later in the afternoon he saw Cochise squatting in
the shadow of his hut with several of the men of the village. There were
women, too, and all were laughing and talking. It was not a council, so
Shoz-Dijiji dared approach and speak to the great chief.
There was that upon the boy’s mind that disturbed him—he wished it
settled once and for all—yet he trembled a little as he approached this
company of his elders. Like all the other boys he stood in awe of
Cochise and he also dreaded the ridicule of the men and women. He came
and stood silently for what seemed a long time, looking straight at
Cochise until the old chieftain noticed him.
“Shoz-Dijiji is a little boy,” said the lad, “and Cochise is a great
chief; he is the father of his people; he is full of wisdom and true are
the words that he speaks. Juh has said that Shoz-Dijiji is white.
Shoz-Dijiji would rather be dead than white. The great chief can speak
and say if Shoz-Dijiji be a true Apache that after this Juh may keep a
still tongue in his head.”
Cochise arose and placed his hand on the boy’s head and looked down upon
him. A fierce and terrible old man was this great war chief of the
Apaches; yet with his own people and more often with children was his
heart soft, and, too, he was a keen judge of men and of boys.
He saw that this boy possessed in a degree equal to his own a pride of
blood that would make of him a stalwart defender of his own kind, an
implacable enemy of the common foe. Year by year the fighting forces of
the Apache were dwindling, to lose even one for the future was a
calamity. He looked up from the boy and turned his eyes upon his
warriors.
“If there be any doubt,” he said, “let the words of Cochise dispel it
forever—Shoz-Dijiji is as true an Apache as Cochise. Let there be no
more talk,” and he looked directly at Juh. “I have spoken.”
The muscles of Juh’s cruel face gave no hint of the rage and malice
surging through his savage breast, but Shoz-Dijiji, the Black Bear, was
not deceived. He well knew the relentless hatred that the war chief had
conceived for him since the day that Go-yat-thlay had thwarted Juh’s
attempt to dash out his infant brains against the tire of his murdered
father’s wagon, even though the lad knew nothing of the details of that
first encounter and had often wondered why Juh should hate him.
As a matter of fact Juh’s hatred of the boy was more or less impersonal,
in so far as Shoz-Dijiji was concerned, being rather a roundabout
resentment against Go-yat-thlay, whom he feared and of whose fame and
prestige he was jealous; for Go-yat-thlay, who was one day to become
world famous by his Mexican-given name, Geronimo, had long been a power
in the war councils of the Apaches; further, too, the youngest and
prettiest of his squaws had also been the desired of Juh. It was she who
had the care of Shoz-Dijiji; it was she, Morning Star, who lavished love
upon the boy. To strike at the woman who had spurned him and the man who
had inflamed his envy and jealousy, Juh bided his time until he might,
with impunity, wreak his passion upon the lad.
Now no one had time for thoughts of anger or revenge, for tonight was to
be a great night in the camp of Cochise the war chief. For two days the
bucks had eaten little or nothing in preparation for the great event;
the women had brewed the tizwin; the drums were ready.
Night fell. Before the entrance to his hogan stood Go-yat-thlay with his
women and his children. From a beaded buckskin bag he took a pinch of
hoddentin and cast it toward the moon.
“Gun-ju-le, chil-jilt; si-chi-zi, gun-ju-le; inzayu, ijanale! Be good, O
Night; Twilight, be good; do not let me die!” he cried, and the women
prayed: “Gun-ju-le, klego-na-ay—be good, O Moon!”
Darkness deepened. Lured by the twinkling camp fires of the Chihuicahuis
myriad stars crept from their hiding places. The purple hills turned to
silver. A coyote voiced his eerie wail and was answered by the yapping
pack within the camp. A drum boomed low. A naked warrior,
paint-streaked—yellow, vermilion, white, blue—moved into a slow dance.
Presently others joined him, moving more rapidly to the gradually
increased tempo of the drums. Firelight glistened upon sweat-streaked
bodies. The squaws, watching, moved restlessly, the spell of the dance
was taking its hold upon them.
That night the warriors drank deep of the tizwin the women had brewed,
and as little Black Bear lay in his blankets he heard the shouting, the
wild laughter, the fighting and dreamed of the day when he, too, should
be a warrior and be able to sit up and drink tizwin and dance and fight;
but most of all he wanted to fight the white man, not his own people.
Stealing the brains of the warriors was the tizwin until their actions
were guided only by the stark brutish germ of savagery. Thus it came
that Juh, seeing Go-yat-thlay, bethought himself of Shoz-Dijiji and his
hate. Leaving the firelight and the revellers, Juh moved quietly through
the outer shadows toward the hogan of Go-yat-thlay.
Black Bear lay wide awake, listening to the alluring, savage sounds that
came to him through the open doorway that similarly revealed to his
childish eyes occasional glimpses of the orgy. Suddenly, in the opening,
the figure of a man was silhouetted against the glimmering firelight
beyond. Shoz-Dijiji recognized Juh instantly and, too, the knife grasped
in the war chief’s sinewy hand and knew why he had come.
Beside the child lay the toys of a primitive boy—toys today, the
weapons of the coming warrior tomorrow. He reached forth and seized his
bow and an arrow. Juh, coming from the lesser darkness without, was
standing in the doorway accustoming his eyes to the gloom of the hogan’s
interior.
Keen-eared savage that he was he heard no sound, for Shoz-Dijiji, too,
was a savage and he made no sound—not until his bow string twanged; but
that was too late for Juh to profit by it as already a quartz-tipped
shaft had torn into his right hand and his knife had slipped from
nerveless fingers to the ground.
With a savage Apache oath he leaped forward, but still he could not see
well in the darkness, and so it was that Black Bear slipped past him and
was out of the hut before Juh could seize him. A dozen paces away the
boy halted and wheeled about.
“Come out, Juh,” he cried, “and Shoz-Dijiji will kill you! Come out, gut
of a coyote, and Shoz-Dijiji will feed your heart to the dogs.”
Shoz-Dijiji said other things, that are unprintable, but Juh did not
come out, for he knew that the boy was voicing no vain boast.
An hour passed and Juh was thinking hard, for the effects of the tizwin
had lessened under the stress of his predicament. Suppose the squaws
should return and find him held prisoner here by a boy—he would be
laughed out of camp. The thought sobered him completely.
“Juh had it not in his heart to harm Shoz-Dijiji,” he said in a
conciliatory tone. “He did but joke.”
“Ugh!” grunted Black Bear. “Juh speaks lies.”
“Let Juh come out and he will never harm Shoz-Dijiji again,” dickered
the chief.
“Juh has not yet harmed Shoz-Dijiji,” mocked the lad in whose mind was
slowly awakening a thought suggested by Juh’s offer. Why not make
capital of his enemy’s predicament? “Shoz-Dijiji will let you go,” he
said, “if you will promise never to harm him again—and give him three
ponies.”
“Never!” cried the chief.
“The women and the children will laugh at you behind their hands when
they hear of this,” the boy reminded him.
For a moment Juh was silent. “It shall be as Shoz-Dijiji says,” he
growled presently, “so long as no one knows of this thing that has just
happened, other than Juh and Shoz-Dijiji. Juh has spoken—that is all!”
“Come forth, then, Juh, and go your way,” said the boy; “but remember
they must be good ponies.”
He stood aside as the warrior strode from the hogan, and he was careful
to stand out of the man’s reach and to keep his weapon in readiness, for
after all he had no great confidence in the honor of Juh.