VACQUEROS AND WARRIORS
DOWN into Sonora the trail of the raiders led them, but the Mexicans,
versed in the ways of the Apaches, loitered not upon the trail. Pushing
their stolen stock to the utmost of the endurance of man and beast they
kept ahead of their pursuers. Yet to accomplish it they were compelled
to average from sixty to seventy miles a day through rough mountains and
across fiery, dust-choked flats, thirst-tortured, wearied, quirting on
their jaded mounts in sullen effort to outdistance the avenging red
demons that they never saw, but who experience, torture-won, told them
followed relentlessly just below the northern horizon. Brave men, these,
whose courage on countless savage, unsung fields deserves a fairer
recognition than it has received at the hands of the chroniclers north
of the Line.
Exhausted, half-starved, the troopers rode at last into a cattle ranch
near Nacozari, where, after turning the stock over to a dozen cowboys,
they were asleep almost before they could satisfy the pangs of hunger.
Twenty miles behind them, their deep chests rising and falling
unhurriedly, trotted the twenty upon their trail. There were old men
among them and youths yet unmatured, but nowhere was there sign of
fatigue, though for three days and nights they had hung doggedly to the
trail of mounted men, gaining in the last day almost all the distance
they had lost while the horses of the Mexicans were fresh.
Just before dark they halted within sight of the ranch and from vantage
points of concealment saw their herd grazing under the watchful eyes of
the dozen vaqueros. Quenching their thirst in the nauseous, sun-heated
contents of their septic water bottles, allaying their hunger with bits
of dried meat, tough as leather and stinking to heaven, they waited.
They were not resting, they were merely waiting.
Mighty men were these, as nearly immune to fatigue as human flesh may
ever be, or ever has been. Some there were among them, however, who,
feeling perhaps a hint of rebellion upon the part of overdriven muscles,
cut switches from ready mesquite and lashed recalcitrant legs until they
bled, scarifying them to renewed life and vitality.
Shoz-Dijiji was not of these. He had not tired. Prone behind a little
bush, chewing upon a bit of strength-giving carrion, his sober,
unchanging eyes bored through the dusk down to the unsuspecting vaqueros
and the herd. They held mostly upon a browsing pinto, Nejeunee, friend,
as his name implied, pal, comrade, prized possession of this son of
Geronimo. Shoz-Dijiji owned two other ponies. They, too, were there; but
they were not to him as was Nejeunee.
The youth chafed to move forward to the battle. He glanced behind him in
the direction of Geronimo who would give the signal for advance and
attack. He saw that the old chief and the other warriors had removed
their shirts and cotton drawers. They were stripped now to moccasins,
G-strings, head handkerchiefs, and they were greasing their bodies and
painting their faces. Shoz-Dijiji thrilled. The war paint! Ah! how it
had always filled his brain with fire and his breast with savage
emotions that he could not fathom, that he could only feel as they
raised him to an exaltation, to a fanaticism of the spirit such as the
old crusaders must have felt as they donned their armor to set their
lances against the infidels. Deep within him smouldered the savage fires
of his Caledonian ancestry that made him one with the grim crusaders of
the past and with the naked descendants of the Athapascans preparing for
battle.
The hearts of the crusaders were upheld by the holiness of their cause;
the soldiers of the Sultan Saladin died defending Allah and the right;
Usen looked down upon the Be-don-ko-he and was pleased. Who may judge
where the right lay?
Geronimo sent a warrior to relieve Shoz-Dijiji that he might strip and
prepare for battle. Dusk deepened into a moonless night canopied by a
star-shot heaven so clear and close that the stars seemed friends that
one might reach out and touch. The Apaches, lovers of Nature, sensed
beauties that many a dull frontier clod of the usurping superior race
lacked the soul to see. Even on the verge of battle they felt and
acknowledged the wonders and beauties of the night, casting hoddentin to
the heavens and the winds as they prayed to their amulets and consulted
their phylacteries.
The time had come. The war chief had issued his orders. Each brave knew
his position and his duties. One by one they crept from the concealment
of the mesquite thicket behind which they had made their preparations.
Below them and up wind was the herd. No bush was too small to offer them
concealment as they crept down toward the enemy.
Half the band was to circle to the opposite side of the herd, which,
being composed principally of Indian stock, would not be excited by the
scent of Indians. Geronimo went with this detachment. At his signal the
Apaches would attack simultaneously upon all sides. Certain braves were
to be the first to seize mounts and attempt to drive off the balance of
the stock. Shoz-Dijiji was one of those chosen for this duty. He would
rather have remained and fought, but the word of the war chief was law
to Shoz-Dijiji.
Following the braves with Geronimo, the youth, belly to the ground,
crept stealthily to the rear of the herd, giving the vaqueros a wide
berth. The warriors, increasing their distances, spread out until a thin
line entirely surrounded the Mexicans and their charges; then they
closed in. The Apaches worked with almost the precision of trained
troops but without word of command.
Geronimo saw a vaquero a few yards in front of him turn in his saddle
and peer intently at the shrub behind which the war chief lay. For a
long moment the Mexican watched intently; then, apparently satisfied, he
looked in another direction. Geronimo took deliberate aim and pressed
the trigger of his Springfield. There was a flash and roar. The Mexican
fell forward upon his horse’s neck.
Simultaneously the quiet of the night was blasted by a bedlam of hideous
war whoops. From all sides, from all directions they fell upon the ears
of the vaqueros. There was the cracking of rifles and the shouts and
curses of men. Shoz-Dijiji, Gian-nah-tah and another rushed into the
midst of the herd. The Black Bear whistled shrilly and Nejeunee, at a
distance, half-frightened by the noise and confusion, about ready to
break for liberty and safety, heard. Halting, he turned with up-pricked
ears and looked back in the direction of the familiar sound. Again the
youth whistled and there was an answering nicker from the stallion.
Arrows and lances and bullets flew thickly through the air. Only the
fast movement of the participants, and the darkness, held down the
casualties. The Mexicans, separated, surprised, outnumbered, readily
assumed the attacking force much greater than it was, yet strove
valiantly to protect the herd and hold it from stampede. The Apaches
profiting by the darkness, advantaging by the shrewd strategy of
Geronimo, carried through their well-planned attack with whirlwind
rapidity.
Shouldering through the frightened herd Nejeunee galloped to his master.
A vaquero, catching sight of the youth, wheeled his mount and bore down
upon him. Shoz-Dijiji hurled his lance and missed as the other fired
point-blank at him from a distance so close that the next stride of his
horse brought him abreast the youthful brave. The powder from the
six-shooter of his assailant burned Shoz-Dijiji’s cheek as the bullet
whizzed by his ear, and at the same instant the Apache leaped for the
vaquero, caught his arm, and swung to the horse’s rump behind the saddle
of the Mexican.
The frightened horse leaped forward as its rider, dropping the reins the
better to defend himself, sought to rid himself of the savage Nemesis
upon his back. At their side raced Nejeunee, harking to the low words of
Shoz-Dijiji urging him on. About the neck of the Mexican went a sinewy
left arm, a well-greased, muscular, copper-colored arm, as the Apache’s
right hand drew a hunting knife from its sheath.
As they flashed by them Geronimo and two other warriors saw and voiced
their applause of the Black Bear in savage whoops of approbation. His
black hair flying from beneath his head band, his muscles tensed to the
exigencies of mortal combat, his black eyes flashing fierce hatred,
Shoz-Dijiji with a forearm beneath his adversary’s chin had forced back
the latter’s head until now they rode cheek to cheek while the knife of
the Apache hovered above the back-stretched throat of the Mexican. For
but an instant it hovered. Seeing, the terrified vaquero voiced a single
shriek which ended in a bloody gurgle as the keen blade cut deep from
ear to ear.
Slipping from the horse’s rump clear of the falling corpse, Shoz-Dijiji
leaped to Nejeunee’s back and, bridleless, guided him in a circle that
rounded the rear of the herd, where, whooping, yelling, he commenced the
task of turning it toward the north, assisted by Gian-nah-tah and the
warrior who had been detailed for this duty. One by one the other
warriors of the party caught mounts from the milling, frightened
herd—in itself a highly arduous and dangerous undertaking amid the
flying heels and bared teeth of the half wild, wholly frightened
animals—as the remaining vaqueros, believing themselves attacked by the
full strength of the six Apache tribes raced for the camp of the
soldiers. Of the twelve two were dead, and one, his horse shot from
beneath him, rode behind a comrade.
Awakened by the shots and the war whoops the sleepy soldiers were
stumbling to arms under the oaths and urgings of their officers as the
ten vaqueros galloped into camp with as many excited versions of the
attack and the battle as there were survivors. The commanding officer
listened, asked questions, swore luridly when he discovered that not
only all the stock that he had won from the Apaches in the face of
torture, death and unspeakable hardship had been run off by the
renegades, but all the horses of his command, as well as those belonging
to the ranch, with the exception of the nine that had come back from the
scene of battle.
Bad as this was it did not constitute his greatest concern, for if the
Indians numbered but a fraction of what the vaqueros reported, their
force was sufficient to wipe out his entire command; and it was not at
all unlikely that, after starting the herd at a safe distance on the way
toward Arizona, they would return in force and attack his camp. Thoughts
of defense, therefore, were paramount to plans of pursuit, and the
officer set about placing a strong guard about his position.
But no attack materialized. The Apaches did not reappear. They were far
away upon the northern trail, urging their ponies to greater speed as
they drove the captured herd ahead all during the long night. In their
rear rode Geronimo, Shoz-Dijiji and another warrior to guard against a
surprise attack by pursuers. Stopping often to watch and listen they
fell far behind.
“Shoz-Dijiji did well,” said Geronimo. “You are young, but already you
have three battles to your credit—a fourth and the council of warriors
can accept you. Geronimo is proud. He laughed when he saw you cut the
throat of the Mexican. That was well done. Kill them, Shoz-Dijiji, kill
them—always.”
“But Geronimo does not always kill them,” said the youth. “Sometimes
Geronimo goes among them to trade, and laughs and jokes with them.”
The war chief grunted. “That,” said he, “is the wisdom of an old chief.
Go among them and trade and laugh and make jokes so that when you come
the next day to cut their throats they will not be prepared to resist
you.”
A simple, kindly soul was the old chief when compared with the diplomats
of civilization who seek by insidious and false propaganda to break down
the defenses of whole nations that they may fall easier prey to the
attacks of their enemies. Yet ever will the name of Geronimo be held up
to a horrified world as the personification of cruelty and treachery,
though during his entire life fewer men died at the hands of the six
tribes of the Apaches than fell in a single day of many an offensive
movement during a recent war between cultured nations.
This was the first time that Shoz-Dijiji had been permitted to enter
into conversation since the war party had left in pursuit of the
Mexicans and so, while far from garrulous, he made the most of it, as he
never tired of listening to the too infrequent tales of his sire, and
tonight, as they rode side by side, he felt that Geronimo was in good
humor and ripe for narrative.
“Shoz-Dijiji knows why Geronimo hates the Mexicans,” said the youth,
“and Shoz-Dijiji hates them, too—also, he hates the pindah lickoyee.
But before the Mexicans murdered the mother of Geronimo and his wife and
children, and the soldiers of the white-eyes slew the Apaches they had
invited to have food with them, and before Mangas Colorado was
treacherously murdered, did the Apaches have reason to hate the Mexicans
and the white-eyes?”
“Many years ago,” commenced Geronimo, “when Go-yat-thlay was yet a
youth, El Gobernador del Chihuahua put a price upon the scalps of
Apaches, just as the pindah lickoyee do upon the scalps of wolves. For
each Apache scalp brought to him he offered to pay thirty dollars, nor
was this for the scalps of warriors only, but included the scalps of
women and children. They treated us even then you see, not like men but
like wild beasts. But even this offer, large as it was, did not bring
him many scalps of Apaches, for few there are who will hunt scalps who
have scalps to lose and always, then as now, the name of the Apache
turned the hearts of his enemies to water.
“But there was a pindah lickoyee called Gal-lan-tin whose heart was very
bad. He was chief of a band of white-eyes so wicked that everyone feared
them. This Gal-lan-tin determined to become rich by killing Apaches and
taking their scalps to El Gobernador; but collecting the scalps of
Apaches is not either a safe or easy pastime.
“We drove Gal-lan-tin and his band from our country, but later we
learned that he was collecting much money for ‘Apache’ scalps. Then we
heard that we had been raiding the villages of the Papago, the Opatah
and the Yaqui, killing many, and that we had entered Mexico upon the war
trail and killed many Mexicans. All this time we had been in our own
country, not having made a raid into Mexico, or upon any other Indian
tribes. We were not at war. We were at peace.
“After a while Gal-lan-tin and his band were caught by Mexican troops in
the act of scalping some Mexicans they had killed, and then everyone
knew, what the Apaches had known for a long time, that it was
Gal-lan-tin who had killed the Papagos, the Opatahs, the Yaquis and the
Mexicans; and we laughed in our blankets when we thought of El
Gobernador del Chihuahua paying out good silver for the scalps of his
neighbors and his friends.
“Thus, by accident, was the truth learned in this case; but there were
many other murders committed by white-eyes and Mexicans that were blamed
upon the Apaches. That is the way of the pindah lickoyee. They are
fools. They find a dead man and they say he was killed by Apaches. The
Apaches find a dead man and they can read all about him the story of his
death. They do not have to guess. Not so the pindah lickoyee.”
“What became of Gal-lan-tin?” inquired Shoz-Dijiji.
“He escaped from the Mexican soldiers and brought his band to New
Mexico. There they bought some sheep and stole more than
nah-kee-go-nay-nan-too-ooh, making in all some twenty-five hundred head,
and with these they started for the country which the pindah lickoyee
call California.
“On the shores of a great river which separates that country from ours
the Yuma Indians fell upon them and killed them all. The Apaches were
sorry that it had not fallen to their lot to kill Gal-lan-tin and his
band, for they had many sheep.”
Shortly after daylight the Apaches camped while Geronimo, Shoz-Dijiji
and one other watched the trail behind. The Indians made no fire lest
pursuers might be attracted by the smoke. A few held the herd in a
grassy canyon while the others slept. Far to the south of them Geronimo
and the warrior dozed in the shade of a stunted cedar on a hillside
while Shoz-Dijiji watched with untiring eyes the rearward trail.
Having eaten, Shoz-Dijiji quenched his thirst from his water bottle,
drawing the liquid into his mouth through his drinking reed, a bit of
cane, attached to his scanty apparel by a length of buckskin, for no
water might touch his lips during his four novitiate excursions upon the
war trail. Treasured therefore was his sacred drinking reed without
which he must choose between death by thirst and the loss of credit for
all that he had performed upon the war trail, together with the
attendant ridicule of the tribe.
Only slightly less esteemed was another treasure dangling from a second
buckskin thong—a bit of cedar three inches in length and less than half
an inch in width. This was his scratch stick, an article that he found
constant use for, since he might not scratch himself with his fingers
during this holy period of initiation into the rites and mysteries of
the sacred war trail. These two necessary adjuncts to the successful
consummation of his ambition he had fashioned in the high places under
the eyes of Usen; he had sanctified them with prayer and the sacrificial
offering of hoddentin and he had brought them to Nakay-do-klunni, the
great izze-nantan, to be blessed, and so he set great store by them, but
he was glad that soon he would not have to carry them upon the war
trail.
With one more test of his fitness, which might come this very day or the
next, he would be ready to go before the council prepared to lay away
forever the last vestiges of his youth; and so he strained his eyes in
an effort to discover the first signs of pursuit which might afford him
the opportunity he craved.
A warrior! The young blood surged hot and savage in his veins, conjured
by that magic word. A warrior! To come and go as he wished, master of
his own destiny, answerable to none; his achievements limited only by
the measure of his own prowess. He saw himself a great chief—war chief
of all the Apaches. And in the vivid picture that imagination projected
upon his screen of dreams the same figures, the same scenes recurred
interminably; the war trail, where he fought the blue-clad soldiers of
the pindah lickoyee side by side with his best friend, Gian-nah-tah; the
council, with the sinister figure of Juh thwarted, confounded at every
turn and finally locked with Shoz-Dijiji in a duel to death; the camp,
where in his own tepee he rested after the war trail and the chase in
the arms of Ish-kay-nay.
Geronimo awoke and relieving the youth told him to sleep. The day wore
on, the three relieving one another in turn. Shoz-Dijiji had led the
three horses to a tiny spring to water them and to fill the water
bottles of his companions and his own. Geronimo was watching—back
toward the south.
Throw yourself prone beside this savage sentinel and follow his gaze
along the back trail. Your eyes just top the summit of a ridge which
hides your body from an enemy approaching from the south. A small bush,
from which you have broken a few branches that you may have an
unobstructed field of vision, masks that portion of your head that rises
above the ridge. An enemy might approach you up the southern slope of
the ridge to within a few feet of the concealing bush and not detect
your presence.
Just below, to the south, is a tiny meadow, its grasses sere and yellow;
for the rains passed months ago. Beneath a single tree at the upper end
of the meadow is a mud hole where Shoz-Dijiji, having filled the water
bottles, is letting the ponies drink. Farther on the canyon widens where
it debouches on a rolling plain that stretches on and on to hazy
mountains in the south. There are mountains to the west, too; and close
at hand, in the east, rise the more imposing Sierra Madre.
The plain shimmers in the heat that is still intense, though the sun is
low. The sage and the greasewood point long, shadowy fingers toward the
Mother of Mountains. Nowhere in all that vast expanse that your eye can
see is there a sign of life. You might be looking; upon a dead world or
a painted canvas. The slow lengthening of the shadows is imperceptible.
You see nothing that might even remotely suggest life, beyond the
solitary brave watering the ponies below you; but that is because the
asthenia of civilization has left you half blind as well as half deaf,
for where you see nothing and hear nothing Geronimo is conscious of
life, movement and sound—of rodents, reptiles and birds awaiting,
quiescent, the lessening heat of dusk.
Of these things he is merely conscious, his attention being centered
upon some tiny specks moving in the haze of the distant horizon. These
you could not see if they were pointed out, much less recognize; but
Geronimo has been watching them for some time. He has recognized them,
counted them. He half turned toward his companion who was freshening the
paint upon his face.
“The vaqueros are coming after their ponies,” he said. “There are nine
of them.”
The other crawled to his side and looked. “They will camp here tonight,”
he said. “It is the first water.”
Geronimo nodded and grunted some brief instructions. The warrior made
his way leisurely down to the water hole, which Shoz-Dijiji had now
left. Arrived at his destination he proceeded to carry out the
instructions of his chief, muddying the water hole and then befouling it
beyond use by man or beast. Disgusting? Hideous? Cruel? Do not forget
that he was on the war trail. Do not forget that he was only a savage,
primitive Apache Indian. Make allowances for him. Had he had the
cultural advantages of the gorgeous generals of civilization he might
have found the means to unloose a poison gas that would have destroyed
half the population of Sonora.
For two hours the three Be-don-ko-hes watched the approaching Mexicans.
Then Geronimo told the warrior to take three ponies and go northward
along the trail of the herd for a mile or two, awaiting there the coming
of him and Shoz-Dijiji.
It was nine o’clock before the nine vaqueros, tired, hot, dusty,
thirsty, threw themselves from their saddles in the little meadow and
sought the water hole. Presently there arose upon the still night air
lurid profanity. Above, looking down upon the starlit scene, the two
watchers grinned while the vaqueros held council. Should they press on
or should they remain here in a dry camp for the night?
Their horses were jaded. It was ten miles to the next water; but most
serious of all, they might overtake the Apaches in the dark defiles of
the mountains, and they did not want the Apaches to know that they were
following until they found a place where they might strike with greater
likelihood of success. To be discovered by the enemy now, at night,
would be to court extermination. They decided to remain where they were
until dawn, and so they left one man on guard while the others slept.
Just above them lay the war chief of all the Apaches with his son,
Shoz-Dijiji, watching their every move.
An hour passed. The tethered horses of the Mexicans, jaded, stood with
drooping heads. The camp slept, even to the single sentry. He was but a
youth—a very tired youth—who had fought manfully against sleep until
it had become torture. Then he had succumbed.
Geronimo whispered to Shoz-Dijiji and the young brave slipped silently
over the summit of the ridge and wormed his way down toward the sleeping
bivouac. With the caution of a panther moving upon its prey he crept. No
loosened stone, no complaining twig, no rustling grasses bespoke his
passing. The shadow of a floating cloud had been as audible. Above him,
his Springfield cocked and ready, Geronimo covered the youth’s advance,
but there was no need.
Shoz-Dijiji went quietly to the horses, calming them with soothing,
whispered words. Quickly he cut both ends of the picket line to which
they were tethered, and grasping one loose end in his hand moved slowly
up the canyon, the horses following him. Half a mile from the camp
Geronimo joined him. Behind them the vaqueros slept on undisturbed,
their lives preserved by the grim humor of the Apache war chief.
Geronimo was pleased. He derived immense satisfaction by picturing the
astonishment and chagrin of the Mexicans when they awoke in the morning
and found themselves afoot many weary, waterless miles from the nearest
rancho. He visualized their surprise when they realized that Apaches had
been in their camp while they slept; and he guessed that they would not
loiter on the trail toward the south, for he justly appraised, and
gloried in, the fear that that name aroused in the hearts of his
enemies.
Presently Geronimo voiced the call of the owl and faintly from afar he
heard it answered ahead of them, and knew that their companion was
awaiting there with their ponies.
At noon the next day they overtook their fellows and turned the newly
captured stock in with the balance of the herd. With great gusto they
recounted their exploit. That is, Geronimo and the warrior did. The ban
of silence kept Shoz-Dijiji’s tongue still in his head, but it did not
prevent him strutting just ever so little.