WHITE AND RED
IN a ranch house on the banks of the Gila, between Fort Thomas and the
San Carlos Indian Agency, Wichita Billings awoke early on a beautiful,
bright April morning.
She had ridden down from Thomas on the previous day with a Signal Corps
detachment that was repairing the line of government telegraph, for a
day’s visit with the wife of the rancher. Tomorrow they would be back
and she would return to the post with them.
Hearing her hostess already in the kitchen the girl dressed quickly and
joined her. It was very early, yet already the rancher and his men were
busy with the feeding and the chores. The daily life of the ranch had
commenced, as it always did, in the cool of the morning, for one soon
learns to take advantage of any respite from the intense heat of
Arizona’s middays.
Molly Pringe hummed a gay song as she fed sticks of cottonwood to the
hungry range while Chita stirred the buckwheat batter. The odor of
coffee and frying bacon was in the air. The women chatted as they
worked. There was a great chirping of birds among the foliage of the two
trees that shaded the front of the house. Later in the day would come
heat and silence.
From behind the brow of a low ridge north of the ranch house a band of
painted warriors surveyed the scene. They were Chi-e-a-hen and
Tats-ah-das-ay-go, the Quick Killer, led them, for Tats-ah-das-ay-go was
a war chief of the Chi-e-a-hen. With him today was Shoz-Dijiji, a war
chief of the Be-don-ko-he; but Shoz-Dijiji rode as a warrior, since his
tribe had refused to join the Chi-e-a-hen and Cho-kon-en upon the war
trail. Just below them they saw a few white men moving about the corrals
and sheds; they saw smoke pouring from the chimney of the ranch
house—there the women would be.
Heber Pringe raised a forkful of hay to toss it over into the corral
where several saddle ponies stood. As he did so he faced the ridge a few
hundred yards away and instantly the fork stopped in mid-air, for at
that moment a dozen savage warriors had urged their wiry mounts over the
top and were already quirting them into a run down the hill.
“Apaches!” yelled Pringe and started for the house on a run.
Simultaneously, realizing that they had been seen, the warriors broke
into the fierce Apache war whoop and, firing as they advanced, charged
at a mad run down the hill in an effort to intercept the men before they
reached the house, toward which all of them were now running amidst the
shriek and whine of bullets, the yells of the savages spurring them on.
Pringe, who was in the lead, fell at the threshold of his home as a
quartet of savages cut off the balance of the white men, who then turned
toward the bunk house where they might make a better stand than in the
open.
With such swiftness had the hostiles struck that the women in the
kitchen had scarcely more than grasped the significance of the attack
when a burly brave shouldered into their presence. For an instant he
stood in the doorway, his cruel face hideous with bands of green and
blue and the red blood of a fresh killed rabbit. From behind him three
other pairs of fierce eyes glared savagely across his shoulders out of
faces streaked with war paint.
Molly Pringe and Wichita Billings, trapped, unarmed, stood there
helpless, momentarily frozen into inactivity by surprise and terror. The
older woman, standing before the stove, was the first to react to the
menace of those sinister intruders. Seizing a hot frying pan filled with
bubbling fat she hurled it at the head of the leading savage, at
Tats-ah-das-ay-go, war chief of the Chi-e-a-hen. He fended the missile
with a swart forearm, but much of the boiling contents spattered upon
his naked body, eliciting a roar of rage and pain, spurring him to
action.
Springing across the kitchen he seized Molly Pringe by the hair and
forced her back upon the red-hot stove as he wielded his great butcher
knife before the horrified eyes of Wichita Billings, then he turned upon
her as, with clothing afire, the body of her friend slipped to the
floor. Wichita Billings neither screamed nor fainted as death stared her
in the face. In her heart she breathed a prayer, not for life, but for
death quick and merciful, such as had been meted to Molly Pringe.
She saw the rage-distorted face of the Apache relax as his eyes fell
upon her; she saw him pause in his advance; she saw the sudden change
that marked a new thought in that demoniacal brain; she saw and
shuddered. She would make him kill her! She raised the mixing bowl to
hurl it in his face just as another warrior leaped into the room and
seized the wrist of Tats-ah-das-ay-go. The girl stood with the bowl
poised above her head, but she did not hurl it. Slowly her hands dropped
before her as she recognized Shoz-Dijiji.
“Do not kill,” said Shoz-Dijiji to Tats-ah-das-ay-go. “She is my
friend.”
“Who are you, Be-don-ko-he, to give orders to Tats-ah-das-ay-go, war
chief of the Chi-e-a-hen?” demanded the other, wrenching his wrist from
the grasp of Shoz-Dijiji. “She is mine. I take her.”
He took a step forward toward the girl, and as he did so the
Be-don-ko-he stepped between them and with a terrific shove sent
Tats-ah-das-ay-go reeling across the room. Recovering himself, loud
Apache curses upon his lips, the Chi-e-a-hen sprang for Shoz-Dijiji with
up-raised knife; but the Be-don-ko-he was too quick, his Colt spoke from
his hip and Tats-ah-das-ay-go crumpled to the floor of the kitchen
beside the last victim of his ferocity.
“Come! Quick!” snapped Shoz-Dijiji, seizing the girl by the wrist; but
there were two more Chi-e-a-hen in the doorway to dispute the ethics of
his action with the Be-don-ko-he.
It is not difficult to foment strife between the members of different
Apache tribes, and in this case there was little background of friendly
intercourse to interpose its mediating influence between Shoz-Dijiji and
these two warriors who had just seen him slay one of their great men;
nor did Shoz-Dijiji expect anything other than opposition as he swung
toward the doorway.
Nor was he waiting for opposition to develop. As he wheeled, he fired,
and as one of the braves lurched forward upon his face the other turned
and ran from the house. Behind him came Shoz-Dijiji, dragging Wichita
Billings with him. In the yard stood many ponies, among them a pinto
stallion and toward him the Be-don-ko-he ran swiftly, while the fleeing
Chi-e-a-hen sped, shouting, in the direction of the warriors surrounding
the bunk house.
Shoz-Dijiji leaped to the back of Nejeunee and leaning down offered a
flexed arm to the girl. Grasping it, she sprang upward as Shoz-Dijiji
straightened, lifting her, swinging her to the pony’s rump behind him.
The Chi-e-a-hen had attracted the attention of some of his fellows and
was leading them back at a run as Shoz-Dijiji reined Nejeunee toward the
south and gave him his head with a whispered word in his pointed ear.
Straight toward the Gila he rode, and as he reached the bank a backward
glance revealed four Chi-e-a-hen braves quirting in pursuit. Down the
steep bank into the muddy Gila slid Nejeunee, across the turgid stream
he splashed and up the bank beyond. Behind them came the yelling,
avenging four.
Out across level land toward the mountains sped the pinto stallion while
a bewildered girl clung to the naked shoulders of the copper giant
before her. His black hair, wind blown, tossed before her eyes; his bow
and arrow-filled quiver touched her cheek; at his hip was the Colt that
had won them escape, and in his right hand he waved a cavalry carbine as
he shouted defiance and insults at the Chi-e-a-hen trailing behind.
Her rescue, if it was rescue, had occurred so unexpectedly and had
developed with such swiftness, amid action fierce and bloody, that
Wichita Billings had had no time to consider what it might portend. Was
she being rescued, or had there merely been a change of captors? She
wondered, now that she could find an instant in which to think at all.
She had recognized Shoz-Dijiji the instant that he had interfered with
her assailant. Unquestionably he had been one of the raiding party that
had attacked the ranch, a hostile on the warpath. She knew how fierce
and terrible they became under the spell of the weird rites of their
medicine men, the savagely inciting oratory of their chiefs, the taunts
and urgings of their squaws. She knew that these forces often
transformed friendly, peaceable Indians into fiends of the most brutish
ferocity; and slowly a new fear entered her heart, but even this was
temporarily driven out a moment later as the Chi-e-a-hen warriors began
firing at them. It is true that the bullets went wide, as a running pony
makes a difficult seat for a marksman, but there was always the chance
that a bullet might find them.
Over his shoulder Shoz-Dijiji spoke to her. “Take my six-shooter,” he
said, “and fire it at them. Mebbyso they no come so fast.”
Wrenching the heavy weapon from its holster the girl turned about as far
as she could and fired back at the leading pursuer. The bullet must have
come close to him, for he reined in a little, increasing the distance
between them. A moment later she fired again, and one of the Chi-e-a-hen
threw up both hands and toppled from his pony. With renewed yells the
remaining three opened fire more rapidly, but they kept a greater
distance.
“I got one,” she said to Shoz-Dijiji.
“Good,” he grunted.
The brave little pinto, straining every nerve, fought courageously on
under his double burden, but as the gradual ascent toward the mountains
became a more pronounced upward gradient the pace told on him, and
Shoz-Dijiji knew that though he might run until his brave heart burst he
could not escape even inferior ponies that carried but a single rider.
Ahead was a low outcropping of uptilted sedimentary rock, and toward
this the Be-don-ko-he reined his war pony while behind the three clung
like pursuing wolves, occasionally firing a shot which was often
returned by the girl. Through a gap in the rocky escarpment rode
Shoz-Dijiji. He wheeled quickly to one side and brought Nejeunee to his
haunches, at the same instant throwing a leg over the pony’s withers,
and as he touched the ground dragging Wichita down beside him.
“Lie down!” he commanded, pointing toward the natural breastwork, and
then he turned toward Nejeunee and spoke an Apache word in his ear.
Instantly the animal went down upon his knees and rolled over on his
side; the three were effectually hidden from the fire of the enemy.
Throwing himself down beside the girl Shoz-Dijiji raised his carbine
above the top of the ledge and took careful aim at the foremost of the
Chi-e-a-hen. At the shot the fellow dropped. Again Shoz-Dijiji fired and
the mount of another stumbled and fell. That was enough for the
Chi-e-a-hen. Running toward his remaining companion, the warrior who had
been dismounted leaped to a seat behind him and the two wheeled and
scurried away while the bullets of the Be-don-ko-he whistled about their
ears. For a while Shoz-Dijiji watched the retreating enemy in silence,
or scanned the country closely in all directions. Presently he turned
toward the girl.
“They come back,” he said.
“What makes you think so?”
“I know. They come back with many braves. They want kill Shoz-Dijiji.
They want you.”
“When they are out of sight I can ride for the post,” she suggested; but
she wondered if he would let her, after all.
“No,” he replied. “Apaches everywhere.” He waved his hand broadly from
west to east and back again. “Apaches on the war trail. You no reach
post. Shoz-Dijiji no reach post, mebby. Shoz-Dijiji take you to his own
people—to the Be-don-ko-he. You be safe there with Sons-ee-ah-ray and
Geronimo.”
To Shoz-Dijiji no promise could have seemed more reassuring, no name so
fraught with assurance of protection than that of the kind old man who
had always defended him, the powerful chief whose very name was a
bulwark of safety for any friend. To Wichita Billings the suggestion
awakened naught but fear and the name only horror. Geronimo! The fiend,
the red devil, murderer, torturer, scourge of two nations! She trembled
at the mere thought of him.
“No!” she cried. “Let me go back to the post—to my own people.”
“You would never reach them. Tomorrow we can be with the Be-don-ko-he.
They are not upon the war trail. When the fighting is over I will take
you back to your people.”
“I am afraid,” she said.
“Afraid of what?”
“Afraid of Geronimo.”
He looked at her in surprise. “You will be safe with him,” he said.
“Geronimo is my father.”
She looked up at him aghast. God have mercy upon her—alone with the son
of Geronimo!
“Come!” said Shoz-Dijiji. “Pretty soon they come back. No find us here.
Mebbyso they follow. We go now they no catch. We stay, they catch.
Come!”
He had mounted Nejeunee and was waiting for her. Tall and straight he
sat his war pony. The war band about his brow confined his black hair;
across his face, from ear to ear, spread a wide band of vermilion; a
single necklace of silver and turquoise encircled his neck and lay upon
his deep chest; beaded war moccasins encased his feet and legs.
From the painted face two steady eyes regarded her intently,
searchingly, conveying the impression that they saw beneath the surface,
deep into the secret recesses of her mind. They were not savage eyes
now, not the eyes that she had seen flash upon Tats-ah-das-ay-go, but,
rather, steadfast, friendly eyes that were, at the same time, commanding
eyes. They waited, but there was no inquiry in them as to whether she
would obey; that, they took for granted.
Still the girl hesitated. What was she to do? As deeply rooted within
her as is man’s natural repugnance for snakes was her fear and distrust
of all Apaches, yet Shoz-Dijiji seemed different. Three times he had had
her in his power and had offered her no harm; twice he had saved her
from harm at the hands of others, this last time at the cost of the
lives of four of his fellows, subjecting himself to what future dangers
she could only too well conjecture, aware as she was of the Indian’s
penchant for vengeance.
Had it been a matter only of trusting herself to him alone, perhaps she
would not have hesitated; but there were the other members of his
tribe—the squaws. She had heard stories of the cruelties of the squaws
toward white women—and Geronimo! She recalled every hideous atrocity
that had ever been laid at the door of this terrible old man, and she
shrank from the thought of permitting herself to be taken to his hidden
den and delivered into his cruel and bloody hands.
Shoz-Dijiji had ridden close to her side. “You come!” he said, and
reaching down he swept her up into his arms and headed Nejeunee into the
hills. Thus was the decision made for her.
He held her so easily, as though she had been a little child. He was so
strong, and his voice so commanding, without harshness, that she felt
almost reassured even with the coincident realization that she was being
carried off by force.
“I know why you afraid,” said Shoz-Dijiji presently. “You hear bad
stories about Apaches. You hear much talk, bad talk; but always from
mouth of enemies of Apache. You wait. You see how Apache treat friend.
You no be afraid. You savvy?”
Wichita Billings had thought that she knew this part of Arizona rather
well, but the Apache took her to a place, far back in what seemed
utterly arid mountains, that she had never dreamed of. It was a tiny,
well-hidden canyon; but it boasted that most precious of treasures,
water; and there were a few trees and a little grass for Nejeunee. The
water seeped out from between rocks, wet the ground for a few feet from
its source and disappeared again into the sand and gravel of a little
wash; but after Shoz-Dijiji scooped out a hole with his hands it quickly
filled and there was ample water for them all, even thirsty Nejeunee,
though it was a long time before he got his fill.
After they had drunk Shoz-Dijiji hobbled Nejeunee, lest he stray too
far, then he removed his cartridge belt and revolver and laid them
beside the girl, together with his carbine. “You stay here,” he said.
“Mebbyso Shoz-Dijiji catchem rabbit. Go see,” and unslinging his bow he
walked away. He went up the little canyon and soon disappeared.
Wichita Billings glanced down at the weapons beside her and up at the
hobbled pony grazing a few yards from her. How easy it would be, she
thought. She gathered up the cartridge belt with the holster and
revolver attached and rose to her feet. How easily she could outdistance
pursuit upon that swift pony.
It seemed strange that the Apache should have left her alone with his
weapons and his pony; he might have known that she could escape. She
wondered why he had done it and then the answer came to her—he trusted
her.
She stood there for several minutes with the belt dangling in her hand.
He trusted her! And what return was she about to make his confidence and
his sacrifices? Did he deserve this at her hands—to be left afoot and
primitively armed in a country swarming with enemy soldiers and equally
hostile Indians?
Wichita let the cartridge belt slip from her fingers to the ground and
sat down again to wait, her mind relieved with the acceptance of a
definite determination to put her trust implicitly in the honor of
Shoz-Dijiji. She tried to remember only his generous acts, his friendly
attitude, his noble mien, and the great strength and courage that
proclaimed him a safe refuge and a natural protector. She wanted to
forget that he was a renegade, a hostile, a savage “Cheeracow” Apache.
And then he returned, as silently as he had departed; and she saw his
almost naked body and the war paint on his face, and it took all the
courage of her brave little heart to smile up at him in greeting as he
stopped before her, tall, straight, magnificent, and laid a rabbit and a
brace of quail at her feet.
Then it was that Shoz-Dijiji did something the significance of which
passed above the head of the white girl, something that would have told
her more plainly than words the unique position that she held in the
regard of the red man. There, with a woman present, the Apache warrior
prepared the game, built the fire and cooked the meal. Wichita Billings
took it as a matter of course. Shoz-Dijiji excused it, mentally, upon
the ground that white women were helpless fools, that one of them would
not know how to build a fire without matches and with very little fuel,
how to prepare properly the quail and the rabbit.
It was almost dusk when they had finished their frugal meal. There were
no dishes to wash, but Shoz-Dijiji carefully buried all signs of their
fire and the remnants of their repast. By dark they were moving south
again upon the back of the rested Nejeunee. Down the mountains, out onto
a plain they rode, and by midnight entered another range farther south.
Here Shoz-Dijiji halted again, built a rude shelter for Wichita and told
her to sleep, while he threw himself down upon the ground a few yards
away.
All the following day they rode, through a rough, trailless, mountain
country, the brave finding food where there was none to be seen and
water where the girl would have sworn no water could exist. Wichita was
tired almost to exhaustion, yet the man seemed not to notice that they
had been undergoing any hardships whatsoever. To her he seemed a man of
iron, and almost as silent; and as the hours passed slowly,
monotonously, painfully, there grew within her a sense of trustfulness,
of security that she could imagine harboring for no other man she had
ever known. He seemed a very well of resourcefulness; a sanctuary as
granitic, as eternal as the everlasting bed rock they sometimes
crossed—a demi-god moving surely through a world of his own creation
where there were no secrets that might be hid from his omniscience.
And thus at last they came to the camp of the Be-don-ko-he, but Wichita
Billings was no longer afraid; where Shoz-Dijiji was, there was safety.
As they rode into the camp, there was a tendency to crowd about them and
there were looks in the eyes of some of the squaws that would have
filled her with apprehension had not the great shoulders of Shoz-Dijiji
loomed so reassuringly close; but after he had spoken to them, in words
she could not understand, their attitude changed. Scowling squaws smiled
up at her and one or two stroked her skirt in a friendly way, for
Shoz-Dijiji had told them that she was his friend—a friend of all the
Be-don-ko-he.
They dismounted before a rude tepee where squatted a wrinkled man and
two women. “This is Geronimo, my father,” said Shoz-Dijiji.
The girl looked, almost fearfully, into the face of the old archdemon.
She saw stern features there, and a wide mouth with almost bloodless
lips, and blue eyes, so uncharacteristic of the Apache. Contorted with
rage, she could sense that it might be a face of utter cruelty; but
today, as he listened to the words of his son, it was just the face of a
benevolent, tired, old man.
“Shoz-Dijiji brings a captive from the war trail?” Geronimo had asked
when the two first stood before him.
“No,” replied Shoz-Dijiji, “a friend.”
“Shoz-Dijiji has taken a white-eyed one for his woman?” demanded the old
chief.
Again the younger man shook his head, “She was a friend to Shoz-Dijiji,”
he explained. “She gave him food and water and a pony when the soldiers
of the pindah lickoyee were hunting him.
“When Shoz-Dijiji was upon the war trail with the Chi-e-a-hen they were
about to kill her. They would not stop when Shoz-Dijiji asked them to.
Shoz-Dijiji killed the Chi-e-a-hen, and because the country was filled
with Apaches upon the war trail and Shoz-Dijiji knew that many soldiers
would come, he brought her here to his own people, where she will be
safe until the trouble is over; then he will return her to her people.”
Geronimo turned his eyes upon Wichita. “Ink-tah,” he said.
“Geronimo says, ‘sit down,’” translated Shoz-Dijiji and the girl did as
she was bid. Geronimo patted her hand and smiled.
“You will be safe with the Be-don-ko-he,” he said. “We are your
friends.”
When Shoz-Dijiji had repeated the words in English Wichita knew that
they were true, yet at the same time it seemed beyond belief that she
could be sitting at the side of the notorious Geronimo in the remote
fastness of his hidden camp and yet be as innocent of fear as though
safe within the protecting walls of her father’s ranch house. The
thought came to her that perhaps she was safer here, since at least she
was not menaced by the threat of hostile Apaches.
That night she slept in the tepee of the mother-in-law of Geronimo and
as she dozed off to sleep she smiled as she thought of the terrors that
that name had always conjured to her mind and of the surprise and
incredulity that were certain to mark the reception of her story by her
father and her friends when she was restored to them—sleeping in the
tepee of the mother-in-law of Geronimo, not twenty paces from the war
chief of all the Apaches.