Apache Devil (Annotated)

Chapter 1 GERONIMO GOES OUTTHE SILVER LIGHT OF Klego-na-ay, the full moon, shone down from out the star-lit heavens of an Arizona night upon the camp of the Be-don-ko-he Apaches; shone upon sleek copper shoulders; shone upon high cheek bones; softened the cruel lines of swart, savage faces—faces as inscrutable as is the face of Klego-na-ay herself. Shone the silver moonlight upon Nan-ta-do-tash, the izze- nantan of his people, as he led them in the dance, as he prayed for rain to save their parched crops. As he danced, Nan-ta-do-tash twirled his. tzi-ditinidi about his head, twirled it rapidly from front to rear, producing the sound of a gust of rain-laden wind; and the warriors and the women, dancing with Nan-ta-do-tash, listened to the tzi- ditinidi, saw the medicine man cast hoddentin to the four winds, and knew that these things would compel the wind and the rain to come to the aid of their crops. A little to one side, watching the dancers, sat Shoz- Dijiji, the Black Bear, with Gian-nah-tah, friend of boyhood days, companion of the war trail and the raid. Little more than a youth was Shoz-Dijiji, yet already a war chief of the Be-don-ko-he, proven in many battles with the soldiers of the pindah-lickoyee; terror of many a scattered hacienda of Sonora and Chihuahua—the dread Apache Devil. The old men beat upon the es-a-da-ded, the primitive drum of buckskin stretched across a hoop; and to their cadence Nan-ta-do-tash led the dancers, his naked body painted a greenish brown with a yellow snake upon each arm; upon his breast, in yellow, a bear; and upon his back the zig-zag lines of lightning. His sacred izze-kloth, passing across his right shoulder, fell over his left hip. Of a potency almost equal to this four strand medicine cord of twisted antelope skin was the buckskin medicine hat of Nan-ta-do-tash by meanS of which he was able to peer into the future, to foresee the approach of an enemy, cure the sick, or tell who had stolen ponies from other people. The downy feathers and black-tipped plumes of the eagle added to the eflicacy and decoration of this potent head- dress, the value of which was further enhanced by pieces of abalone shell, by duklij, and a snake's rattle which surmounted the apex, while in brownish yellow and dirty blue there were depicted upon the body of the hat clouds, a rainbow, hail, the morning star, the God of Wind, with his lungs, the black Kan, and the great suns. "You do not dance with the warriors and the women, Shoz- Dijiji," said Gian-nah-tah. "Why is it?" "Why should I?" demanded the Black Bear. "Usen has forsaken the Shis-Inday. No longer does He hear the prayers of His people. He has gone over to the side of the pindah- lickoyee, who have more warriors and better weapons. "Many times went Shoz-Dijiji to the high places and made big medicine and prayed to Usen; but He let Juh steal my little Ish-kay-nay, and He let the bullet of the pindah- lickoyee slay her. Why should I dance to the Kans if they are blind and deaf?" "But did not Usen help you to find Juh and slay him?" urged Gian-nah-tah. "Usen!" The tone of the Black Bear was contemptuous. "No one helped Shoz-Dijiji find Juh. No one helped Shoz-Dijiji slay him. Alone he found Juh—alone, with his own hands, he killed him. It was Shoz-Dijiji, not Usen, who avenged Ish- kay-nay!" "But Usen healed the wound of your sorrow," persisted Gian- nah-tah. "He placed in your heart a new love to take the place of the old that was become but a sad memory." "If Usen did that it was but to add to the sorrows of Shoz- Dijiji," said the Black Bear. "I have not told you, Gian- nah-tah." "You have not spoken of the white girl since you took her from our camp to her home after you had saved her from Tats-ah-das-ay-go and the other Chi-e-a-hen,!" replied Gian-nah-tah; "but while she was with us I saw the look in your eyes, Shoz-Dijiji, and it told me what your lips did not tell me." "Then my eyes must have known what my heart did not know," said Shoz-Dijiji. "It would have been better had my heart not learned, but it did. "Long time have we been friends, Gian-nah-tah. Our tsochs, swinging from the branches of the trees, swayed to the same breezes, or, bound to the backs of our mothers, we followed the same trails across deserts and mountains; together we learned to use the bow and the arrow and the lance; and together we went upon the war trail the first time. To me you are as a brother. You will not laugh at me, Gian-nah- tah; and so I shall tell you what happened that time that I took the white-eyed girl, Wichita, back to the hogan of her father that you may know why I am unhappy and why I know that Usen no longer cares what becomes of me." "Gian-nah-tah does not laugh at the sorrow of his best friend," said the other. "It was not in my heart to love the white-eyed girl," continued the Black Bear. "To Shoz-Dijiji she was as a sister. She was kind to me. When the soldiers of the pindah-lickoyee were all about, she brought me food and water and gave me a horse to carry me back to my people.I knew that she did that because I had once saved her from a white-eyed man who would have harmed her. No thought of love was in my mind. How could it have been? How could I think that Shoz-Dijiji, an Apache, a war chief of the Be- don-ko-he, could love a girl of the pindah-lickoyee! "But Usen deserted me. He let me look upon the face of the white-eyed girl for many days, and every day He made her more beautiful in my eyes. I tried not to think of love. I put it from my mind. I turned my thoughts to other things, but I could not keep my eyes from the face of the pindah- lickoyee girl. "At last we came close to the hogan of her father; and there I stopped and told her to go on, but she wanted me to come with her that her father might thank me. I would not go. I dared not go. I, The Apache Devil, was afraid of this white-eyed daughter of the pindah-lickoyee! "She came close to me and urged me. She laid her two hands upon my breast. The touch of those soft, white hands, Gian- nah-tah, was more powerful than the will of Shoz-Dijiji; beneath it crumbled all the pride and hate that are of the heritage of the Apaches. A flame burst forth within me—the signal fire of love. "I seized her and pressed her close; I put my mouth upon her mouth. And then she struck at me and tried to push me away, and I saw fear in her eyes; and something more terrible than fear—loathing—as though I were unclean. "Then I let her go; and I came away, but I left my heart and happiness behind. Shoz-Dijiji has left to him only his pride and his hate—his hate of the pindah-lickoyee." "If you hate the white-eyed girl now, it is well," said Gian-nah.tah. "The pindah-lickoyee are low born and fools. They are not fit for an Apache!" "I do not hate the white-eyed girl, Wichita," said Shoz- Dijiji, sadly. "If I did I should not be unhappy. I love her." Gian-nah-tah shook his head. "There are many pretty girls of the Shis-Inday," he said presently, "who look with bright eyes upon Shoz-Dijiji." "I do not love them," replied the Black Bear. "Let us talk no more of these things. Gian-nah-tah is my friend. I have spoken. Let us go and listen to the talk of Geronimo and the other old warriors." "That is better talk for men," agreed Gian-nah-tah. Together they strolled over and joined the group of warriors that surrounded the old war chief of the Apaches. White Horse, Geronimo's brother, was speaking. "There is much talk," he said, "among the Indians at San Carlos that the chiefs of the white-eyed soldiers are going to put Geronimo and many other of our leaders in prison." "They put me in prison once before and kept me there for four months," said Geronimo. "They never told me why they kept me there or why they let me out." "They put you in prison to kill you as they did Mangas Colorado," said Na-tanh; "but their hearts turned to water, so that they were afraid." "They will never get Geronimo in prison again," said the old war chief. "I am getting old; and I should like to have peace, but rather would I take the war trail tor the rest of my life than be again chained in the prison of the pindah-lickoyee. "We do not want to fight any more. We came in as Nan-tan- des-la-par-en ("Captain-with-the-brown-clothes"—Major- General George Crook, U. S. A.)asked us to. We planted crops, but the rain will not come. Usen is angry with us; and The Great White Chief cannot feed us because his Agent steals the beef that is meant for us, and lets us starve. He will not let us hunt for food if we live at San Carlos." "Who is this white-eyed thief that he may say where an Apache warrior may make his kunh-gan-hay or where he shall hunt?" demanded Shoz-Dijiji. "The Black Bear makes his camp where he will, hunts where he will!" "Those are the big words of a young man, my son," said Geronimo. "It is fine to make big talk; but when we would do these things the soldiers come and kill us; every white- eyed man who meets our hunters upon the trails shoots at them. To them we are as coyotes. Not content with stealing the land that Usen gave to our fore-fathers, not content with slaughtering the game that Usen put here to feed us, they lie to us, they cheat us, they hunt us down like wild beasts." "And yet you, Geronimo, War Chief of the Apaches, hesitate to take the war trail against them!" Shoz-Dijiji reproached him. 'It is not because you are afraid. No man may say that Geronimo is afraid. Then why is it?" "The son of Geronimo speaks true words," replied the old chief. "Go-yat-thlay (Geronimo), the son of Tah-clish-un, is not afraid to take the war trail against the pindah- lickoyee even though he knows that it is hopeless to fight against their soldiers, who are as many as the needles upon the cedars, because Go-yat-thlay is not afraid to die; but he does not like to see the warriors and the women and the children slain needlessly, and so he waits and hopes—hopes that the pindah-lickoyee will some day keep the words of the treaties they have made with the Shis-Inday—the treaties that they have always been the first to break. "If that day should come, the Shis-Inday could live in peace with the pindah-lickoyee; our women and children would have food to eat; we should have land to till and land to hunt upon; we might live as brothers with the white-eyed men, nor everagain go upon the war trail." "I do not wish to live with the white-eyed men in peace or otherwise," cried the Black Bear. "I am an Apache! I was born to the war trail. From my mother's breasts I drew the strong milk that makes warriors. You, my father, taught me to string a bow, to hurl a lance; from your lips my childish ears heard the proud deeds of my ancestors, the great warriors from whose loins I sprung; you taught me to hate the pindah-lickoyee, you saw me take my first scalp, you have seen me kill many of the warriors of the enemy, and always you approved and were proud. How then may I believe that the words you have just spoken are true words from your heart?" "Youth speaks from the heart, Shoz-Dijiji, as you speak and as I spoke to you when you were a child; but old age speaks from the head.My heart would go upon the war trail, my son; my heart would kill the white-eyed men wherever it found them, but my head tells me to suffer and be sad a little longer in the hope of peace and justice for my people." For a time after Geronimo had spoken there was silence, broken only by the beating of the es-a-da-ded and the mumbling of the medicine man, as he led the dancers. Presently a figure stepped into the outer rim of the circle of firelight from the darkness beyond and halted. He gave the sign and spoke the words of peace, and at the command of Geronimo approached the group of squatting braves.