20 Western Novels You Should Read

Chapter 25

Chapter 19

THE LAST WAR TRAILTHROUGH the descending dark an Apache rode along the war trail,

following the tracks of an enemy. He saw that the man ahead if of

him had been urging his mount at perilous speed down the rocky

gorge, but the Apache did not hurry. He was a young man. Before him

stretched a life time in which to bring the quarry, to bay. To

follow recklessly would be to put himself at a disadvantage, to

court disaster, defeat, death. Such was not the way of an Apache.

Doggedly, stealthily he would stalk the foe. If it took a life

time, if he must follow, him across a world, what matter? In the

end he would get him.

What was that, just ahead? In the trail, looming strange through

the dusk, lay something that did not harmonize with the

surroundings. At first he could not be quite certain what it was,

but that it did not belong there was apparent to his trained

senses.

Cautiously he approached. It was a horse lying in the trail. It

was alive. It tried to rise as he came nearer, but it stumbled and

fell again — and it groaned. He saw that it was saddled and

bridled. He waited in concealment, listening. There was no other

sound. Creeping nearer he saw that the horse could not rise because

one of its legs was broken. It suffered. Shoz-Dijiji drew his

butcher knife and cut its throat, putting it out of its misery.

Cheetim had ridden too fast down this rocky gorge. On foot now,

leading Nejeunee, Shoz-Dijiji followed the faint spoor of the

dismounted man. He found the place where it turned up the

precipitous side of the gorge where no horse could go, and here

Shoz-Dijiji abandoned Nejeunee and followed on alone.

All night he followed. At dawn he knew that he was close upon

the man he sought. Small particles of earth were still crumbling

back into the depression of a footprint where Cheetim had stepped

but a few moments before. Did Shoz- Dijiji hasten forward? No. On

the contrary he followed more cautiously, more slowly than before,

for he gave the enemy credit for doing precisely what Shoz-Dijiji

would have done had their positions been reversed — except that

Shoz- Dijiji would have done it hours earlier.With infinite

patience and care he crept up each slope and from the summit

surveyed the terrain ahead before he proceeded. He knew that

Cheetim was just ahead of him and that he would soon stop to rest,

for the spoor told him that the man was almost exhausted. For a

long time Shoz-Dijiji had guessed that the other knew he was being

followed — before that he had only feared it. The end must be

near.

Shoz-Dijiji crept slowly up a hillside. Just below the summit he

stopped and took a red bandanna from his pouch. This he wrapped

loosely about the stock of his rifle; and then, holding the piece

by the muzzle, raised it slowly just above the hill top. Instantly

there came the report of a rifle from beyond the hill; and

Shoz-Dijiji; almost smiling, jerked the bandanna from sight.

Quickly he hastened to the right, keeping well below the line of

vision of his adversary; and when he crept upward again it was

behind a low bush, through the branches of which he could see

without being seen.

A hundred yards away Cheetim lay behind a boulder upon another

hill top. He was peering out from behind his shelter. Shoz-Dijiji

took careful aim — not at the head of his enemy, which was in plain

sight, but at his shoulder. Shoz-Dijiji had plans.

He pressed his trigger, and with the report Cheetim jumped

convulsively and slumped forward. Slowly the Apache arose and

keeping his man covered with his rifle walked toward him. He found

the white man, just as he had expected, stunned by the shock of the

wound but not dead.

Shoz-Dijiji removed Cheetim's weapons from his reach and sat

down and waited. With the patience that is an Apache's he waited.

Presently Cheetim opened his eyes and looked into the painted face

of the Apache Devil. He shuddered and closed them again, but

Shoz-Dijiji knew that the man was conscious.

The Indian spoke no word as he bent and seized Cheetim by the

hair. Again the man opened his eyes. He saw the butcher knife in

the hand of the Indian and screamed.

"Fer God's sake don't!" he cried. "I'll give you whiskey, money

— anything you want ef you'll let me go."

Shoz-Dijiji did not answer him. The keen blade sank into the

flesh of the white man. Cheetim screamed and struggled. There was a

quick, deft, circular motion of Shoz-Dijiji's hand, and a bloody

scalp-lock dangled from the fingers of the war chief. It was then

that Cheetim fainted.

Shoz-Dijiji sat down and waited. Five, ten, fifteen minutes he

waited before Cheetim gave signs of returning consciousness. Still

Shoz-Dijiji waited. At last the white man was fully cognizant of

his surroundings. He began to weep tears of self pity. Shoz-Dijiji

arose and bent over him.

"What are you going to do?" shrieked his victim, but the Apache

did not answer him — in words. Instead he took some buckskin thongs

from his pouch and making a running noose in one end of each he

slipped one upon each wrist and ankle of the prostrate man. Then

with his butcher knife he cut some stakes from stout shrubs that

grew about them. Returning to Cheetim he turned the man upon his

back and, stretching each arm and leg to its full extent, out

spread, he staked the screaming coward to the ground.

Rising, he stood looking down at Cheetim for a long minute.

Then, in silence, he turned and walked away, back along the trail

he had come.

"Don't leave me!" screamed Cheetim. "Fer God's sake come back!

Come back and kill me. Don't leave me here to die alone — like

this!"

Shoz~Dijiji, war chief of the Be-don-ko-he1 walked on in

silence. Not once did he turn to look back in the direction of the

first enemy he had ever tortured. Had he, he would have seen a

vulture circling high against the blue on stationary wings above

the last victim of the Apache Devil.

Where he had left Nejeunee Shoz-Dijiji found Luis Mariel waiting

for him.

"I knew that you would come back to your pony," said Luis.

"Why did you follow me?" demanded the Apache.

"The Senorita sent me after you."

"Why?"

"She wished me to say to you that you are to come back to

her."

It was dark when Luis Mariel and Shoz-Dijiji rode into the ranch

yard of the Crazy B. Wichita Billings was standing beneath the

cottonwood trees that grew in front of the ranch house as they rode

up to her and dismounted.

"Luis," she said, "take his horse and yours and turn them into

the east pasture; then go to the cook house. Chung will give you

supper."

Shoz-Dijiji said nothing. He watched Luis leadipg Nejeunee away.

He waited. Wichita came close to him and laid her hands upon his

breast as she had once before, long ago. Again came the terrible

urge to take her in his arms, but this time he did not surrender to

it.

"You sent for me?" he asked.

"To ask you to forgive me."

"For what?"

"For everything," she replied.

"There is nothing to forgive. You did not understand — that is

all."

"I understand now."

"I am glad," he said simply. "Is that all?"

"No. Kreff has left. I do not know why. He wouldn't even stop

for supper. Just got his stuff and his check and rode away. I need

another foreman. Will you take the job?"

"Do you want me?"

"Yes."

"Then I will take it. Now I go to the bunk house."

"Wait."

"Is there something more?"

"Yes. You know there is. Oh! Shoz-Dijiji, are you a man or a

stone?" she cried.

"I am an Apache, Senorita," he said. "Do not forget that. I am

an Apache, and you are a white girl."

"I do not care. I love you!" She came very close to him

again.

"Are you very sure, Chita,?" he asked. "You must make no mistake

this time."

"I am very sure, Shoz-Dijiji."

"We shall see," he said, "for we must both be sure. Shoz- Dijiji

will be very happy if he finds that you can love him even though he

is an Indian — then he will tell you something that you will be

glad to know, but not now."

"There is something that you could tell me now that I should

like to hear, Shoz-Dijiji," she whispered.

"What is that?"

"You have not told me that you love me."

The war chief took his mate into his arms and looked down into

her tear filled eyes.

"Shoz-Dijiji no sabe," he said, smiling. Then he bent and

covered her lips with his.

In the east pasture a filly nickered, and a pinto stallion

arched his neck and answered her.

CABIN FEVER by B. M. Bower

About Bower

Bertha Muzzy Sinclair or Sinclair-Cowan, née Muzzy

(November 15, 1871 – July 23, 1940), best known by her pseudonym

B. M. Bower, was an American author who wrote

novels, fictional short stories, and screenplays about the American

Old West. Born Bertha Muzzy in Otter Tail County, Minnesota, USA,

and living her early years in Big Sandy, Montana, she was married

three times: to Clayton Bower, in 1890; to Bertrand William

Sinclair,(also a Western author) in 1912; and to Robert Elsworth

Cowan, in 1921. Bower's 1912 novel Lonesome Land was

praised in The Bookman magazine for its characterization.

She wrote 57 Western novels, several of which were turned into

films.