Many of the Gringoes that he saw were not bad, only fools; but there
were many others who were very bad indeed. El Teniente King was the best
Americano he had ever seen. Luis was sorry that El Teniente had no
riding job for him. These were some of the thoughts that passed through
the mind of the Mexican youth as he rode herd on the stolen cattle.
* * * * *
Up from the south rode Shoz-Dijiji. From the moment that he crossed the
border into Arizona his spirits rose. The sight of familiar and beloved
scenes, the scent of the cedars and the pines, the sunlight and the
moonlight were like wine in his veins. The Black Bear was almost happy
again.
Where there were no trails he went unseen. No longer were the old water
holes guarded by the soldiers of the pindah-lickoyee. Peace lay upon the
battle ground of three hundred years. He saw prospectors and cowboys
occasionally, but they did not see Shoz-Dijiji. The war chief of the
Be-don-ko-he knew that the safety of peace was for the white-eyed men
only—he was still a renegade, an outlaw, a hunted beast, fair target
for the rifle of the first white man who saw him.
He moved slowly, and often by night, drinking to the full the joys of
homeland; but he moved toward a definite goal and with a well defined
purpose. It had taken days and weeks and months of meditation and
introspection to lay the foundation for the decision he had finally
reached; it had necessitated trampling under foot a lifetime of race
consciousness and pride in caste; it had required the sacrifice of every
cherished ideal, but the incentive was more powerful than any of these
things, perhaps the greatest single moral force for good or evil that
exists to govern and shape the destinies of man—love.
Love was driving this Apache war chief to the object of his devotion and
to the public avowal that he was no Apache but, in reality, a member of
the race that he had always looked upon with the arrogant contempt of a
savage chieftain.
In his return through Arizona he found his loved friend, Nejeunee, an
obstacle to safe or rapid progress. A pinto pony, while perhaps
camouflaged by Nature, is not, at best, an easy thing to conceal, nor
can it follow the trackless steeps of rugged mountains as can a lone
Apache warrior; but, none the less, Shoz-Dijiji would not abandon this,
his last remaining friend, the sole and final tie that bound him to the
beloved past; and so the two came at last to an upland country, hallowed
by sacred memories—memories that were sweet and memories that were
bitter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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