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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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