“Hurt one of Geronimo’s renegades! Child, it can’t be done.” “They’re human,” replied the girl. “I learned that in the days that I spent in Geronimo’s camp while Chief Loco was out with his hostiles. Among themselves they are entirely different people from those we are accustomed to see on the reservation. No one who has watched them with their children, seen them at their games, heard them praying to Dawn and Twilight, to the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars as they cast their sacred hoddentin to the winds would ever again question their possession of the finer instincts of sentiment and imagination. “Because they do not wear their hearts upon their sleeves, because they are not blatant in the declaration of their finer emotions, does not mean that they feel no affection or that they are incapable of experiencing spiritual suffering.” “Perhaps,” said Margaret Cullis; “but you, who have lived in Indian country all your life, who have seen the heartless cruelties they inflict upon their helpless victims, who know their treachery and their dishonesty, cannot but admit that whatever qualities of goodness they possess are far outweighed by those others which have made them hated and feared the length and breadth of the Southwest.” “For every wrong that they have committed,” argued Wichita, “they can point out a similar crime perpetrated upon them by the whites. O, Margaret, it is the old case again of the pot calling the kettle black. We have tortured them and wronged them even more than they have tortured and wronged us. “We esteem personal comfort and life as our two most sacred possessions. When the Apaches torture and kill us we believe that they have committed against us the most hideous of conceivable crimes. “On the other hand the Apaches do not esteem personal comfort and life as highly as do we and consequently, by their standards—and we may judge a people justly only by their own standards—we have not suffered as much as they, who esteem more highly than life or personal comfort the sanctity of their ancient rites and customs and the chastity of their women. From the time of the white man’s first contact with the Apaches he has ridiculed the one and defiled the other. “I have talked with Shoz-Dijiji, and Geronimo, with Sons-ee-ah-ray, and many another Be-don-ko-he man and woman; they have laid bare their hearts to me, and never again can anyone convince me that we have not tortured the Apaches with as malignant cruelty as they have tortured us.” “Why you are a regular little Apache yourself, Wichita,” cried Margaret Cullis. “I wonder what your father would say if he could hear you.” “He has heard me. Don’t think for a minute that I am afraid to express my views to anyone.” “Did he enjoy them and agree with you?”