Apache Indians -- Fiction; Historical fiction; Western stories
Occasionally a wild cry would break from the lips of some dancer and be
taken up by others until the forest and the mountains rang with the
savage sounds. Until morning came and many had dropped with exhaustion
the dance continued. The Be-don-ko-he had worked themselves into a
frenzy of religious fanaticism, just as had the Cho-kon-en, the
Chi-hen-ne and the other tribes that Nakay-do-klunni had visited, just
as the old izze-nantan had known that they would.
CHAPTER XIV
“FIFTY APACHES”
IT was nearly noon of the following day before Ish-kay-nay could
arouse the exhausted izze-nantan, for the spirit dance had drawn heavily
upon his physical resources and, too, it had left him cross and surly;
for the cha-ja-la is a hard task master to its devotees, even of a
single evening, and Nakay-do-klunni had been steadily at it for weeks in
his effort to arouse the scattered tribes. It meant much to
Nakay-do-klunni for he had long since sensed the antagonism of the
whites toward the members of his precious profession and he saw his
powers, and also his emoluments, not alone waning, but approaching total
eclipse, if something radical was not compassed to thwart the activities
of the pindah lickoyee. Power and emoluments were the life of
Nakay-do-klunni.
He glared fiercely at Ish-kay-nay. “What do you want?” he snapped.
“To know if Shoz-Dijiji lives and will return,” she said.
Her words reminded the medicine man of something, of a pair of field
glasses and a pearl-handled Colt, and he relaxed. “Sit down,” he
mumbled. “Nakay-do-klunni make medicine, talk with spirits, you wait.”
Ish-kay-nay sat down. The medicine man opened a beaded buckskin bag and
took forth some pieces of lightning-riven wood, a root, a stone, a piece
of turquoise, a glass bead and a square bit of buckskin upon which
colored designs had been painted. All the time he mumbled strange words
that Ish-kay-nay only knew were sacred, all-powerful and terrible.
Nakay-do-klunni did not know even this much about them.
He sprinkled hoddentin upon the potent paraphernalia of his wizardry,
upon Ish-kay-nay, upon himself; he tossed it to the four winds. Then he
pointed toward a bag that Ish-kay-nay clutched in her hand, and grunted.
The girl understood, opened the bag and displayed a few bits of the
blue-green dukliji, some colored beads—her treasures. Wide-eyed,
tearless, she looked at Nakay-do-klunni, wondering, hoping that this
would be enough to insure strong medicine from the great izze-nantan—if
her all would be enough to bring her word of Shoz-Dijiji, of her lover.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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