Up from Fort Thomas rode the first reinforcements for Fort Apache, spurred on by the rumor that Colonel Carr and his entire command had been massacred, while from many a hilltop the Ned-ni scouts watched them and took word to Juh. Gathering their ponies and the stolen herds whose numbers had greatly augmented their own the Ned-ni set out toward the southwest to join with Geronimo and the Be-don-ko-he. Down toward the border, raiding, massacring, fighting off the pursuing troops, the savage horde moved with a rapidity that is possible only to Apaches in the uptorn, burning country across which they chose to lead the suffering troops. Na-chi-ta joined them with his Cho-kon-en, and there was Mangas and Nanáy and Kut-le and many another famous warrior to bring terror and destruction to the pindah lickoyee, and with them went their women, their children and their herds. Northward, searching for his people, went Shoz-Dijiji, dodging, doubling, hiding like a beast of prey upon which the hunters are closing, for in whatever direction he turned he saw soldiers or signs of soldiers. Never had Shoz-Dijiji seen so many soldiers and they all seemed to be marching in the same direction, toward Fort Apache. The young war chief wondered what this movement of troops portended. Had the reservation Indians arisen, were his people on the warpath, or were the pindah lickoyee planning a surprise attack in force? Shoz-Dijiji could not know, he could only guess that something momentous was afoot, and that where the soldiers of the pindah lickoyee went there would be Apaches. So he kept to the direction the troops were taking, longing to meet one of his own kind, watching always for signals. Patient is the Apache, but the strain of prolonged apprehension was telling upon the nerves of Shoz-Dijiji. Had it been only a question as to the whereabouts or the fate of the Apache people Shoz-Dijiji would have been less seriously affected; but the whereabouts and the fate of Ish-kay-nay were involved and that was by far a more serious consideration. It irked Shoz-Dijiji to think of returning empty-handed. He knew the raillery to which he would be subjected and which he must accept in silence. He had failed and so there was nothing to say, for in the pandect of the Apaches there is no justification for failure. It would still have been within the range of possibilities to have picked up some horses were it not for all these soldiers; and so to his other reasons for hating them there was added this other, the further frustration of his marriage plan.