The girl looked, almost fearfully, into the face of the old archdemon. She saw stern features there, and a wide mouth with almost bloodless lips, and blue eyes, so uncharacteristic of the Apache. Contorted with rage, she could sense that it might be a face of utter cruelty; but today, as he listened to the words of his son, it was just the face of a benevolent, tired, old man. “Shoz-Dijiji brings a captive from the war trail?” Geronimo had asked when the two first stood before him. “No,” replied Shoz-Dijiji, “a friend.” “Shoz-Dijiji has taken a white-eyed one for his woman?” demanded the old chief. Again the younger man shook his head, “She was a friend to Shoz-Dijiji,” he explained. “She gave him food and water and a pony when the soldiers of the pindah lickoyee were hunting him. “When Shoz-Dijiji was upon the war trail with the Chi-e-a-hen they were about to kill her. They would not stop when Shoz-Dijiji asked them to. Shoz-Dijiji killed the Chi-e-a-hen, and because the country was filled with Apaches upon the war trail and Shoz-Dijiji knew that many soldiers would come, he brought her here to his own people, where she will be safe until the trouble is over; then he will return her to her people.” Geronimo turned his eyes upon Wichita. “Ink-tah,” he said. “Geronimo says, ‘sit down,’” translated Shoz-Dijiji and the girl did as she was bid. Geronimo patted her hand and smiled. “You will be safe with the Be-don-ko-he,” he said. “We are your friends.” When Shoz-Dijiji had repeated the words in English Wichita knew that they were true, yet at the same time it seemed beyond belief that she could be sitting at the side of the notorious Geronimo in the remote fastness of his hidden camp and yet be as innocent of fear as though safe within the protecting walls of her father’s ranch house. The thought came to her that perhaps she was safer here, since at least she was not menaced by the threat of hostile Apaches. That night she slept in the tepee of the mother-in-law of Geronimo and as she dozed off to sleep she smiled as she thought of the terrors that that name had always conjured to her mind and of the surprise and incredulity that were certain to mark the reception of her story by her father and her friends when she was restored to them—sleeping in the tepee of the mother-in-law of Geronimo, not twenty paces from the war chief of all the Apaches. CHAPTER XX COME BACK! THROUGH that strange medium for the dissemination of information that is one of the remarkable phenomena of the life of primitive peoples, word of the activities of the hostiles was carried to the stronghold of Geronimo.