“How do you know? Do you know who did kill him? He was scalped.”
“Are the white-eyed men such fools that they think that only an Apache can scalp? If they were not such fools they would know that it is only occasionally that Apaches do take the scalps of their enemies. They do know this, but they do not want to admit it. They know that whenever a white-eyed man wishes to kill an enemy he need only scalp him to convince everyone that Apaches did it, because everyone wishes to believe that every murder is done by Apaches.
“Yes, I know who killed Mason and why. He was robbed in Cheetim’s Hog Ranch, and he had sworn to get Cheetim. He was looking for him with a gun. Cheetim hired a man to ride out with Mason and shoot him in the back. That is all.
“Now come. Shoz-Dijiji ride back with you until you are near the ranch. You must not ride alone again even if you are not afraid of the Apaches, for there are bad men among the white-eyes—men who would harm you even more surely than an Apache.”
He motioned her to precede him up the steep canyon side; and when the two ponies had scrambled to the summit he rode at her side, where the ground permitted, as they walked their ponies in the direction of the Billings ranch.
For a while they rode in silence, the Apache constantly on the alert against another and more dangerous surprise, the girl thoughtful, her face reflecting the cast of sadness in which her thoughts were molded.
Wichita Billings knew that the man at her side loved her. She knew that she was drawn to him more than to any other man that she had ever known, but she did not know that this attraction constituted love.
Raised as she had been in an atmosphere of racial hatred, schooled in ignorance and bigotry by people who looked upon every race and nation, other than their own race and nation, as inferior, she could scarce believe it possible that she could give her love to an Indian; and so her mind argued against her heart that it was not love that she felt for him but some other emotion which should be suppressed.
Shoz-Dijiji, on his part, realized the barrier that prejudice had erected between them and the difficulty that the white girl might have to surmount it in the event that she loved him. He, too, had faced a similar barrier in his hatred of the white race; but that his love had long since leveled. A greater obstacle, one which he could not again face, was the hurt that his pride had suffered when she had recoiled from his embrace.
Thoughts such as these kept them silent for some time until Wichita chanced to recall Nejeunee.