“All your life you have been as a son to me. I have loved you. I have been proud of you. It is because I love you, Shoz-Dijiji, that I am going to tell you this thing now. When I have told you you will know that you need not throw away your life fighting the pindah-lickoyee, fighting the battles of the Apaches.
“Shoz-Dijiji, you are not an Apache. You are not a Shis-Inday. You are a pindah-lickoyee.”
The eyes of the Apache Devil narrowed. “You are my father,” he said, “but not even you may call Shoz-Dijiji a pindah-lickoyee and live. That, Juh learned.”
Geronimo shook his head sadly. “Juh knew,” he said. “He was with me when we killed your father and mother in a pass in the Stein’s Peak Range. It was Juh who dragged you from the wagon and would have killed you but for Geronimo.”
“It is a lie!” growled Shoz-Dijiji.
“Has Geronimo ever lied to you?” asked the old war chief.
“Cochise swore before the council fire that I was as much an Apache as he,” cried the young man.
“Cochise did not lie,” said Geronimo. “You are as much an Apache as any of us in heart and spirit, but in your veins flows the blood of your white-eyed father.
“Twenty three times have the rains come since the day that I killed him; and I have kept my lips sealed because I loved you and because you were as much my son to me as though you were flesh of my own flesh; but now the time has come that you should know, for as an Apache every man’s hand will be turned against you, but as a pindah-lickoyee you will have a chance that no Apache ever may have.”
For a few moments Shoz-Dijiji sat in brooding silence. Presently he spoke.