The Indian spoke no word as he bent and seized Cheetim by the hair. Again the man opened his eyes. He saw the butcher knife in the hand of the Indian and screamed.
“Fer God’s sake don’t!” he cried. “I’ll give you whiskey, money—anything you want ef you’ll let me go.”
Shoz-Dijiji did not answer him. The keen blade sank into the flesh of the white man. Cheetim screamed and struggled. There was a quick, deft, circular motion of Shoz-Dijiji’s hand, and a bloody scalp-lock dangled from the fingers of the war chief. It was then that Cheetim fainted.
Shoz-Dijiji sat down and waited. Five, ten, fifteen minutes he waited before Cheetim gave signs of returning consciousness. Still Shoz-Dijiji waited. At last the white man was fully cognizant of his surroundings. He began to weep—tears of self pity. Shoz-Dijiji arose and bent over him.
“What are you going to do?” shrieked his victim, but the Apache did not answer him—in words. Instead he took some buckskin thongs from his pouch and making a running noose in one end of each he slipped one upon each wrist and ankle of the prostrate man. Then with his butcher knife he cut some stakes from stout shrubs that grew about them. Returning to Cheetim he turned the man upon his back and, stretching each arm and leg to its full extent, out spread, he staked the screaming coward to the ground.
Rising, he stood looking down at Cheetim for a long minute. Then, in silence, he turned and walked away, back along the trail he had come.
“Don’t leave me!” screamed Cheetim. “Fer God’s sake come back! Come back and kill me. Don’t leave me here to die alone—like this!”
Shoz-Dijiji, war chief of the Be-don-ko-he, walked on in silence. Not once did he turn to look back in the direction of the first enemy he had ever tortured. Had he, he would have seen a vulture circling high against the blue on stationary wings above the last victim of the Apache Devil.
Where he had left Nejeunee Shoz-Dijiji found Luis Mariel waiting for him.
“I knew that you would come back to your pony,” said Luis.