“It’s silly,” snapped Wichita, “and I tell him so. It would be just as logical to hate all French-Canadians because Guiteau assassinated President Garfield.”
“Well, how in the world, feeling toward the Apaches as you do, could you have found it in your heart to so wound Shoz-Dijiji that he will not speak to you?”
“I did not mean to,” explained the girl. “It—just happened. We had been together for many days after the Chi-e-a-hen attacked the Pringe ranch and Shoz-Dijiji got me away from them. The country was full of hostiles, and so he took me to the safest place he could think of—the Be-don-ko-he camp. They kept me there until they were sure that all the hostiles had crossed the border into Mexico. He was lovely to me—a white man could have been no more considerate—but when he got me home again and was about to leave me he told me that he loved me.
“I don’t know what it was, Margaret—inherited instinct, perhaps—but the thought of it revolted me, and he must have seen it in my face. He went away, and I never saw him again until today—three years.”
The older woman looked up quickly from her work. There had been a note in the girl’s voice as she spoke those last two words that aroused sudden apprehension in the breast of Margaret Cullis.
“Wichita,” she demanded, “do you love this—this Apache?”
“Margaret,” replied the girl, “you have been like a sister to me, or a mother. No one else could ask me that question. I have not even dared ask myself.” She paused. “No, I cannot love him!”
“It would be unthinkable that you would love an Indian, Wichita,” said the older woman. “It would cut you off forever from your own kind and would win you only the contempt of the Indians. A white girl had better be dead than married to an Indian.”
Wichita nodded. “Yes, I know,” she whispered, “and yet he is as fine as any man, white or red, that I have ever known.”
“Perhaps, but the fact remains that he is an Apache.”