Glances stole around the circle in search of Shoz-Dijiji. He was not there.
Up toward the camp of the enemy—the camp that stood between the renegades and Chihuahua—a painted warrior rode a pinto stallion. A gentle May wind blew down to the nostrils of the man and his mount. To Nejeunee it carried the scent of his kind from the picket line of the ——th Cavalry. He pricked up his ears and nickered. Shoz-Dijiji slid from his back, slipped the primitive bridle from about his lower jaw and slapped him on the rump.
“Good-bye, Nejeunee,” he whispered; “the pindah-lickoyee may kill you, but they will not eat you.”
Slowly the Apache walked back toward the camp of his people. Like the stones upon the grave of Ish-kay-nay, many and heavy, his sorrows lay upon his heart.
“Perhaps, after all,” he mused, “Gian-nah-tah is right and Usen has forgotten the Apaches. I have prayed to him in the high places; I have offered hoddentin to him upon the winds of the morning and the evening; I have turned a deaf ear to the enemies who bring us a new god. Yet one by one the friends that I love are taken from me. Oh, Usen, before they are all gone take Shoz-Dijiji! Do not leave him alone without friends in a world filled with enemies!”
“Where is Shoz-Dijiji?” demanded Geronimo, his blue eyes sweeping the circle before him. “Gian-nah-tah, where is Shoz-Dijiji?”
“Here is Shoz-Dijiji!” said a voice from the darkness; and as they looked up, the war chief of the Be-don-ko-he stepped into the dim, flickering light of their tiny fire.
“Shoz-Dijiji,” said Geronimo, “there is but one pony left. It is Nejeunee. He must be killed for food. The others are all gone.”
“Nejeunee is gone, also,” said Shoz-Dijiji.
“Gone?”