“Me no go,” he replied.
The girl became suddenly conscious of a feeling almost of panic. Was she never to see Shoz-Dijiji again, this good friend, this best of friends? She realized, and the realization came as a distinct shock, that this man of another race had suddenly filled a great emptiness in her life—an emptiness the existence of which she had never before realized—and that life was going to be very different without him. Already she felt a great loneliness creeping over her.
She was standing beside him and now she turned and came close, putting her two palms upon his breast. “Please, Shoz-Dijiji,” she begged. “Please come down—I do not want you to go away.”
The contact of her hands upon him broke the iron will of the Apache. The habitual mask behind which he hid his emotions dropped away—it was a new Shoz-Dijiji into whose face the girl looked. He seized her in his arms and pressed her close; his lips covering hers.
She struck at his great chest and sought to push him away; she held her head from him and he saw the horror in her eyes. Then it was that he released her.
“Shoz-Dijiji sorry,” he said. “For days he fight the great fire burning in his brain, burning up his heart, Shoz-Dijiji thought he was strong; he did not know how much stronger is love—until you touched him. But you are right. You are white—Shoz-Dijiji is Apache. White girl could not love Apache. That is right.” He vaulted to the back of Nejeunee. “Shoz-Dijiji sorry. Good-bye!”
She watched him ride away and the panic and the loneliness gripped her like fingers of flesh and blood that sought to choke life and love and happiness from her. She saw him disappear beyond a hill to the south and she took a step after him, her hands outstretched in dumb pleading for his return that her lips had not the courage to voice aloud. She stood thus for a minute and then her arms dropped limply to her side and she turned back toward her father’s house.
A few steps she took and then she wheeled suddenly about and extended her arms again, in supplication.
“Shoz-Dijiji!” she cried, “Shoz-Dijiji, come back!”
But Shoz-Dijiji, war chief of the Be-don-ko-he, did not hear.