“At last we arrived at our own kunh-gan-hay. There was the tepee that I had made for Alope, a tepee of buffalo hides. There were the bear robes, the lion skins, the other trophies of the chase that I had placed there for her. There were the little decorations of beads and drawn work on buckskin made by Alope’s own slender fingers. There were the many pictures that she had drawn upon the walls of our home, and there were the playthings of our little ones.
“I burned them all. Also I burned my mother’s tepee and destroyed all her property. It was then I took an oath to be revenged upon the Mexicans, to kill them wherever I found them, to give them no quarter and to show them no mercy.
“My mother, Alope, our three children have been avenged many times over, but the end is not yet. Now, perhaps, Shoz-Dijiji too will see the same pictures of the mind that Geronimo sees when the war trail crosses the path of the Mexicans—an old woman and a young woman lying in their blood, three little children huddled together in terror before the bullets or the gun butts of the Mexican soldiers stilled their sobs forever.”
The wrinkled war chief arose and walked silently away. In silence Shoz-Dijiji sat—in silence and in thought.
And all during the long, arduous marches that followed he thought upon what Geronimo had told him until he too came to hate the enemies of his people with a bitterness that was but to be increased with each closer association with them, whether in war or in peace; but Shoz-Dijiji discriminated less between Mexicans and Americans than did Geronimo, for he knew that upon the whole the former had sinned against them less than the latter.
Always watching for attack from in front, for pursuit from the rear, the Apaches drove the laden mules northward toward home, keeping as much to inaccessible mountains as the limitations of the mules permitted; passing the few habitations that lay in their way silently by night, with the single exception of an isolated Mexican ranch not far from the border. This they attacked by day, slaying its owner, his wife and children.
Again Shoz-Dijiji and Gian-nah-tah conducted themselves well, thus having two engagements to their credit of the four necessary before they could be accepted into the warrior class; but again Shoz-Dijiji abstained from torture or mutilation, though he watched Juh, the butcher, with interest, if nothing more.
The meager loot from the pitiful Mexican home they loaded upon a spare mule, set fire to the interior of the adobe house and continued their way, leaving the wounded but conscious Mexican staked out upon a bed of cactus within sight of the mutilated remains of his family, to die of thirst.
As they passed on toward the farther hills Shoz-Dijiji saw a coyote giving them a wide berth as it slunk down toward the ranch.
That night they crossed the border into New Mexico and camped in timbered mountains by a running spring. Here they killed a mule and feasted, for at last they felt reasonably safe from pursuit.