The war chief

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Having eaten, Shoz-Dijiji quenched his thirst from his water bottle, drawing the liquid into his mouth through his drinking reed, a bit of cane, attached to his scanty apparel by a length of buckskin, for no water might touch his lips during his four novitiate excursions upon the war trail. Treasured therefore was his sacred drinking reed without which he must choose between death by thirst and the loss of credit for all that he had performed upon the war trail, together with the attendant ridicule of the tribe.

Only slightly less esteemed was another treasure dangling from a second buckskin thong—a bit of cedar three inches in length and less than half an inch in width. This was his scratch stick, an article that he found constant use for, since he might not scratch himself with his fingers during this holy period of initiation into the rites and mysteries of the sacred war trail. These two necessary adjuncts to the successful consummation of his ambition he had fashioned in the high places under the eyes of Usen; he had sanctified them with prayer and the sacrificial offering of hoddentin and he had brought them to Nakay-do-klunni, the great izze-nantan, to be blessed, and so he set great store by them, but he was glad that soon he would not have to carry them upon the war trail.

With one more test of his fitness, which might come this very day or the next, he would be ready to go before the council prepared to lay away forever the last vestiges of his youth; and so he strained his eyes in an effort to discover the first signs of pursuit which might afford him the opportunity he craved.

A warrior! The young blood surged hot and savage in his veins, conjured by that magic word. A warrior! To come and go as he wished, master of his own destiny, answerable to none; his achievements limited only by the measure of his own prowess. He saw himself a great chief—war chief of all the Apaches. And in the vivid picture that imagination projected upon his screen of dreams the same figures, the same scenes recurred interminably; the war trail, where he fought the blue-clad soldiers of the pindah lickoyee side by side with his best friend, Gian-nah-tah; the council, with the sinister figure of Juh thwarted, confounded at every turn and finally locked with Shoz-Dijiji in a duel to death; the camp, where in his own tepee he rested after the war trail and the chase in the arms of Ish-kay-nay.

Geronimo awoke and relieving the youth told him to sleep. The day wore on, the three relieving one another in turn. Shoz-Dijiji had led the three horses to a tiny spring to water them and to fill the water bottles of his companions and his own. Geronimo was watching—back toward the south.

Throw yourself prone beside this savage sentinel and follow his gaze along the back trail. Your eyes just top the summit of a ridge which hides your body from an enemy approaching from the south. A small bush, from which you have broken a few branches that you may have an unobstructed field of vision, masks that portion of your head that rises above the ridge. An enemy might approach you up the southern slope of the ridge to within a few feet of the concealing bush and not detect your presence.

Just below, to the south, is a tiny meadow, its grasses sere and yellow; for the rains passed months ago. Beneath a single tree at the upper end of the meadow is a mud hole where Shoz-Dijiji, having filled the water bottles, is letting the ponies drink. Farther on the canyon widens where it debouches on a rolling plain that stretches on and on to hazy mountains in the south. There are mountains to the west, too; and close at hand, in the east, rise the more imposing Sierra Madre.

The plain shimmers in the heat that is still intense, though the sun is low. The sage and the greasewood point long, shadowy fingers toward the Mother of Mountains. Nowhere in all that vast expanse that your eye can see is there a sign of life. You might be looking; upon a dead world or a painted canvas. The slow lengthening of the shadows is imperceptible. You see nothing that might even remotely suggest life, beyond the solitary brave watering the ponies below you; but that is because the asthenia of civilization has left you half blind as well as half deaf, for where you see nothing and hear nothing Geronimo is conscious of life, movement and sound—of rodents, reptiles and birds awaiting, quiescent, the lessening heat of dusk.

Of these things he is merely conscious, his attention being centered upon some tiny specks moving in the haze of the distant horizon. These you could not see if they were pointed out, much less recognize; but Geronimo has been watching them for some time. He has recognized them, counted them. He half turned toward his companion who was freshening the paint upon his face.

“The vaqueros are coming after their ponies,” he said. “There are nine of them.”