The officer turned to Shoz-Dijiji. “Are you an Apache?” he demanded.
“No savvy,” replied the Black Bear.
“You are sure he is the man who saved your life?” demanded the officer.
“I could not know my own mother’s face better,” the woodchopper assured him.
For several minutes the officer stood in thought before he spoke again.
“I cannot release him,” he said, then. “He is to be shot in the morning when the general comes, he and all the other grown men; but it is crowded in this corral and I am afraid with so many prisoners and so few men to guard them that many will escape. Therefore you may take this one and guard him in your own house until morning. If he escapes it will not be my fault.”
“Thank you! Thank you!” exclaimed the woodchopper; “and may the Mother of God bless you.”
Shoz-Dijiji heard and understood. He was to live! But not by so much as the quiver of an eyelid did he reveal his understanding. He stood impassive while they bound his hands behind him and placed a rope about his neck, and he followed, though not meekly, but with haughty mien, as the woodchopper led him away, the wife and the several small children following proudly behind.
CHAPTER XII
THE SCALP DANCE
DARKNESS had fallen, but the night was still young when a fire appeared upon the summit of a lonely hill above the village of Casas Grandes. It burned steadily hour after hour, tended by a single, silent figure. Into the hills about and out across the valley it signalled to the scattered braves, and through the silence and the darkness of the night shadowy forms, soft-footed, mysterious, converged toward the shining beacon.