“The chief’s name is Go-yath-lay,” continued the red-headed boy. “He is war-captain of the Chiricahua. Nah-che is son of Cochise, head chief.”
The war captain, who had been listening intently, trying to understand the words, nodded, and spoke again in Apache.
“Your chi-kis-n will show you,” translated the red-headed boy, who knew Spanish and Apache both.
“Aqui (Here),” bade Nah-che: and Jimmie followed him to one of those regulation Apache jacals—a low round-topped hut made from willow branches stuck in a circle and bent over to fasten together, with pieces of deer hide and cow hide laid to cover the framework of the sides, and flat bundles of brush to thatch the roof. The jacals resembled dirty white bowls bottom-up. Each had a little opening, as a door to be entered only by stooping half double.
Before the hut an Apache woman in a loose cotton waist worn outside a draggled calico skirt was busy cooking. She stirred the contents of an iron kettle, set upon a bed of coals in a small shallow pit. She threw back her long, coarse black hair and scanned Jimmie curiously while Nah-che spoke a few words to her.
Then repeating the title “chi-kis-n” Nah-che strolled away. The woman smiled broadly at Jimmie, took him by the arm, and talking to him led him inside the hut. The earth had been dug out, there, so that they might stand, in the middle, and not strike their heads on the ceiling.
The woman made Jimmie remove his trousers and shoes; and leaving him his ragged shirt tossed to him a pair of old moccasins.
Again out-doors, she gave him a mess of the stew, in a gourd bowl. The stew was corn and beans cooked together, and was very good indeed, to a hungry boy.
“Go,” she signed. “Come back at night.”
Here in the open, Jimmie felt rather odd, with nothing on but his shirt and moccasins. Still, most of the boys and girls of his age, in the village, had even less on. They were brown, though, and he was white, which seemed to make a difference.