"Ugh!" said Kah-go-mish. "Ping!"
As for the boy himself, the dulness almost vanished from his face in his exultation at having been so nearly hit, actually grazed, by a rifle-ball. His sister came around to stare at the scratch, and then his own quick eyes caught something.
"Tah-nu-nu!" he said, and pointed at the wide fold of her red calico. It was torn. A Mexican bullet had found its way through the furze bushes, and Tah-nu-nu had been almost as much in peril, the moment she stood erect, as her brother had been.
Wah-wah-o-be's wrath boiled over. The Apaches pay more of respect to their squaws than do some other tribes, and the chief's wife was a woman who was likely to demand all that belonged to her.
Kah-go-mish had stood upon the rock to be fired at by the rancheros for the glory of it, and was almost too proud of so great an exploit to lose his temper at once. He was beginning to say something about Mexican marksmanship when he was interrupted by Wah-wah-o-be. She had feelings of her own, if he had not. She pointed at her son's ear, and again she said "Ping!"
The bullet might have wantonly murdered any member of her family, or any of her neighbors. She made rapid remarks about it, of such a nature that Kah-go-mish felt a change going on in his mind. Other ears had heard, and the voices of braves and squaws seemed to agree with that of Wah-wah-o-be. All had fallen back from the dangerous margin, and it would have looked a little like a council if a squaw had not been the speaker. There was very little red upon the ear of Ping, but it served her as a representative of all the wrongs ever done to the Apaches by the white men, including that of cooping them in upon the Reservation, where she had obtained her bonnet, and where they had all but starved for lack of game.
The blood of Kah-go-mish reached the right heat at last, and his hand arose to his mouth to help out the largest, longest, fiercest war-whoop he knew anything about.
"Kah-go-mish is a great chief!"
He said this as he strode away towards the trees, waving back all the rest with his hands. Warriors and squaws, boys and girls, they at once seemed to arrange themselves for a good look at whatever their great man might be about to do.
He was gone but a few minutes, and returned, leading a mean-looking, undersized, disreputable pony, upon whose head he had placed a miserable, worn-out bridle.