Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/323

Rh day. I told him the story just as I had it from the two Indians, and told him that I was going to try to get the girl away from the Apaches if she wanted to leave them.

I rode along some distance, apparently in a deep study, and he finally turned to me and said:

"I think you had better let that gal alone, for then. Apaches is the wust Injuns in the hull country. If you make the attempt and they ever git on your track, they'll run you down in spite o' you."

To the readers of this book I will say I never was more astonished in my life, than I was to hear Jim Beckwith talk as he did. In all the time that I had been with him, this was the first time I had ever seen the slightest indication of his showing the white feather, as we termed it. It seemed to me he had lost all his nerve.

I said: "Jim, my mind is made up; if that white girl is dissatisfied and wants to leave the Indians, I am going to make the attempt, and trust to luck for the balance."

From that time until the day I was to go back to the village, he tried in every way he could think of to persuade me not to make the attempt, but I told him there was no use talking, that I looked upon it as being my duty, knowing that the girl was a slave to those Indians.

On the day appointed I saddled Mexico and started for the Pima village. I met the two young Indians about two miles from the village, where they had come to meet me, and they were both riding one horse, Nawasa riding behind her brother. When I met them she jumped off from behind her brother and said she wanted to try my horse to see how he rode, and she got on Mexico behind me and rode to camp.