nd during all this journey, saying men were scarce up here, that he
must go back to Mexico and kill some one.
"He was tired of the woman, and did not want her to go back with him,
so, after sitting all day on a rock while she besought him, the old wolf
told her to go home in peace. But the girl was lost, and told him that
either the Mexicans or Americans would kill her if she departed from
him; so his mood softened, and telling her to come on, he began the
homeward journey. They passed through a small American town in the
middle of the night--he having previously taken off the Indian rawhide
shoes from the ponies. They crossed the Gila near the Nau Taw Mountains.
Here he stole two fresh horses, and loading one with all the buckskins,
he put her on and headed her down the Eagle Trail to Black River. She
now knew where she was, but was nearly dying from the exhaustion of his
fly-by-night expeditions. He halted her, told her to 'tell the white
officer that she was a pretty good girl, better than the San Carlos
woman, and that he would come again and get another.' He struck her
horse and was gone.
[Illustration: 30 THE CHIEF OF SCOUTS]
"Massai then became a problem to successive chiefs of scouts, a bugbear
to the reservation Indians, and a terror to Arizona. If a man was killed
or a woman missed, the Indians came galloping and the scouts lay on his
trail. If he met a woman in the defiles, he stretched her dead if she
did not please his errant fancy. He took pot-shots at the men ploughing
in their little fields, and knocked the Mexican bull-drivers on the head
as they plodded through the blinding dust of the Globe Road. He even sat
like a vulture on the rim-rock and signalled the Indians to come out and
talk. When two Indians thus accosted did go out, they found themselves
looking down Mas-sai's.50-calibre, and were tempted to do his bidding.
He sent one in for sugar and coffee, holding the brother, for such he
happened to be, as a hostage till the sugar and coffee came. Then he
told them that he was going behind a rock to lie down, cautioning them
not to move for an hour. That was an unnecessary bluff, for they did not
wink an eye till sundown. Later than this he stole a girl in broad
daylight in the face of a San Carlos camp and dragged her up the rocks.
Here he was attacked by fifteen or twenty bucks, whom he stood off until
darkness. When they reached his lair in the morning, there lay the dead
girl, but Massai was
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