“You’ve got her on wrong,” said Slaughter. “The child must face the same way as you. That’s Apache fashion.”
Mrs. Slaughter readjusted Patchy. Facing forward and steadying herself with arms and legs, the baby was as contented as a mouse in its nest.
“Patchy was just a little wild animal when she came to San Bernardino ranch,” said Mrs. W. E. Hankin of Bisbee, who has preserved in manuscript much interesting history of the Slaughter family. “She ate anything, picking up scraps of food from the ground. When thirsty, she would run to a ditch and, lying face downward, drink from the stream. When drowsy, she curled up anywhere and went to sleep.
“When she became accustomed to her new home, she proved an unusually bright child. She understood much that was said to her. Sign language was natural to her; if she wanted bread and sugar, her signs were quite eloquent. She was soon lisping English. She forgot her Indian habits and in a little while was eating from a plate, drinking from a cup, and sleeping in her own little bed.
“She was a vain little creature. She used to strut like a robin in the pretty clothes Mrs. Slaughter had made for her, and she was particularly proud of her long, thick black hair. Once, when her hair was cut off, she cried as if her heart would break. ‘All my pretty hair is gone,’ she wailed. But when her hair grew back more luxuriantly than before, she was vainer than ever. When she was four years old, an amateur photographer took her picture. The look of pride on her flat little face was comical as she sat before the camera after having carefully spread her hair out over her shoulders.
“There were other waifs who had found a home at San Bernardino—a little Mexican girl, a pickaninny as black as tar, and a freckled-faced American youngster. With these playmates, Patchy romped all day. She had nothing to do but play, and the years for the little wild girl passed like a happy dream.
“Above everything else in the world, Patchy loved Mr. Slaughter. She would toddle about the place, holding to the strap of one of his boots to steady her wavering feet. If he took her in his lap, she would sit serenely happy for any length of time. If he rode away, she would wait at the front gate for hours, watching patiently for his return. When she saw him far off riding back, she would dance for joy. She called him Don Juan and when Don Juan took her for a little ride over the ranch, as he often did, holding her on his saddle in front of him, Patchy revelled in the greatest happiness the world had to give. Caresses were not in Patchy’s line. All the affection she had was expressed by her eyes, and she used to sit on the floor at the feet of her Don Juan as he smoked his pipe or read his paper and gaze at him by the hour with the rapt expression of a pagan worshipper before an idol.”
But the daughter of the wilderness in the white man’s home remained an Apache. She had an instinct for ambush. She took delight in frightening feminine visitors at the ranch by slipping noiselessly through the house and suddenly appearing as if from nowhere. If, at her games, she hid from her playmates, her lithe body became as motionless as a rock on a hillside. Sometimes she had spells of silent anger when her baby face froze in hard, savage lines and her black eyes snapped impishly. Though usually obedient, she could be sullen and obstinate. Once, when Mrs. Slaughter reprimanded her, the child’s face twisted with rage.
“I’ll kill you when I grow up,” she flared.
Pessimists shook their heads over Patchy. They warned Mrs. Slaughter. They feared that the Indian in the child some day might flame into quick and possibly tragic savagery. A leopard, they sermonized, could not change its spots, and an Apache would never be anything but an Apache—and a devil.
Four years after Patchy had come to the ranch, she was standing one February morning in beside a fire that she and her playmates had kindled in front of the house. A gust of wind whipped her skirt into the blaze. Flames shot up and enveloped her. In panic, she ran down the road. Will Slaughter, John Slaughter’s son, caught her, after a chase, smothered the flames, and bore her in his arms into the house. She was put to bed and soothing embrocations were applied. A telephone message was sent to Bisbee for a doctor. Bisbee, the nearest town, was fifty-five miles distant—modern Douglas was not yet in existence—and it was eight hours before the physician arrived. He found the case hopeless.
Patchy suffered exquisite agony. But she did not writhe or scream or moan. She lay on her pillow silent and motionless, the courage and stolid fortitude of her race in her grim little face, only the look in her black eyes giving evidence of the torture she endured. The little Apache was approaching the end like an Apache.
“Don Juan,” she said to John Slaughter with womanly calmness, “I am going to die. You have been good to me. Goodbye, Don Juan.”
So Patchy went to join the ghosts of her fathers, leaving unsolved the riddle over which the learned of the world have pondered and argued for years. What effect would civilization have had in moulding the character of this little savage of the Stone Age nurtured among the refinements of a modern home? Would she have grown into the gentle womanhood of the white race or into
