midnight
From what the girl said , he must have got off east of Kansas City and travelled south and then west , till at last he came to the lands of the Mescalero Apaches , where he stayed for some time . He was over a year making this journey , and told the girl that no human eye ever saw him once in that time . This is all he ever told the girl Natastale , and she was afraid to ask him more . Beyond these mere facts , it is still a midnight prowl of a human coyote through a settled country for twelve hundred miles , the hardihood of the undertaking being equalled only by the instinct which took him home . -LSB- Illustration : 29 SCOUTS -RSB- `` Once only while the girl was with him did they see sign of other Indians , and straightway Massai turned away -- his wild nature shunning even the society of his kind . `` At times ` his heart was bad , ' and once he sat brooding for a whole day , finally telling her that he was going into a bad country to kill Mexicans , that women were a burden on a warrior , and that he had made up his mind to kill her . All through her narrative he seemed at times to be overcome with this blood-thirst , which took the form of a homicidal melancholia .