Title: The Heritage of the Sioux
Author: Bower, B. M.
Language: English
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THE HERITAGE OF THE SIOUX


By B.M. Bower



     I     WHEN GREEN GRASS COMES
     II    THE DAUGHTER OF A CHIEF
     III   TO THE VICTORS THE SPOILS
     IV    LOVE WORDS FOR ANNIE
     V     FOR THE GOOD OF THE COMPANY
     VI    “I GO WHERE WAGALEXA CONKA SAY”
      VII   ADVENTURE COMES SMILING
     VIII  THE SONG OF THE OMAHA
     IX    RIDERS IN THE BACKGROUND
     X     DEPUTIES ALL
     XI    ALL THIS WAR-TALK ABOUT INJUNS
     XII   THE WILD-GOOSE CHASE
     XIII  SET AFOOT
     XIV   ONE PUT OVER ON THE BUNCH
     XV    “NOW, DANG IT, RIDE!”
      XVI   ANNIE-MANY-PONIES WAITS
     XVII  APPLEHEAD SHOWS THE STUFF HE IS MADE OF
     XVIII IN THE DEVIL’S FRYING-PAN
     XIX   PEACE TALK
     XX    LUIS ROJAS TALKS
     XXI   “WAGALEXA CONKA--COLA!”



THE HERITAGE OF THE SIOUX



CHAPTER I. WHEN GREEN GRASS COMES

Old Applehead Furrman, jogging home across the mesa from Albuquerque,
sniffed the soft breeze that came from opal-tinted distances and felt
poignantly that spring was indeed here. The grass, thick and green
in the sheltered places, was fast painting all the higher ridges
and foot-hill slopes, and with the green grass came the lank-bodied,
big-kneed calves; which meant that roundup time was at hand. Applehead
did not own more than a thousand head of cattle, counting every hoof
that walked under his brand. And with the incipient lethargy of old
age creeping into his habits of life, roundup time was not with him the
important season it once had been; for several years he had been content
to hire a couple of men to represent him in the roundups of the larger
outfits--men whom he could trust to watch fairly well his interests. By
that method he avoided much trouble and hurry and hard work--and escaped
also the cares which come with wealth.

But this spring was not as other springs had been. Something--whether an
awakened ambition or an access of sentiment regarding range matters, he
did not know--was stirring the blood in Applehead’s veins. Never, since
the days when he had been a cowpuncher, had the wide spaces called to
him so alluringly; never had his mind dwelt so insistently upon the
approach of spring roundup. Perhaps it was because he heard so
much range talk at the ranch, where the boys of the Flying U were
foregathered in uneasy idleness, their fingers itching for the feel
of lariat ropes and branding irons while they gazed out over the wide
spaces of the mesa.

So much good rangeland unharnessed by wire fencing the Flying U boys had
not seen for many a day. During the winter they had been content to ride
over it merely for the purpose of helping to make a motion picture of
the range, but with the coming of green grass, and with the reaction
that followed the completion of the picture that in the making had
filled all their thoughts, they were not so content. To the inevitable
reaction had been added a nerve racking period of idleness and
uncertainty while Luck Lindsay, their director, strove with the Great
Western Film Company in Los Angeles for terms and prices that would make
for the prosperity of himself and his company.

In his heart Applehead knew, just as the Happy Family knew, that Luck
had good and sufficient reasons for over-staying the time-limit he had
given himself for the trip. But knowing that Luck was not to be blamed
for his long absence did not lessen their impatience, nor did it stifle
the call of the wide spaces nor the subtle influence of the winds that
blew softly over the uplands.

By the time he reached the ranch Applehead had persuaded himself that
the immediate gathering of his cattle was an imperative duty and that he
himself must perform it. He could not, he told himself, afford to wait
around any longer for luck. Maybe when he came Luck would have nothing
but disappointment for them, Maybe--Luck was so consarned stubborn when
he got an idea in his head--maybe be wouldn’t come to any agreement with
the Great Western. Maybe they wouldn’t offer him enough money, or leave
him enough freedom in his work; maybe he would “fly back on the rope”
 at the last minute, and come back with nothing accomplished. Applehead,
with the experience gleaned from the stress of seeing luck produce one
feature picture without any financial backing whatever and without half
enough capital, was not looking forward with any enthusiasm to another
such ordeal. He did not believe, when all was said and done, that the
Flying U boys would be so terribly eager to repeat the performance.
He did believe--or he made himself think he believed--that the only
sensible thing to do right then was to take the boys and go out and
start a roundup of his own. It wouldn’t take long--his cattle weren’t so
badly scattered this year.

“Where’s Andy at?” he asked Pink, who happened to be leaning boredly
over the gate when he rode up to the corral. Andy Green, having been
left in nominal charge of the outfit when Luck left, must be consulted,
Applehead supposed.

“Andy? I dunno. He saddled up and rode off somewhere, a while ago,” Pink
answered glumly. “That’s more than he’ll let any of us fellows do; the
way he’s close-herding us makes me tired! Any news?”

“Ain’t ary word from Luck--no word of NO kind. I’ve about made up my
mind to take the chuck-wagon to town and stock it with grub, and hit
out on roundup t’morrer or next day. I don’t see as there’s any sense
in setting around here waitin’ on Luck and lettin’ my own work slide.
Chavez boys, they started out yest’day, I heard in town. And if I don’t
git right out close onto their heels, I’ll likely find myself with
a purty light crop uh calves, now I’m tellin’ yuh!” Applehead, so
completely had he come under the spell of the soft spring air and the
lure of the mesa, actually forgot that he had long been in the habit of
attending to his calf crop by proxy.

Pink’s face brightened briefly. Then he remembered why they were being
kept so close to the ranch, and he grew bored again.

“What if Luck pulled in before we got back, and wanted us to start work
on another picture?” he asked, discouraging the idea reluctantly. Pink
had himself been listening to the call of the wide spaces, and the mere
mention of roundup had a thrill for him.

“Well, now, I calc’late my prope’ty is might’ nigh as important as
Luck’s pitcher-making,” Applehead contended with a selfishness born of
his newly awakened hunger for the far distances. “And he ain’t sent ary
word that he’s coming, or will need you boys immediate. The chances is
we could go and git back agin before Luck shows up. And if we don’t,” he
argued speciously, “he can’t blame nobody for not wantin’ to set around
on their haunches all spring waiting for ‘im. I’d do a lot fer luck;
I’ve DONE a lot fer ‘im. But it ain’t to be expected I’d set around
waitin’ on him and let them danged Mexicans rustle my calves. They’ll do
it if they git half a show--now I’m tellin’ yuh!”

Pink did not say anything at all, either in assent or argument; but old
Applehead, now that he had established a plausible reason for his sudden
impulse, went on arguing the case while he unsaddled his horse. By the
time he turned the animal loose he had thought of two or three other
reasons why he should take the boys and start out as soon as possible to
round up his cattle. He was still dilating upon these reasons when Andy
Green rode slowly down the slope to the corral.

“Annie-Many-Ponies come back yet?” he asked of Pink, as he swung down
off his horse. “Annie? No; ain’t seen anything of her. Shunky’s been
sitting out there on the hill for the last hour, looking for her.”

“Fer half a cent,” threatened old Applehead, in a bad humor because
his arguments had not quite convinced him that he was not meditating a
disloyalty, “I’d kill that danged dawg. And if I was runnin’ this bunch,
I’d send that squaw back where she come from, and I’d send her quick.
Take the two of ‘em together and they don’t set good with me, now I’m
tellin’ yuh! If I was to say what I think, I’d say yuh can’t never
trust an Injun--and shiny hair and eyes and slim build don’t make ‘em no
trustier. They’s something scaley goin’ on around here, and I’d gamble
on it. And that there squaw’s at the bottom of it. What fur’s she ridin’
off every day, ‘n’ nobody knowin’ where she goes to? If Luck’s got the
sense he used to have, he’ll git some white girl to act in his pitchers,
and send that there squaw home ‘fore she double-crosses him some way or
other.”

“Oh, hold on, Applehead!” Pink felt constrained to defend the girl.
“You’ve got it in for her ‘cause her dog don’t like your cat. Annie’s
all right; I never saw anything outa the way with her yet.”

“Well, now, time you’re old as I be, you’ll have some sense, mebby,”
 Applehead quelled. “Course you think Annie’s all right. She’s purty, ’n’
purtyness in a woman shore does cover up a pile uh cussedness--to a
feller under forty. You’re boss here, Andy. When she comes back, you ask
‘er where she’s been, and see if you kin git a straight answer. She’ll
lie to yuh--I’ll bet all I got, she’ll lie to yuh. And when a woman lies
about where she’s been to and what she’s been doin’, you can bet there’s
something scaley goin’ on. Yuh can’t fool ME!”

He turned and went up to the small adobe house where he had lived in
solitary contentment with his cat Compadre until Luck Lindsay, seeking a
cheap headquarters for his free-lance company while he produced the big
Western picture which filled all his mind, had taken calm and unheralded
possession of the ranch. Applehead did not resent the invasion; on
the contrary, he welcomed it as a pleasant change in his monotonous
existence. What he did resent was the coming, first, of the little black
dog that was no more than a tramp and had no right on the ranch, and
that broke all the laws of decency and gratitude by making the life of
the big blue cat miserable. Also he resented the uninvited arrival of
Annie-Many-Ponies from the Sioux reservation in North Dakota.

Annie-Many-Ponies had not only come uninvited--she had remained in
defiance of Luck’s perturbed insistence that she should go back home.
The Flying U boys might overlook that fact because of her beauty, but
Applehead was not so easily beguiled--especially when she proceeded
to form a violent attachment to the little black dog, which she called
Shunka Chistala in what Applehead considered a brazen flaunting of her
Indian blood and language, Between the mistress of Shunka Chistala and
the master of the cat there could never be anything more cordial than
an armed truce. She had championed that ornery cur in a way to make
Applehead’s blood boil. She had kept the dog in the house at night,
which forced the cat to seek cold comfort elsewhere. She had pilfered
the choicest table scraps for the dog--and Compadre was a cat of
fastidious palate and grew thin on what coarse bits were condescendingly
left for him.

Applehead had not approved of Luck’s final consent that
Annie-Many-Ponies should stay and play the Indian girl in his big
picture. In the mind of Applehead there lurked a grudge that found all
the more room to grow because of the natural bigness and generosity of
his nature. It irked him to see her going her calm way with that proud
uptilt to her shapely head and that little, inscrutable smile when she
caught the meaning of his grumbling hints.

Applehead was easy-going to a fault in most things, but his dislike
had grown in Luck’s absence to the point where he considered himself
aggrieved whenever Annie-Many-Ponies saddled the horse which had been
tacitly set aside for her use, and rode off into the mesa without a word
of explanation or excuse. Applehead reminded the boys that she had not
acted like that when luck was home. She had stayed on the ranch where
she belonged, except once or twice, on particularly fine days, when she
had meekly asked “Wagalexa Conka,” as she persisted in calling Luck, for
permission to go for a ride.

Applehead itched to tell her a few things about the social, moral,
intellectual and economic status of an “Injun squaw”--but there was
something in her eye, something in the quiver of her finely shaped
nostrils, in the straight black brows, that held his tongue quiet when
he met her face to face. You couldn’t tell about these squaws. Even
luck, who knew Indians better than most--and was, in a heathenish tribal
way, the adopted son of Old Chief Big Turkey, and therefore Annie’s
brother by adoption--even Luck maintained that Annie-Many-Ponies
undoubtedly carried a knife concealed in her clothes and would use it if
ever the need arose. Applehead was not afraid of Annie’s knife. It was
something else, something he could not put into words, that held him
back from open upbraidings.

He gave Andy’s wife, Rosemary, the mail and stopped to sympathize with
her because Annie-Many-Ponies had gone away and left the hardest part of
the ironing undone. Luck had told Annie to help Rosemary with the work;
but Annie’s help, when Luck was not around the place, was, Rosemary
asserted, purely theoretical.

“And from all you read about Indians,” Rosemary complained with a pretty
wrinkling of her brows, “you’d think the women just LIVE for the sake
of working. I’ve lost all faith in history, Mr. Furrman. I don’t believe
squaws ever do anything if they can help it. Before she went off riding
today, for instance, that girl spent a whole HOUR brushing her hair and
braiding it. And I do believe she GREASES it to make it shine the way
it does! And the powder she piles on her face--just to ride out on
the mesa!” Rosemary Green was naturally sweet-tempered and exceedingly
charitable in her judgements; but here, too, the cat-and-dog feud had
its influence. Rosemary Green was a loyal champion of the cat Compadre;
besides, there was a succession of little irritations, in the way of
dishes left unwashed and inconspicuous corners left unswept, to warp her
opinion of Annie-Many-Ponies.

When he left Rosemary he went straight down to where the chuck-wagon
stood, and began to tap the tires with a small rock to see if they would
need resetting before he started out. He decided that the brake-blocks
would have to be replaced with new ones--or at least reshod with old
boot-soles. The tongue was cracked, too; that had been done last winter
when Luck was producing The Phantom Herd and had sent old Dave Wiswell
down a rocky hillside with half-broken bronks harnessed to the wagon, in
a particularly dramatic scene. Applehead went grumblingly in search of
some baling wire to wrap the tongue. He had been terribly excited and
full of enthusiasm for the picture at the time the tongue was cracked,
but now he looked upon it merely as a vital weakness in his roundup
outfit. A new tongue would mean delay; and delay, in his present mood,
was tragedy.

He couldn’t find any old baling wire, though he had long been accustomed
to tangling his feet in snarled bunches of it when he went forth in
the dark after a high wind. Until now he had not observed its unwonted
absence from the yard. For a long while he had not needed any wire to
mend things, because Luck had attended to everything about the ranch,
and if anything needed mending he had set one of the Happy Family at the
task.

His search led him out beyond the corrals in the little dry wash that
sometimes caught and held what the high winds brought rolling that way.
The wash was half filled with tumble-weed, so that Applehead was forced
to get down into it and kick the weeds aside to see if there was
any wire lodged beneath. His temper did not sweeten over the task,
especially since he found nothing that he wanted.

Annie-Many-Ponies, riding surreptitiously up the dry wash--meaning to
come out in a farther gully and so approach the corral from the west
instead of from the east--came upon Applehead quite unexpectedly. She
stopped and eyed him aslant from under her level, finely marked brows,
and her eyes lightened with relief when she saw that Applehead looked
more startled than she had felt. Indeed, Applehead had been calling Luck
uncomplimentary names for cleaning the place of everything a man might
need in a hurry, and he was ashamed of himself.

“Can’t find a foot of danged wire on the danged place!” Applehead kicked
a large, tangled bunch of weeds under the very nose of the horse which
jumped sidewise. “Never seen such a maniac for puttin’ things where a
feller can’t find ‘em, as what Luck is.” He was not actually speak
ing to Annie-Many-Ponies--or if he was he did not choose to point his
remarks by glancing at her.

“Wagalexa Conka, he heap careful for things belong when they stay,”
 Annie-Many-Ponies observed in her musical contralto voice which always
irritated Applehead with its very melody. “I think plenty wire all fold
up neat in prop-room. Wagalexa Conka, he all time clean this studio from
trash lie around everywhere.”

“He does, hey?” Applehead’s sunburnt mustache bristled like the whiskers
of Compadre when he was snarling defiance at the little black dog.
The feud was asserting itself. “Well, this here danged place ain’t no
studio! It’s a ranch, and it b’longs to ME, Nip Furrman. And any balin’
wire on this ranch is my balin’ wire, and it’s got a right to lay around
wherever I want it t’ lay. And I don’t need no danged squaw givin’ me
hints about ‘how my place oughta be kept--now I’m tellin’ yuh!”

Annie-Many-Ponies did not reply in words. She sat on her horse, straight
as any young warchief that ever led her kinsmen to battle, and looked
down at Applehead with that maddening half smile of hers, inscrutable as
the Sphinx her features sometimes resembled. Shunka Chistala (which
is Sioux for Little Dog) came bounding over the low ridge that hid the
ranch buildings from sight, and wagged himself dislocatingly up to her.
Annie-Many-Ponies frowned at his approach until she saw that Applehead
was aiming a clod at the dog, whereupon she touched her heels to the
horse and sent him between Applehead and her pet, and gave Shunka
Chistala a sharp command in Sioux that sent him back to the house with
his tail dropped.

For a full half minute she and old Applehead looked at each other
in open antagonism. For a squaw, Annie-Many-Ponies was remarkably
unsubmissive in her bearing. Her big eyes were frankly hostile; her half
smile was, in the opinion of Applehead, almost as frankly scornful.
He could not match her in the subtleties of feminine warfare. He took
refuge behind the masculine bulwark of authority.

“Where yuh bin with that horse uh mine?” he demanded harshly. “Purty
note when I don’t git no say about my own stock. Got him all het up and
heavin’ like he’d been runnin’ cattle; I ain’t goin’ to stand for havin’
my horses ran to death, now I’m tellin’ yuh! Fer a squaw, I must say
you’re gittin’ too danged uppish in your ways around here. Next time
you want to go traipsin’ around the mesa, you kin go afoot. I’m goin’ to
need my horses fer roundup.”

A white girl would have made some angry retort; but Annie-Many-Ponies,
without looking in the least abashed, held her peace and kept that
little inscrutable smile upon her lips. Her eyes, however, narrowed in
their gaze.

“Yuh hear me?” Poor old Applehead had never before attempted to browbeat
a woman, and her unsubmissive silence seemed to his bachelor mind
uncanny.

“I hear what Wagalexa Conka tell me.” She turned her horse and rode
composedly away from him over the ridge.

“You’ll hear a danged sight more’n that, now I’m tellin’ yuh!” raved
Applehead impotently. “I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ agin Luck, but they’s
goin’ to be some danged plain speakin’ done on some subjects when
he comes back, and given’ squaws a free rein and lettin’ ‘em ride
rough-shod over everybody and everything is one of ‘era. Things is
gittin’ mighty funny when a danged squaw kin straddle my horses and ride
‘em to death, and sass me when I say a word agin it--now I’m tellin’
yuh!”

He went mumbling rebellion that was merely the effervescing of a
mood which would pass with the words it bred, to the store-room which
Annie-Many-Ponies had called the prop-room. He found there, piled upon
a crude shelf, many little bundles of wire folded neatly and with the
outer end wound twice around to keep each bundle separate from the
others. Applehead snorted at what he chose to consider a finicky streak
in his secret idol, Luck Lindsay; but he took two of the little bundles
and went and wired the wagon tongue. And in the work he found a salve of
anticipatory pleasure, so that he ended the task to the humming of the
tune he had heard a movie theatre playing in town as he rode by on his
way home.



CHAPTER II. THE DAUGHTER OF A CHIEF

In spite of Andy Green’s plea for delay until they knew what Luck meant
to do, Applehead went on with his energetic preparations for a spring
roundup of his own. Some perverse spirit seemed to possess him and drive
him out of his easy-going shiftlessness. He offered to hire the Happy
Family by the day, since none of them would promise any permanent
service until they heard from Luck. He put them to work gathering up
the saddle-horses that had been turned loose when Luck’s picture was
finished, and repairing harness and attending to the numberless details
of reorganizing a ranch long left to slipshod make-shifts.

The boys of the Flying U argued while they worked, but in spite of
themselves the lure of the mesa quickened their movements. They were
supposed to wait for Luck before they did anything; an they all knew
that. But, on the other hand, Luck was supposed to keep them informed as
to his movements; which he had not done. They did not voice one single
doubt of Lucks loyalty to them, but human nature is more prone to
suspicion than to faith, as every one knows. And Luck had the power and
the incentive to “double-cross” them if he was the kind to do such a
thing. He was manager for their little free-lance picture company which
did not even have a name to call itself by. They had produced one big
feature film, and it was supposed to be a cooperative affair from
start to finish. If Luck failed to make good, they would all be broke
together. If Luck cleared up the few thousands that had been their hope,
why--they would all profit by the success, if Luck--

I maintain that they showed themselves of pretty good metal, in that
not even Happy Tack, confirmed pessimist that he was, ever put the least
suspicion of Luck’s honesty into words. They were not the kind to
decry a comrade when his back was turned. And they had worked with Luck
Lindsay and had worked for him. They had slept under the same roof
with him, had shared his worries, his hopes, and his fears. They did not
believe that Luck had appropriated the proceeds of The Phantom Herd
and had deliberately left them there to cool their heels and feel the
emptiness of their pockets in New Mexico, while he disported himself in
Los Angeles; they did--not believe that--they would have resented the
implication that they harbored any doubt of him. But for all that, as
the days passed and he neither came nor sent them any word, they yielded
more and more to the determination of Applehead to start out upon his
own business, and they said less and less about Luck’s probable plans
for the future.

And then, just when they were making ready for an early start the next
morning; just when Applehead had the corral full of horses and his
chuckwagon of grub; just when the Happy Family had packed their war-bags
with absolute necessities and were justifying themselves in final
arguments with Andy Green, who refused point-blank to leave the;
ranch--then, at the time a dramatist would have chosen for his entrance
for an effective “curtain,” here came Luck, smiling and driving a huge
seven-passenger machine crowded to the last folding seat and with the
chauffeur riding on the running board where Luck had calmly banished him
when he skidded on a sharp turn and came near upsetting them.

Applehead, stowing a coil of new rope in the chuck-wagon, took off his
hat and rubbed his shiny, pink pate in dismay. He was, for the moment,
a culprit caught in the act of committing a grave misdemeanor if not
an actual felony. He dropped the rope and went forward with dragging
feet--ashamed, for the first time in his life, to face a friend.

Luck gave the wheel a twist, cut a fine curve around the windmill and
stopped before the house with as near a flourish as a seven-passenger
automobile loaded from tail-lamp to windshield can possibly approach.

“There. That’s the way I’ve been used to seeing cars behave,” Luck
observed pointedly to the deposed chauffeur as he slammed the door open
and climbed out. “You don’t have to act like you’re a catepillar on a
rail fence, to play safe. I believe in keeping all four wheels on the
ground--but I like to see ‘em turn once in awhile. You get me?” He
peeled a five-dollar banknote off a roll the size of his wrist, handed
it to the impressed chauffeur and dismissed the transaction with a
wave of his gloved hand. “You’re all right, brother,” he tempered his
criticism, “but I’m some nervous about automobiles.”

“I noticed that myself,” drawled a soft, humorous voice from the rear.
“This is the nearest I ever came to traveling by telegraph.”

Luck grinned, waved his hand in friendly greeting to the Happy Family
who were taking long steps up from the corral, and turned his attention
to the unloading of the machine. “Howdy, folks!--guess yuh thought I’d
plumb lost the trail back,” he called to them over his shoulder while he
dove after suitcases, packages of various sizes and shapes, a box or
two which the Happy Family recognized as containing “raw stock,” and a
camera tripod that looked perfectly new.

From the congested tonneau a tall, slim young woman managed to descend
without stepping on anything that could not bear being stepped upon. She
gave her skirts a little shake, pushed back a flying strand of hair and
turned her back to the machine that she might the better inspect her
immediate surroundings.

Old Dave Wiswell, the dried little man who never had much to say, peered
at her sharply, hesitated and then came forward with his bony hand
outstretched and trembling with eagerness. “Why, my gorry! If it ain’t
Jean Douglas, my eyes are lyin’ to me,” he cried.

“It isn’t Jean Douglas--but don’t blame your eyes for that,” said the
girl, taking his hand and shaking it frankly. “Jean Douglas Avery,
thanks to the law that makes a girl trade her name for a husband. You
know Lite, of course--dad, too.”

“Well, well--my gorry I I should say I do! Howdy, Aleck?” He shook the
hand of the old man Jean called dad, and his lips trembled uncertainly,
seeking speech that would not hurt a very, very sore spot in the heart
of big Aleck Douglas. “I’m shore glad to meet yuh again,” he stuttered
finally, and let it go at that “And how are yuh, Lite? Just as long and
lanky as ever--marriage shore ain’t fattened you up none. My gorry! I
shore never expected to see you folks away down here!”

“Thought you heard me say when I left that the Great Western had offered
to get me Jean Douglas for leading lady,” Luck put in, looking around
distractedly for a place to deposit his armload of packages. “That’s
one thing that kept me--waiting for her to show up. Of course a man
naturally expects a woman to take her own time about starting--”

“I like that!” Jean drawled. “We broke up housekeeping and wound up a
ranch and traveled a couple of thousand miles in just a week’s time.
We--we ALMOST hit the same gait you did from town out here today!”

Rosemary Green came out then, and Luck turned to greet her and to
present Jean to her, and was pleased when he saw from their eyes that
they liked each other at first sight. He introduced the Happy Family
and Applehead to her and to her husband, Lite Avery, and her father.
He pulled a skinny individual forward and announced that this was Pete
Lowry, one of the Great Western’s crack cameramen; and another chubby,
smooth-cheeked young man he presented as Tommy Johnson, scenic artist
and stage carpenter. And he added with a smile for the whole bunch,
“We’re going to produce some real stuff from now on believe me, folks!”

In the confusion and the mild clamor of the absence-bridging questions
and hasty answers, two persons had no part. Old Applehead, hard-ridden
by the uneasy consciousness of his treason to Luck, leaned against a
porch post and sucked hard at the stem of an empty pipe. And just beyond
the corner out of sight but well within hearing, Annie-Many-Ponies stood
flattened against the wall and listened with fast-beating pulse for the
sound of her name, spoken in the loved voice of Wagalexa Conka. She, the
daughter of a chief and Luck’s sister by tribal adoption--would he
not miss her: from among those others who welcomed him? Would he not
presently ask: “Where is Annie-Many-Ponies?” She knew just how he would
turn and search for her with his eyes.

She knew just how his voice would sound when he asked for her. Then,
after a minute--when he had missed her and had asked for her--she would
come and stand before him. And he would take her hand and say to that
white woman; “This is my Indian sister, Annie-Many-Ponies, who played
the part of the beautiful Indian girl who died so grandly in The Phantom
Herd. This is the girl who plays my character leads.” Then the white
girl, who was to be his leading woman, would not feel that she was the
only woman in the company who could do good work for Luck.

Annie-Many-Ponies had worked in pictures since she was fifteen and did
only “atmosphere stuff” in the Indian camps of Luck’s arranging. She was
wise in the ways of picture jealousies. Already she was jealous of this
slim woman with the dark hair and eyes and the slow smile that always
caught one’s attention and held it. She waited. She wanted Wagalexa
Conka to call her in that kindly, imperious voice of his--the voice of
the master. This leading woman would see, then, that here was a girl
more beautiful for whom Luck Lindsay felt the affection of family ties.

She waited, flattened against the wall, listening to every word that
was spoken in that buzzing group. She saw the last bundle taken from
the machine, and she saw Luck’s head and shoulders disappear within the
tonneau, making sure that it was the last bundle and that nothing had
been overlooked. She saw the driver climb in, slam the fore-door shut
after him and bend above the starter. She saw the machine slide out of
the group and away in a wide circle to regain the trail. She saw the
group break and start off in various directions as duty or a passing
interest led. But Wagalexa Conka never once seemed to remember that she
was not there. Never once did he speak her name.

Instead, just as Rosemary was leading the way into the house, this slim
young woman they called Jean glanced around inquiringly. “I thought you
had a squaw working for you,” she said in that soft, humorous voice of
hers. “The one who did the Indian girl in The Phantom Herd. Isn’t she
here any more?”

“Oh, yes!” Luck stopped with one foot on the porch. “Sure! Where is
Annie? Anybody know?”

“She was around here just before you came,” said Rosemary carelessly. “I
don’t know where she went.”

“Hid out, I reckon,” Luck commented. “Injuns are heap shy of meeting
strangers. She’ll show up after a little.”

Annie-Many-Ponies stooped and slid safely past the window that might
betray her, and then slipped away behind the house. She waited, and she
listened; for though the adobe walls were thick, there were open windows
and her hearing was keen. Within was animated babel and much laughter.
But not once again did Annie-Many-Ponies hear her name spoken. Not once
again did Wagalexa Conka remember her. Save when she, that slim woman
who bad come to play his leads, asked to see her, she had been wholly
forgotten. Even then she had been named a squaw. It was as though they
had been speaking of a horse. They did not count her worthy of a place
in their company, they did not miss her voice and her smile.

“Hid out,” Wagalexa Conka had said. Well, she would hide out, then--she,
the daughter of a chief of the Sioux; she, whom Wagalexa Conka had been
glad to have in his picture when he was poor and had no money to pay
white leading women. But now he had much money; now he could come in a
big automobile, with a slim, white leading woman and a camera man and
scenic artist and much money in his pocket; and she--she was just
a squaw who had hid out, and who would show up after a while and be
grateful if he took her by the hand and said, “How!”

With so many persons moving eagerly here and there, none but an Indian
could have slipped away from that house and from the ranch without being
seen. But though the place was bald and open to the four winds save for
a few detached outbuildings, Annie-Many-Ponies went away upon the mesa
and no one saw her go.

She did not dare go to the corral for her horse. The corral was in plain
sight of the house, and the eyes of Wagalexa Conka were keen as the
eye of the Sioux, his foster brothers. He would see her there. He would
call: “Annie, come here!” and she would go, and would stand submissive
before him, and would be glad that he noticed her; for she was born of
the tribe where women obey their masters, and the heritage of centuries
may not be lightly lain aside like an outgrown garment. She felt that
this was so; that although her heart might burn with resentment because
he had forgotten and must be reminded by a strange white woman that the
“squaw” was not present, still, if he called her she must go, because
Wagalexa Conka was master there and the master must be obeyed.

Down the dry wash where Applehead had hunted for baling wire she went
swiftly, with the straight-backed, free stride of the plainswoman who
knows not the muscle-bondage of boned girdle. In moccasins she walked;
for a certain pride of race, a certain sense of the picture-value of
beaded buckskin and bright cloth, held her fast to the gala dress of her
people, modified and touched here and there with the gay ornaments
of civilization. So much had her work in the silent drama taught her.
Bareheaded, her hair in two glossy braids each tied with a big red bow,
she strode on and on in the clear sunlight of spring.

Not until she was more than two miles from the ranch did she show
herself upon one of the numberless small ridges which, blended together
in the distance, give that deceptive look of flatness to the mesa. Even
two miles away, in that clear air that dwarfs distance so amazingly,
Wagalexa Conka might recognize her if he looked at her with sufficient
attention. But Wagalexa Conka, she told herself with a flash of her
black eyes, would not look. Wagalexa Conka was too busy looking at that
slim woman he had brought with him.

That ridge she crossed, and two others. On the last one she stopped
and stood, straight and still, and stared away towards the mountains,
shading her eyes with one spread palm. On a distant slope a small herd
of cattle fed, scattered and at peace. Nearer, a great hawk circled
slowly on widespread wings, his neck craned downward as if he
were watching his own shadow move ghostlike over the grass.
Annie-Many-Ponies, turning her eyes disappointedly from the empty mesa,
envied the hawk his swift-winged freedom.

When she looked again toward the far slopes next the mountains, a black
speck rolled into view, the nucleus of a little dust cloud. Her face
brightened a little; she turned abruptly and sought easy footing down
that ridge, and climbed hurriedly the longer rise beyond. Once or twice,
when she was on high ground, she glanced behind her uneasily, as does
one whose mind holds a certain consciousness of wrongdoing. She did not
pause, even then, but hurried on toward the dust cloud.

On the rim of a shallow, saucer-like basin that lay cunningly concealed
until one stood upon the very edge of it, Annie-Many-Ponies stopped
again and stood looking out from under her spread palm. Presently the
dust cloud moved over the crest of a ridge, and now that it was so
much closer she saw clearly the horseman loping abreast of the
dust. Annie-Many-Ponies stood for another moment watching, with that
inscrutable half smile on her lips. She untied the cerise silk kerchief
which she wore knotted loosely around her slim neck, waited until the
horseman showed plainly in the distance and then, raising her right hand
high above her head, waved the scarf three times in slow, sweeping half
circles from right to left. She waited, her eyes fixed expectantly upon
the horseman. Like a startled rabbit he darted to the left, pulled in
his horse, turned and rode for three or four jumps sharply to the right;
stopped short for ten seconds and then came straight on, spurring his
horse to a swifter pace.

Annie-Many-Ponies smiled and went down into the shallow basin and seated
herself upon the wide, adobe curbing of an old well that marked, with
the nearby ruins of an adobe house, the site, of an old habitation of
tragic history. She waited with the absolute patience of her race for
the horseman had yet a good two miles to cover. While she waited she
smiled dreamily to herself and with dainty little pats and pulls she
widened the flaring red bows on her hair and retied the cerise scarf in
its picturesque, loose knot about her throat. As a final tribute to
that feminine instinct which knows no race she drew from some cunningly
devised hiding place a small, cheap “vanity box,” and proceeded very
gravely to powder her nose.



CHAPTER III. TO THE VICTORS THE SPOILS

“Hey, boys!” Luck Lindsay shouted to Applehead and one or two of
the Happy Family who were down at the chuck--wagon engaged in uneasy
discussion as to what Luck would say when he found out about their
intention to leave. “Come on up here--this is going to be a wiping out
of old scores and I want to get it over with!”

“Well, now, I calc’late the fur’s about to fly,” Applehead made dismal
prophecy, as they started to obey the summons. “All ‘t su’prises me is
‘t he’s held off this long. Two hours is a dang long time fer Luck to
git in action, now I’m tellin’ yuh!” He took off his hat and polished
his shiny pate, as was his habit when perturbed. “I’m shore glad we
had t’ wait and set them wagon-tires,” he added. “We’d bin started this
mornin’ only fer that.”

“Aw, we ain’t done nothing,” Happy Jack protested in premature self
defense. “We ain’t left the ranch yet. I guess a feller’s got a right to
THINK!”

“He has, if he’s got anything to do it with,” Pink could not forbear to
remark pointedly.

“Well, if a feller didn’t have, he’d have a fat chance borrying from
YOU,” Happy Jack retorted.

“Well, by cripes, I ain’t perpared to bet very high that there’s a
teacupful uh brains in this hull outfit,” Big Medicine asserted. “We
might a knowed Luck’d come back loaded fer bear; we WOULD a knowed it if
we had any brains in our heads. I’m plumb sore at myself. By cripes, I
need kickin’!”

“You’ll get it, chances are,” Pink assured him grimly.

Luck was in the living room, sitting at a table on which were scattered
many papers Scribbled with figures. He had a cigarette in his lips, his
hat on the back of his head and a twinkle in his eyes. He looked up and
grinned as they came reluctantly into the room.

“Time’s money from now on, so this is going to be cut short as
possible,” he began with his usual dynamic energy showing in his tone
and in the movements of his hands as he gathered up the papers and
evened their edges on the table top. “You fellows know how much you put
into the game when we started out to come here and produce The Phantom
Herd, don’t you? If you don’t, I’ve got the figures here. I guess
the returns are all in on that picture--and so far She’s brought us
twenty-three thousand and four hundred dollars. She went big, believe
me! I sold thirty states. Well, cost of production is-what we put in the
pool, plus the cost of making the prints I got in Los. We pull out the
profits according to what we put in--sabe? I guess that suits everybody,
doesn’t it?”

“Sure,” one astonished voice gulped faintly. The others were dumb.

“Well, I’ve figured it out that way--and to make sure I had it right I
got Billy Wilders, a pal of mine that works in a bank there, to figure
it himself and check up after me. We all put in our services--one man’s
work against every other man’s work, mine same as any of you. Bill
Holmes, here, didn’t have any money up, and he was an apprentice--but
I’m giving him twenty a week besides his board. That suit you, Bill?”

“I guess it’s all right,” Bill answered in his colorless tone.

Luck, being extremely sensitive to tones, cocked an eye up at Bill
before he deliberately peeled, from the roll he drew from his pocket,
enough twenty dollar notes to equal the number of weeks Bill had worked
for him. “And that’s paying you darned good money for apprentice work,”
 he informed him drily, a little hurt by Bill’s lack of appreciation. For
when you take a man from the streets because he is broke and hungry and
homeless, and feed him and give him work and clothes and three meals a
day and a warm bed to sleep in, if you are a normal human being you are
going to expect a little gratitude from that man; Luck had a flash of
disappointment when he saw how indifferently Bill Holmes took those
twenties and counted them before shoving them into his pocket. His own
voice was more crisply businesslike when he spoke again.

“Annie-Many-Ponies back yet? She’s not in on the split either. I’m
paying her ten a week besides her board. That’s good money for a squaw.”
 He counted out the amount in ten dollar bills and snapped a rubber band
around them.

“Now here is the profit, boys, on your winter’s work. Applehead comes
in with the use of his ranch and stock and wagons and so on. Here,
pard--how does this look to you?” His own pleasure in what he was doing
warmed from Luck’s voice all the chill that Bill Holmes had sent into
it. He smiled his contagious smile and peeled off fifty dollar banknotes
until Applehead’s eyes popped.

“Oh, don’t give me so dang much!” he gulped nervously when Luck had
counted out for him the amount he had jotted down opposite his name.
“That there’s moren the hul dang ranch is worth if I was t’ deed it over
to yuh, Luck! I ain’t goin’ to take--”

“You shut up,” Luck commanded him affectionately. “That’s yours--now,
close your face and let me get this thing wound up. Now--WILL you quit
your arguing, or shall I throw you out the window?”

“Well, now, I calc’late you’d have a right busy time throwin’ ME out
the window,” Applehead boasted, and backed into a corner to digest this
astonishing turn of events.

One by one, as their names stood upon his list, Luck called the boys
forward and with exaggerated deliberation peeled off fifty-dollar notes
and one-hundred-dollar notes to take their breath and speech from them.

With Billy Wilders, his friend in the bank, to help him, he had boyishly
built that roll for just this heart-warming little ceremony. He might
have written checks to square the account of each, but he wanted to make
their eyes stand out, just as he was doing. He had looked forward to
this half hour more eagerly than any of them guessed; he had, with his
eyes closed, visualized this scene over more than one cigarette, his
memory picturing vividly another scene wherein these same young men
had cheerfully emptied their pockets and planned many small personal
sacrifices that he, Luck Lindsay, might have money enough to come here
to New Mexico and make his one Big Picture. Luck felt that nothing less
than a display of the profits in real money could ever quite balance
that other scene when all the Happy Family had in the world went in the
pot and they mourned because it was so little.

“Aw, I betche Luck robbed a bank er something!” Happy Jack stuttered
with an awkward attempt to conceal his delight when his name was
called, his investment was read and the little sheaf of currency that
represented his profit was laid in his outstretched palm.

“It’s me for the movies if this is the way they pan out,” Weary declared
gleefully. “Mamma! I didn’t know there was so much money in the world!”

“I’ll bet he milked Los Angeles dry of paper money,” Andy Green asserted
facetiously, thumbing his small fortune gloatingly. “Holding out
anything for yourself, Luck? We don’t want to be hogs.”

“I’m taking care of my interests--don’t you worry about that a minute,”
 Luck stated complacently. “I held mine out first. That wipes the
slate--and cleans up the bank-roll. I maintain The Phantom Herd
was so-o-ome picture, boys. They’ll be getting it here in ‘Querque
soon--we’ll all go in and see it.”

“Now we’re all set for a fresh start. And while you’re all here I’ll
just put you up to date on what kind of a deal I made with Dewitt. We
come in under the wing of Excelsior, and our brand name will be Flying
U Feature Film--how does that hit you? You boys are all on a straight
board-and-salary basis--thirty dollars a week, and it’s up to me to
make you earn it!” He grinned and beckoned to Jean Douglas Avery and her
companions in the next room.

“Mrs. Avery, here, is our leading woman--keeping the name of Jean
Douglas, since she made it valuable in that Lazy A serial she did a
year or so ago. Lite is on the same footing as the rest of you boys.
Her father will be my assistant in choosing locations and so on. Tommy
Johnson, as I said, is another assistant in another capacity, that of
scenic artist and stage carpenter. Pete Lowry, here, is camera man and
Bill Holmes will be his assistant. The rest of you work wherever I need
you--a good deal the way we did last winter. Annie-Many-Ponies stays
with us as character lead and is in general stock. Rosemary--” he
stopped and smiled at her understandingly--“Rosemary draws fifteen a
week--oh, don’t get scared! I won’t give you any foreground stuff!
just atmosphere when I need it, and general comforter and mascot of the
company!”

Luck may have stretched a point there, but if he did it was merely a
technical one. Rosemary Green was hopelessly camera-shy, but he could
use her in background atmosphere, and when it came to looking after the
physical and mental welfare of the bunch she was worth her weight in any
precious metal you may choose to name.

“You better put me down as camp cook and dishwasher, Luck Lindsay,”
 Rosemary protested, blushing.

“No--thank the Lord you won’t have to cook for this hungry bunch any
longer. I’ve got a Mexican hired and headed this way. There’ll be no
more of that kind of thing for you, lady--not while you’re with us.

“Now, boys, let’s get organized for action. Weather’s perfect--Lowry’s
been raving over the light, all the way out from town. I’ve got a range
picture all blocked out--did it while I was waiting in Los for Jean to
show up. Done anything about roundup yet, Applehead?”--

Poor old Applehead, with his guilty conscience and his soft-hearted
affection for Luck so deeply stirred by the money laid in his
big-knuckled hand, shuffled his feet and cleared his throat and did not
get one intelligible word past his dry tongue.

“If you haven’t,” Luck hurried on, spurred by his inpatient energy,
“I want to organize and get out right away with a regular roundup
outfitchuck-wagon, remuda and all--see what I mean I While I’m getting
the picture of the stuff I want, we can gather and brand your calves.
That way, all my range scenes will be of the real thing. I may want to
throw the Chavez outfit in with ours, too, so as to get bigger stuff.
I’ll try and locate Ramon Chavez and see what I can do. But anyway,
I want the roundup outfit ready to start just as soon as
possible--tomorrow, if we could get it together in time. How about that
cracked tongue on the chuck-wagon? Anybody fixed that?”

“We-ell, I wired it up so’st it’s as solid as the rest uh the runnin’
gear,” Applehead confessed shamefacedly, rolling his eyes apprehensively
at the flushed faces of his fellow traitors.

“Yuh did? Good! Tires need setting, if I recollect--”

“Er--I had the boys set the tires, ‘n’--”

“Fine! I might have known you fellows would put things in shape while
I was gone! How about the horses? I thought I saw a bunch in the big
corral--”

“I rustled enough saddle horses to give us all two apiece,” Applehead
admitted, perspiring coldly. “‘Tain’t much of a string, but--”

“You did? Sounds like you’ve been reading my mind, Applehead. Now we’ll
grubstake the outfit--”

“Er--well, I took the chuck-wagon in yest’day and loaded ‘er up with
grub fer two weeks,” blurted Applehead heroically. “I was figurin’--”

“Good! Couldn’t ask better. Applehead, you sure are there when it comes
to backing a man’s play. If I haven’t said much about how I stand toward
you fellows it isn’t because I don’t appreciate every durned one of
you.”

The Happy Family squirmed guiltily and made way for Applehead, who was
sidling toward the open door, his face showing alarming symptoms of
apoplexy. Their confusion Luck set down to a becoming modesty. He went
on planning and perfecting details. Standing as he did on the threshold
of a career to which his one big success had opened the door, he was
wholly absorbed in making good.

There was nothing now to balk his progress, he told himself. He had his
company, he had the location for his big range stuff, he had all the
financial backing any reasonable man could want. He had a salary that
in itself gauged the prestige he had gained among producers, and as an
added incentive to do the biggest work of his life he had a contract
giving him a royalty on all prints of his pictures in excess of a fixed
number. Better than all this, he had big ideals and an enthusiasm for
the work that knew no limitations.

Perhaps he was inclined to dream too big; per-haps he assumed too great
an enthusiasm on the part of those who worked with him--I don’t know
just where he did place the boundary line. I do know that he never once
suspected the Happy Family of any meditated truancy from the ranch and
his parting instructions to “sit tight.” I also know that the Happy
Family was not at all likely to volunteer information of their lapse.
And as for Applehead, the money burned his soul deep with remorse; so
deep that he went around with an abject eagerness to serve Luck that
touched that young man as a rare example of a bone-deep loyalty that
knows no deceit. Which proves once more how fortunate it is that we
cannot always see too deeply into the thoughts and motives of our
friends.



CHAPTER IV. LOVE WORDS FOR ANNIE

In Tijeras Arroyo the moon made black shadows where stood the tiny
knolls here and there, marking frequently the windings of dry washes
where bushes grew in ragged patches and where tall weeds of mid-May
tangled in the wind. The roundup tents of the Flying U Feature Film
Company stood white as new snow in the moonlight, though daylight showed
them an odd, light-blue tint for photographic purposes. On a farther
slope cunningly placed by the scenic artist to catch the full sunlight
of midday, the camp of the Chavez brothers gleamed softly in the magic
light.

So far had spring roundup progressed that Luck was holding the camp in
Tijeras Arroyo for picture-making only. Applehead’s calves were branded,
to the youngest pair of knock-kneed twins which Happy Jack found curled
up together cunningly hidden in a thicket. They had been honored with a
“close-up” scene, those two spotted calves, and were destined to further
honors which they did not suspect and could not appreciate.

They slept now, as slept the two camps upon the two slopes that lay
moon-bathed at midnight. Back where the moon was making the barren
mountains a wonderland of deep purple and black and silvery gray and
brown, a coyote yapped a falsetto message and was answered by one nearer
at hand--his mate, it might be. In a bush under the bank that made of
it a black blot in the unearthly whiteness of the sand, a little
bird fluttered uneasily and sent a small, inquiring chirp into the
stillness. From somewhere farther up the arroyo drifted a faint,
aromatic odor of cigarette smoke.

Had you been there by the bush you could not have told when
Annie-Many-Ponies passed by; you would not have seen her--certainly you
could not have heard the soft tread of her slim, moccasined feet. Yet
she passed the bush and the bank and went away up the arroyo, silent as
the shadows themselves, swift as the coyote that trotted over a nearby
ridge to meet her mate nearer the mountains. Sol following much the same
instinct in much the same way, Annie-Many-Ponies stole out to meet the
man her heart timidly yearned for a possible mate.

She reached the rock-ledge where the smoke odor was strongest, and she
stopped. She saw Ramon Chavez, younger of the Chavez brothers who were
ten-mile-off neighbors of Applehead, and who owned many cattle and much
land by right of an old Spanish grant. He was standing in the shadow of
the ledge, leaning against it as they of sun-saturated New Mexico always
lean against anything perpendicular and solid near which they happen to
stand. He was watching the white-lighted arroyo while he smoked, waiting
for her, unconscious of her near presence.

Annie-Many-Ponies stood almost within reach of him, but she did not make
her presence known. With the infinite wariness of her race she waited to
see what he would do; to read, if she might, what were his thoughts--his
attitude toward her in his unguarded moments. That little, inscrutable
smile which so exasperated Applehead was on her lips while she watched
him.

Ramon finished that cigarette, threw away the stab and rolled and
lighted another. Still Annie-Many-Ponies gave no little sign of her
presence. He watched the arroyo, and once he leaned to one side and
stared back at his own quiet camp on the slope that had the biggest and
the wildest mountain of that locality for its background. He settled
himself anew with his other shoulder against the rock, and muttered
something in Spanish--that strange, musical talk which Annie-Many-Ponies
could not understand. And still she watched him, and exulted in his
impatience for her coming, and wondered if it would always be lovelight
which she would see in his eyes.

He was not of her race, though in her pride she thought him favored when
she named him akin to the Sioux. He was not of her race, but he was tall
and he was straight, he was dark as she, he was strong and brave and he
bad many cattle and much broad acreage. Annie-Many-Ponies smiled upon
him in the dark and was glad that she, the daughter of a chief of the
Sioux, had been found good in his sight.

Five minutes, ten minutes. The coyote, yap-yap-yapping in the broken
land beyond them, found his mate and was silent. Ramon Chavez, waiting
in the shadow of the ledge, muttered a Mexican oath and stepped out into
the moonlight and stood there, tempted to return to his camp--for he,
also, had pride that would not bear much bruising.

Annie-Many-Ponies waited. When he muttered again and threw his cigarette
from him as though it had been something venomous; when he turned his
face toward his own tents and took a step forward, she laughed softly, a
mere whisper of amusement that might have been a sleepy breeze stirring
the bushes somewhere near. Ramon started and turned his face her way;
in the moonlight his eyes shone with a certain love-hunger which
Annie-Many-Ponies exulted to see--because she did not understand.

“You not let moon look on you,” she chided in an undertone, her
sentences clipped of superfluous words as is the Indian way, her voice
that pure, throaty melody that is a gift which nature gives lavishly to
the women of savage people. “Moon see, men see.”

Ramon swung back into the shadow, reached out his two arms to fold her
close and got nothing more substantial than another whispery laugh.

“Where are yoh,sweetheart?” He peered into the shadow where she had
been, and saw the place empty. He laughed, chagrined by her elusiveness,
yet hungering for her the more.

“You not touch,” she warned. “Till priest say marriage prayers, no man
touch.”

He called her a devil in Spanish, and she thought it a love-word and
laughed and came nearer. He did not attempt to touch her, and so,
reassured, she stood close so that he could see the pure, Indian profile
of her face when she raised it to the sky in a mute invocation, it might
be, of her gods.

“When yoh come?” he asked swiftly, his race betrayed in tone and accent.
“I look and look--I no see yoh.”

“I come,” she stated with a quiet meaning. “I not like cow, for make
plenty noise. I stand here, you smoke two times, I look.”

“You mus’ be moonbeam,” he told her, reaching out again, only to lay
hold upon nothing. “Come back, sweetheart. I be good.”

“I not like you touch,” she repeated. “I good girl. I mind priest, I
read prayers, I mind Wagalexa Conka--” There she faltered, for the last
boast was no longer the truth.

Ramon was quick to seize upon the one weak point of her armor. “So? He
send yoh then to talk with Ramon at midnight? Yoh come to please yoh
boss?”

Annie-Many-Ponies turned her troubled face his way. “Wagalexa Conka
sleep plenty. I not ask,” she confessed. “You tell me come here you tell
me must talk when no one hear. I come. I no ask Wagalexa Conka--him say
good girl stay by camp. Him say not walk in night-time, say me not talk
you. I no ask; I just come.”

“Yoh lov’ him, perhaps? More as yoh lov’ me? Always I see yoh look at
him--always watch, watch. Always I see yoh jomp when he snap the finger;
always yoh run like train dog. Yoh lov’ him, perhaps? Bah! Yoh dirt
onder his feet.” Ramon did not seriously consider that any woman whom
he favored could sanely love another man more than himself, but to
his nature jealousy was a necessary adjunct of lovemaking; not to
have displayed jealousy would have been to betray indifference, as he
interpreted the tender passion.

Annie-Many-Ponies, woman-wily though she was by nature, had little
learning in the devious ways of lovemaking. Eyes might speak, smiles
might half reveal, half hide her thoughts; but the tongue, as her tribe
had taught her sternly, must speak the truth or keep silent. Now she
bent her head, puzzling how best to put her feelings toward Luck Lindsay
into honest words which Ramon would understand.

“Yoh lov’ him, perhaps--since yoh all time afraid he be mad.” Ramon
persisted, beating against the wall of her Indian taciturnity which
always acted as a spur upon his impetuosity. Besides, it was important
to him that he should know just what was the tie between these two. He
had heard Luck Lindsay speak to the girl in the Sioux tongue. He had
seen her eyes lighten as she made swift answer. He had seen her always
eager to do Luck’s bidding--had seen her anticipate his wants and
minister to them as though it was her duty and her pleasure to do so.
It was vital that he should know, and it was certain that he could not
question Luck upon the subject--for Ramon Chavez was no fool.

“Long time ago--when I was papoose with no shoes,” she began with
seeming irrelevance, her eyes turning instinctively toward the white
tents of the Flying U camp gleaming in the distance, “my people go for
work in Buffalo Bill show. My father go, my mother go, I go. All time we
dance for show, make Indian fight with cowboys--all them act for Buffalo
Bill-Pawnee Bill show. That time Wagalexa Conka boss of Indians. He
Indian Agent. He take care whole bunch. He make peace when fights, he
give med’cine when somebody sick. He awful good to them Indians. He give
me candy, always stop to talk me. I like him. My father like him. All
them Indians like him plenty much. My father awful sick one time, he no
let doctor come. Leg broke all in pieces. He say die plenty if Wagalexa
Conka no make well. I go ticket wagon, tell Wagalexa Conka, he come
quick, fix up leg all right.

“All them Indians like to make him--” She stopped, searching her mind
for the elusive, little-used word which she had learned in the mission
school. “Make him sdop’,” she finished triumphantly. “Indians make much
dance, plenty music, lots speeches make him Indian man. My father big
chief, he make Wagalexa Conka him son. Make him my brother. Give him
Indian name Wagalexa Conka. All Indians call that name for him.

“Pretty soon show stop, all them Indians go home by reservation. long
time we don’t see Wagalexa Conka no more. I get big girl, go school
little bit. Pretty soon Wagalexa Conka come back, for wants them Indians
for work in pictures. My father go, my mother go, all us go. We work
long time. I,” she added with naive pride in her comeliness, “awful good
looking. I do lots of foreground stuff. Pretty soon hard times come.
Indians go home by reservation. I go--I don’t like them reservations no
more. Too lonesome. I like for work all time in pictures. I come, tell
Wagalexa Conka I be Indian girl for pictures. He write letter for agent,
write letter for my father. They writes letter for say yes, I stay. I
stay and do plenty more foreground stuff.”

“I don’t see you do moch foreground work since that white girl come,”
 Ramon observed, hitting what he instinctively knew was a tender point.

Had he seen her face, he must have been satisfied that the chance shot
struck home. But in the shadow hate blazed unseen from her eyes. She did
not speak, and so he went back to his first charge.

“All this don’t tell me moch,” he complained. “Yoh lov’ him, maybe?
That’s what I ask.”

“Wagalexa Conka my brother, my father, my friend,” she replied calmly,
and let him interpret it as he would.

“He treats yoh like a dog. He crazee ‘bout that Jean. He gives her all
smiles, all what yoh call foreground stuff. I know--I got eyes. Me, it
makes me mad for see how he treat yoh--and yoh so trying hard always
to Please. He got no heart for yoh--me, I see that.” He moved a step
closer, hesitating, wanting yet not quite daring to touch her. “Me, I
lov’ yoh, little Annie,” he murmured. “Yoh lov’ me little bit, eh? Jus’
little bit! Jus’ for say, ‘Ramon, I go weeth yoh, I be yoh woman--’”

Annie-Many-Ponies widened the distance between them. “Why you not say
wife?” she queried suspiciously.

“Woman, wife, sweetheart--all same,” he assured her with his voice like
a caress. “All words mean I lov’ yoh jus’ same. Now yoh say yoh lov’ me,
say yoh go weeth me, I be one happy man. I go back on camp and my heart
she’s singing lov’ song. My girl weeth eyes that shine so bright, she
lov’ me moch as I lov’ her. That what my heart she sing. Yoh not be so
cruel like stone--yoh say, ‘Ramon, I lov’ yoh.’ Jus’ like that! So easy
to say!”

“Not easy,” she denied, moved to save her freedom yet a while longer.
“I say them words, then I--then I not be same girl like now. Maybe much
troubles come. Maybe much happy--I dunno. Lots time I see plenty trouble
come for girl that say them words for man. Some time plenty happy--I
think trouble comes most many times. I think Wagalexa Conka he be awful
mad. I not like for hims be mad.”

“Now you make ME mad--Ramon what loves yoh! Yoh like for Ramon be mad,
perhaps? Always yoh ‘fraid Luck Lindsay this, ‘fraid Luck that other.
Me, I gets damn’ sick hear that talk all time. Bimeby he marree som’
girl, then what for you? He don’ maree yoh, eh? He don’ lov’ yoh; he
think too good for maree Indian girl. Me, I not think like that. I,
Ramon Chavez, I think proud to lov, yoh. Ramon--”

“I not think Wagalexa Conka marry me.” The girl was turning stubborn
under his importunities. “Wagalexa Conka my brother--my friend. I tell
you plenty time. Now I tell no more.”

“Ramon loves yoh so moch,” he pleaded, and smiled to himself when he saw
her turn toward toward him again. The love-talk--that was what a woman
likes best to hear! “Yoh say yoh lov’ Ramon jus’ little bit!”

“I not say now. When I say I be sure I say truth.”

“All right, then I be sad till yoh lov’ me. Yoh maybe be happy, yoh know
Ramon’s got heavy heart for yoh.”

“I plenty sorry, you be sad for me,” she confessed demurely. “I lov’ yoh
so moch! I think nothing but how beautiful my sweetheart is. I not tease
yoh no more. Tell me, how long Luck says he stay out here? Maybe yoh
hear sometimes he’s going for taking pictures in town?”

“I not hear.”

“Going home, maybe? You mus’ hear little bit. Yoh tell me, sweetheart;
what’s he gone do when roundup’s all finish? Me, I know she’s finish
las’ week. Looks like he’s taking pictures out here all summer! You hear
him say something, maybe?”

“I not hear.”

“Them vaqueros--bah! They don’t bear nothings either. What’s matter over
there, nobody hear nothing? Luck, he got no tongue when camera’s shut
up, perhaps?”

“Nah--I dunno.”

Ramon looked at her for a minute in mute rage. It was not the first time
he had found himself hard against the immutable reticence of the Indian
in her nature.

“Why you snapping teeth like a wolf?” she asked him slyly.

“Me? I don’ snap my teeth, sweetheart.” It cost Ramon some effort to
keep his voice softened to the love key.

“Why you not ask Wagalexa Conka what he do?”

“I don’ care, that’s why I don’ ask. Me, it’s’ no matter.”

He hesitated a moment, evidently weighing a matter of more importance
to him than he would have Annie-Many-Ponies suspect. “Sweetheart, yoh do
one thing for Ramon?” His voice might almost be called wheedling. “Me,
I’m awful busy tomorrow. I got long ride away off--to my rancho. I got
to see my brother Tomas. I be back here not before night. Yoh tell Bill
Holmes he come here by this rock--yoh say midnight that’s good time--I
sure be here that time. Yoh say I got something I wan’ tell him. Yoh do
that for Ramon, sweetheart?”

He waited, trying to hide the fact that he was anxious.

“I not like Bill Holmes.” Annie-Many-Ponies spoke with an air of
finality. “Bill Holmes comes close, I feel snakes. Him not friend to
Wagalexa Conka--say nothing--always go around still, like fox watching
for rabbit. You not friend to Bill Holmes?”

“Me? No--I not friend, querida mia. I got business. I sell Bill Holmes
one silver bridle, perhaps. I don’ know--mus’ talk about it. Yoh tell
him come here by big rock, sweetheart?”

Annie-Many-Ponies took a minute for deliberation--which is the Indian
way. Ramon, having learned patience, said no more but watched her
slant-eyed.

“I tell,” she promised at last, and added, “I go now.” Then she slipped
away. And Ramon, though he stood for several minutes by the rock smiling
queerly and staring down the arroyo, caught not the slightest glimpse
of her after she left him. He knew that she would deliver faithfully
his message to Bill Holmes, she had given her word. That was one
great advantage, considered Ramon, in dealing with those direct,
uncompromising natures. She might torment him with her aloofness and her
reticence, but once he had won her to a full confidence and submission
he need not trouble himself further about her loyalty. She would tell
Bill Holmes--and, what was vastly more important, she would do it
secretly; he had not dared to speak of that, but he thought he might
safely trust to her natural wariness. So Ramon, after a little, stole
away to his own camp quite satisfied.

The next night, when he stood in the shadow of the rock ledge and
waited, he was not startled by the unexpected presence of the person he
wanted to see. For although Bill Holmes came as cautiously as he knew
how, and avoided the wide, bright-lighted stretches of arroyo where he
would have been plainly visible, Ramon both saw and heard him before he
reached the ledge. What Ramon did not see or hear was Annie-Many-Ponies,
who did not quite believe that those two wished merely to talk about a
silver bridle, and who meant to listen and find out why it was that they
could not talk openly before all the boys.

Annie-Many-Ponies had ways of her own. She did not tell Ramon that she
doubted his word, nor did she refuse to deliver the message. She waited
calmly until Bill Holmes left camp stealthily that night, and she
followed him. It was perfectly simple and sensible and the right thing
to do; if you wanted to know for sure whether a person lied to you, you
had but to watch and listen and let your own eyes and ears prove guilt
or innocence.

So Annie-Many-Ponies stood by the rock and listened and watched. She
did not see any silver bridle. She heard many words, but the two were
speaking in that strange Spanish talk which she did not know at all,
save “Querida mia,” which Ramon had told her meant sweetheart.

The two talked, low-voiced and earnest, Bill was telling all that he
knew of Luck Lindsay’s plans--and that was not much.

“He don’t talk,” Bill complained. “He just tells the bunch a day
ahead--just far enough to get their makeup and costumes on, generally.
But he won’t stay around here much longer; he’s taken enough spring
roundup stuff now for half a dozen pictures. He’ll be moving in to the
ranch again pretty quick. And I know this picture calls for a lot of
town business that he’ll have to take. I saw the script the other day.”
 This, of course, being a free translation of the meaningless jumble of
strange words which Annie heard.

“What town business is that? Where will he work?” Ramon was plainly
impatient of so much vagueness.

“Well, there’s a bank robbery--I paid particular attention, Ramon, so I
know for certain. But when he’ll do it, or what bank he’ll use, I don’t
know any more than you do. And there’s a running fight down the street
and through the Mexican quarter. The rest is just street stuff--that
and a fiesta that I think he’ll probably me the old plaza for location.
He’ll need a lot of Mexicans for that stuff. He’ll want you, of course.”

“That bank--who will do that?” Ramon’s fingers trembled so that he could
scarcely roll a cigarette. “Andy, perhaps?”

“No--that’s the Mexican bunch. I--why, I guess that will maybe be
you, Ramon. I wasn’t paying much attention to the parts--I was after
locations, and I only had about two minutes at the script. But he’s been
giving you some good bits right along where he needed a Mexican type;
and those scenes in the rocks the other day was bandit stuff with you
for lead. It’ll be you or Miguel--the Native Son, as they call him--and
so far he’s cast for another part. That’s the worst of Luck. He won’t
talk about what he’s going to do till he’s all ready to do it.”

There was a little further discussion. Ramon muttered a few
sentences--rapid instructions, Annie-Many-Ponies believed from the tone
he used.

“All right, I’ll keep you posted,” Bill Holmes replied in English. And
he added as he started off, “You can send word by the squaw.”

He went carefully back down the arroyo, keeping as much as possible in
the shade. Behind him stole Annie-Many-Ponies, noiseless as the shadow
of a cloud. Bill Holmes, she reflected angrily, had seen the day, not so
far in the past, when he was happy if the “squaw” but smiled upon him.
It was because she had repelled his sly lovemaking that he had come to
speak of her slightingly like that; she knew it. She could have named
the very day when his manner toward her had changed. Mingled with her
hate and dread of him was a new contempt and a new little anxiety over
this clandestine intimacy between Ramon and him. Why should Bill Holmes
keep Ramon posted? Surely not about a silver bridle!

Shunka Chistala was whining in her little tent when she came into the
camp. She heard Bill Holmes stumble over the end of the chuck-wagon
tongue and mutter the customary profanity with which the average man
meets an incident of that kind. She whispered a fierce command to the
little black dog and stood very still for a minute, listening. She
did not hear anything further, either from Bill Holmes or the dog, and
finally reassured by the silence, she crept into her tent and tied the
flaps together on the inside, and lay down in her blankets with the
little black dog contentedly curled at her feet with his nose between
his front paws.



CHAPTER V. FOR THE GOOD OF THE COMPANY

All through breakfast Applehead seemed to have something weighty on his
mind. He kept pulling at his streaked, reddish-gray mustache when his
fingers should have been wholly occupied with his food, and he stared
abstractedly at the ground after he had finished his first cup of coffee
and before he took his second. Once Bill Holmes caught him glaring with
an intensity which circumstances in no wise justified--and it was Bill
Holmes who first shifted his gaze in vague uneasiness when he tried to
stare Applehead down. Annie-Many-Ponies did not glance at him at all, so
far as one could discover; yet she was the first to sense trouble in
the air, and withdrew herself from the company and sat apart, wrapped
closely in her crimson shawl that matched well the crimson bows on her
two shiny braids.

Luck, keenly alive to the moods of his people, looked at her
inquiringly. “Come on up by the fire, Annie,” he commanded gently. “What
you sitting away off there for? Come and eat--I want you to work today.”

Annie-Many-Ponies did not reply, but she rose obediently and came
forward in the silent way she had, stepping lightly, straight and slim
and darkly beautiful. Applehead glanced at her sourly, and her lashes
drooped to hide the venom in her eyes as she passed him to stand before
Luck.

“I not hungry,” she told Luck tranquilly, yet with a hardness in her
voice which did not escape him, who knew her so well. “I go put on
makeup.”

“Wear that striped blanket you used last Saturday when we worked up
there in Tijeras Canon. Same young squaw makeup you wore then, Annie.”
 He eyed her sharply as she turned away to her own tent, and he observed
that when she passed Applehead she took two steps to one side, widening
the distance between them. He watched her until she lifted her tent
flap, stooped and disappeared within. Then he looked at Applehead.

“What’s wrong between you two?” he asked the old man quizzically. “Her
dog been licking your cat again, or what?”

“You’re danged right he ain’t!” Applehead testified boastfully.
“Compadre’s got that there dawg’s goat, now I’m tellin’ yuh! He don’t
take nothin’ off him ner her neither.”

“What you been doing to her, then?” Luck set his empty plate on the
ground beside him and began feeling for the makings of a cigarette. “Way
she side-stepped you, I know there must be SOMETHING.”

“Well, now, I ain’t done a danged thing to that there squaw! She ain’t
got any call to go around givin’ me the bad eye.” He looked at the
breakfasting company and then again at Luck, and gave an almost
imperceptible backward jerk of his head as he got awkwardly to his feet
and strolled away toward the milling horses in the remuda.

So when Luck had lighted his fresh-rolled cigarette he followed
Applehead unobtrusively. “Well, what’s on your mind?” he wanted to know
when he came up with him.

“Well, now, I don’t want you to think I’m buttin’ in on your affairs,
Luck,” Applehead began after a minute, “but seein’ as you ast me what’s
wrong, I’m goin’ to tell yuh straight out. We got a couple of danged
fine women in this here bunch, and I shore do hate to see things goin’
on around here that’d shame ‘em if they was to find it out. And fur’s
I can see they will find it out, sooner or later. Murder ain’t the only
kinda wickedness that’s hard to cover up. I know you feel about as I do
on some subjects; you never did like dirt around you, no better’n--”

“Get to the point, man. What’s wrong?”

So Applehead, turning a darker shade of red than was his usual hue,
cleared his throat and blurted out what he had to say. He had heard
Shunka Chistala whinnying at midnight in the tent of Annie-Many-Ponies,
and had gone outside to see what was the matter. He didn’t know, he
explained, but what his cat Compadre was somehow involved. He had stood
in the shadow of his tent for a few minutes, and had seen Bill Holmes
sneak into camp, coming from up the arroyo somewhere.

For some reason he waited a little longer, and he had seen a woman’s
shadow move stealthily up to the front of Annie’s tent, and had seen
Annie slip inside and had heard her whisper a command of some sort
to the dog, which had immediately hushed its whining. He hated to
be telling tales on anybody, but he knew how keenly Luck felt his
responsibility toward the Indian girl, and he thought he ought to know.
This night-prowling, he declared, had shore got to be stopped, or he’d
be danged if he didn’t run ‘em both outa camp himself.

“Bill Holmes might have been out of camp,” Luck said calmly, “but you
sure must be mistaken about Annie. She’s straight.”

“You think she is,” Applehead corrected him. “But you don’t know a
danged thing about it. A girl that’s behavin’ herself don’t go chasin’
all over the mesa alone, the way she’s been doin’ all spring. I never
said nothin’ ‘cause it wa’n’t none of my put-in. But that Injun had a
heap of business off away from the ranch whilst you was in Los Angeles,
Luck. Sneaked off every day, just about--and ‘d be gone fer hours at a
time. You kin ast any of the boys, if yuh don’t want to take my word. Or
you kin ast Mis’ Green; she kin tell ye, if she’s a mind to.”

“Did Bill Holmes go with her?” Luck’s eyes were growing hard and gray.

“As to that I won’t say, fer I don’t know and I’m tellin’ yuh what I
seen myself. Bill Holmes done a lot uh walkin’ in to town, fur as that
goes; and he didn’t always git back the same day neither. He never went
off with Annie, and he never came back with her, fur as I ever seen.
But,” he added grimly, “they didn’t come back together las’ night,
neither. They come about three or four minutes apart.”

Luck thought a minute, scowling off across the arroyo. Not even to
Applehead, bound to him by closer ties than anyone there, did he ever
reveal his thoughts completely.

“All right--I’ll attend to them,” he said finally. “Don’t say anything
to the bunch; these things aren’t helped by talk. Get into your old
cowman costume and use that big gray you rode in that drive we made the
other day. I’m going to pick up the action where we left off when it
turned cloudy. Tomorrow or next day I want to move the outfit back to
the ranch. There’s quite a lot of town stuff I want to get for this
picture.”

Applehead looked at him uncertainly, tempted to impress further upon him
the importance of safeguarding the morals of his company. But he knew
Luck pretty well--having lived with him for months at a time when Luck
was younger and even more peppery than now. So he wisely condensed his
reply to a nod, and went back to the breakfast fire polishing his bald
bead with the flat of his palm. He met Annie-Many-Ponies coming to ask
Luck which of the two pairs of beaded moccasins she carried in her hands
he would like to have her wear. She did not look at Applehead at all as
she passed, but he nevertheless became keenly aware of her animosity and
turned half around to glare after her resentfully. You’d think, he told
himself aggrievedly, that he was the one that had been acting up! Let
her go to Luck--she’d danged soon be made to know her place in camp.

Annie-Many-Ponies went confidently on her way, carrying the two pairs of
beaded moccasins in her hands. Her face was more inscrutable than ever.
She was pondering deeply the problem of Bill Holmes’ business with
Ramon, and she was half tempted to tell Wagalexa Conka of that secret
intimacy which must carry on its converse under cover of night. She did
not trust Bill Holmes. Why must he keep Ramon posted? She glanced
ahead to where Luck stood thinking deeply about something, and her eyes
softened in a shy sympathy with his trouble. Wagalexa Conka worked hard
and thought much and worried more than was good for him. Bill Holmes,
she decided fiercely, should not add to those worries. She would warn
Ramon when next she talked with him. She would tell Ramon that he must
not be friends with Bill Holmes; in the meantime, she would watch.

Ten feet from Luck she stopped short, sensing trouble in the hardness
that was in his eyes. She stood there and waited in meek subjection.

“Annie, come here!” Luck’s voice was no less stern because it was
lowered so that a couple of the boys fussing with the horses inside the
rope corral could not overhear what he had to say.

Annie-Many-Ponies, pulling one of the shiny black braids into the
correct position over her shoulder and breast, stepped soft-footedly up
to him and stopped. She did not ask him what he wanted. She waited until
it was his pleasure to speak.

“Annie, I want you to keep away from Bill Holmes.” Luck was not one to
mince his words when he had occasion to speak of disagreeable things.
“It isn’t right for you to let him make love to you on the sly. You know
that. You know you must not leave camp with him after dark. You make me
ashamed of you when you do those things. You keep away from Bill Holmes
and stay in camp nights. If you’re a bad girl, I’ll have to send you
back to the reservation--and I’ll have to tell the agent and Chief
Big Turkey why I send you back. I can’t have anybody in my company who
doesn’t act right. Now remember--don’t make me speak to you again about
it.”

Annie-Many-Ponies stood there, and the veiled, look was in her eyes.
Her face was a smooth, brown mask--beautiful to look upon but as
expressionless as the dead. She did not protest her innocence, she did
not explain that she hated and distrusted Bill Holmes and that she
had, months ago, repelled his surreptitious advances. Luck would have
believed, for he had known Annie-Many-Ponies since she was a barefooted
papoose, and he had never known her to tell him an untruth.

“You go now and get ready for work. Wear the moccasins with the birds on
the toes.” He pointed to them and turned away.

Annie-Many-Ponies also turned and went her way and said nothing. What,
indeed, could she say? She did not doubt that Luck had seen her the
night before, and had seen also Bill Holmes when he left camp or
returned--perhaps both. She could not tell him that Bill Holmes had gone
out to meet Ramon, for that, she felt instinctively, was a secret which
Ramon trusted her not to betray. She could not tell Wagalexa Conka,
either, that she met Ramon often when the camp was asleep. He would
think that as bad as meeting Bill Holmes. She knew that he did not
like Ramon, but merely used him and his men and horses and cattle for
a price, to better his pictures. Save in a purely business way she had
never seen him talking with Ramon. Never as he talked with the boys of
the Flying U--his Happy Family, he called them.

She said nothing. She dressed for the part she was to play. She
twined flowers in her hair and smoothed out the red bows and laid them
carefully away--since Wagalexa Conka did not wish her to wear ribbon
bows in this picture. She murmured caresses to Shunka Chistala, the
little black dog that was always at her heels. She rode with the company
to the rocky gorge which was “location” for today. When Wagalexa Conka
called to her she went and climbed upon a high rock and stood just where
he told her to stand, and looked just as he told her to look, and stole
away through the rocks and out of the scene exactly as he wished her to
do.

But when Wagalexa Conka--sorry for the harshness he had felt it his
duty to show that morning--smiled and told her she had done fine, and
that he was pleased with her, Annie-Many-Ponies did not smile back with
that slow, sweet, heart-twisting smile which was at once her sharpest
weapon and her most endearing trait.

Bill Holmes who had also had his sharp word of warning, and had been
told very plainly to cut out this flirting with Annie if he wanted to
remain on Luck’s payroll, eyed her strangely. Once he tried to have a
secret word with her, but she moved away and would not look at him.
For Annie-Many-Ponies, hurt and bitter as she felt toward her beloved
Wagalexa Conka, hated Bill Holmes fourfold for being the cause of her
humiliation. That she did not also hate Ramon Chavez as being equally
guilty with Bill Holmes, went far toward proving how strong a hold he
had gained upon her heart.



CHAPTER VI. “I GO WHERE WAGALEXA CONKA SAY”

That afternoon Ramon joined them, suave as ever and seeming very much at
peace with the world and his fellow-beings. He watched the new leading
woman make a perilous ride down a steep, rocky point and dash up to
camera and on past it where she set her horse back upon, its haunches
with a fine disregard for her bones and a still finer instinct for
putting just the right dash of the spectacular into her work without
overdoing it.

“That senora, she’s all right, you bet!” he praised the feat to those
who stood near him; “me, I not be stuck on ron my caballo down that
place. You bet she’s fine rider. My sombrero, he’s come off to that
lady!”

Jean, hearing, glanced at him with that little quirk of the lips which
was the beginning of a smile, and rode off to join her father and Lite
Avery. “He made that sound terribly sincere, didn’t he?” she commented.
“It takes a Mexican to lift flattery up among the fine arts.” Then she
thought no more about it.

Annie-Many-Ponies was sitting apart, on a rock where her gay blanket
made a picturesque splotch of color against the gray barrenness of the
hill behind her. She, too, heard what Ramon said, and she, too, thought
that he had made the praise sound terribly sincere. He had not spoken to
her at all after the first careless nod of recognition when he rode
up. And although her reason had approved of his caution, her sore heart
ached for a little kindness from him. She turned her eyes toward him
now with a certain wistfulness; but though Ramon chanced to be looking
toward her she got no answering light in his eyes, no careful little
signal that his heart was yearning for her. He seemed remote, as
indifferent to her as were any of the others dulled by accustomedness
to her constant presence among them. A premonitory chill, as from
some great sorrow yet before her in the future, shook the heart of
Annie-Many-Ponies.

“Me, I fine out how moch more yoh want me campa here for pictures,”
 Ramon was saying now to Luck who was standing by Pete Lowry, scribbling
something on his script. “My brother Tomas, he liking for us at ranch
now, s’pose yoh finish poco tiempo.”

Luck wrote another line before he gave any sign that he heard.
Annie-Many-Ponies, watching from under her drooping lids, saw that Bill
Holmes had edged closer to Ramon, while he made pretense of being much
occupied with his own affairs.

“I don’t need your camp at all after today.” Luck shoved the script into
his coat pocket and looked at his watch.

“This afternoon when the sun is just right I want to get one or two
cut-back scenes and a dissolve out. After that you can break camp any
time. But I want you, Ramon--you and Estancio Lopez and Luis Rojas. I’ll
need you for two or three days in town--want you to play the heavy in a
bank-robbery and street fight. The makeup is the same as when you worked
up there in the rocks the other day. You three fellows come over and
go in to the ranch tomorrow if you like. Then I’ll have you when I want
you. You’ll get five dollars a day while you work.” Having made himself
sufficiently clear, he turned away to set and rehearse the next scene,
and did not see the careful glance which passed between Ramon and Bill
Holmes.

“Annie,” Luck said abruptly, swinging toward her, “can you come down
off that point where Jean Douglas came? You’ll have to ride horseback,
remember, and I don’t want you to do it unless you’re sure of yourself.
How about it?”

For the first time since breakfast her somber eyes lightened with a
gleam of interest. She did not look at Ramon--Ramon who had told her
many times how much he loved her, and yet could praise Jean Douglas for
her riding. Ramon had declared that he would not care to come riding
down that point as Jean had come; very well, then she would show Ramon
something.

“It isn’t necessary, exactly,” Luck explained further. “I can show you
at the top, looking down at the way Jean came; and then I can pick
you up on an easier trail. But if you want to do it, it will save some
cut-backs and put another little punch in here. Either way it’s up to
you.”

The voice of Annie-Many-Ponies did not rise to a higher key when she
spoke, but it had in it a clear incisiveness that carried her answer to
Ramon and made him understand that she was speaking for his ears.

“I come down with big punch,” she said.

“Where Jean came? You’re riding bareback, remember.”

“No matter. I come down jus’ same.” And she added with a haughty tilt of
her chin, “That’s easy place for me.”

Luck eyed her steadfastly, a smile of approval on his face. “All right.
I know you’ve got plenty of nerve, Annie. You mount and ride up that
draw till you get to the ridge. Come up to where you can see camp over
the brow of the hill--sabe?--and then wait till I whistle. One whistle,
get ready to come down. Two whistles, you, come. Ride past camera, just
the way Jean did. You know you’re following the white girl and trying to
catch up with her. You’re a friend and you have a message for her, but
she’s scared and is running away--sabe? You want to come down slow first
and pick your trail?”

“No.” Annie-Many-Ponies started toward the pinto pony which was her
mount in this picture. “I come down hill. I make big punch for you. Pete
turn camera.”

“You’ve got more nerve than I have, Annie,” Jean told her good-naturedly
as she went by. “I’d hate to run a horse down there bareback.”

“I go where Wagalexa Conka say.” From the corner of her eye she saw the
quick frown of jealousy upon the face of Ramon, and her pulse gave an
extra beat of triumph.

With an easy spring she mounted the pinto pony, took the reins of her
squaw bridle that was her only riding gear, folded her gay blanket
snugly around her uncorseted body and touched the pinto with her
moccasined heels. She was ready--ready to the least little tensed nerve
that tingled with eagerness under the calm surface.

She rode slowly past luck, got her few final instructions and a warning
to be careful and to take no chances of an accident--which brought that
inscrutable smile to her face; for Wagalexa Conka knew, and she knew
also, that in the mere act of riding down that slope faster than a walk
she was taking a chance of an accident. It was that risk that lightened
her heart which had been so heavy all day. The greater the risk, the
more eager was she to take it. She would show Ramon that she, too, could
ride.

“Oh, do be careful, Annie!” Jean called anxiously when she was riding
into the mouth of the draw. “Turn to the right, when you come to that
big flat rock, and don’t come down where I did. It’s too steep. Really,”
 she drawled to Rosemary and Lite, “my heart was in my mouth when I came
straight down by that rock. It’s a lot steeper than it looks from here.”

“She won’t go round it,” Rosemary predicted pessimistically. “She’s in
one of her contrary moods today. She’ll come down the worst way she can
find just to scare the life out of us.”

Up the steep draw that led to the top, Annie-Many-Ponies rode
exultantly. She would show Ramon that she could ride wherever the white
girl dared ride. She would shame Wagalexa Conka, too, for his injustice
to her. She would put the too, for big punch in that scene or--she would
ride no more, unless it were upon a white cloud, drifting across the
moon at night and looking, down at this world and upon Ramon.

At the top of the ridge she rode out to the edge and made the peace-sign
to Luck as a signal that she was ready to do his bidding. Incidentally,
while she held her hand high over her head, her eyes swept keenly the
bowlder-strewn bluff beneath her. A little to one side was a narrow
backbone of smoother soil than the rest, and here were printed deep the
marks of Jean’s horse. Even there it was steep, and there was a
bank, down there by the big flat rock which Jean had mentioned.
Annie-Many-Ponies looked daringly to the left, where one would say the
bluff was impassable. There she would come down, and no other place. She
would show Ramon what she could do--he who had praised boldly another
when she was by!

“All right, Annie!” Luck called to her through his megaphone. “Go back
now and wait for whistle. Ride along the edge when you come, from bushes
to where you stand. I want silhouette, you coming. You sabe?”

Annie-Many-Ponies raised her hand even with her breast, and swept it
out and upward in the Indian sign-talk which meant “yes.” Luck’s eyes
flashed appreciation of the gesture; he loved the sign-talk of the old
plains tribes.

“Be careful, Annie,” he cried impulsively. “I don’t want you to be
hurt.” He dropped the megaphone as she swung her horse back from the
edge and disappeared. “I’d cut the whole scene out if I didn’t know what
a rider she is,” he added to the others, more uneasy than he cared to
own. “But it would hurt her a heap more if I wouldn’t let her ride where
Jean rode. She’s proud; awfully proud and sensitive.”

“I’m glad you’re letting her do it,” Jean said sympathetically. “She’d
hate me if you hadn’t. But I’m going to watch her with my eyes shut,
just the same. It’s an awfully mean place in spots.”

“She’ll make it, all right,” Luck declared. But his tone was not so
confident as his words, and he was manifestly reluctant to place the
whistle to his lips. He fussed with his script, and he squinted into
the viewfinder, and he made certain for the second time just where the
side-lines came, and thrust half an inch deeper in the sandy soil the
slender stakes which would tell Annie-Many-Ponies where she must guide
the pinto when she came tearing down to foreground. But he could delay
the signal only so long, unless he cut out the scene altogether.

“Get back, over on that side, Bill,” he commanded harshly. “Leave her
plenty of room to pass that side of the camera. All ready, Pete?” Then,
as if he wanted to have it over with as soon as possible, he whistled
once, waited while he might have counted twenty, perhaps, and sent
shrilling through the sunshine the signal that would bring her.

They watched, holding their breaths in fearful expectancy. Then they saw
her flash into view and come galloping down along the edge of the ridge
where the hill fell away so steeply that it might be called a cliff.
Indian fashion, she was whipping the pinto down both sides with the end
of her reins. Her slim legs hung straight, her moccasined toes pointing
downward. One corner of her red-and-green striped blanket flapped out
behind her. Haste--the haste of the pursuer--showed in every movement,
every line of her figure.

She came to the descent, and the pinto, having no desire for applause
but a very great hankering for whole bones in his body, planted his
forefeet and slid to a stop upon the brink. His snort came clearly down
to those below who watched.

“He won’t tackle it,” Pete Lowry predicted philosophically while he
turned the camera crank steadily round and round and held himself ready
to “panoram” the scene if the pinto bolted.

But the pinto, having Annie-Many-Ponies to reckon with, did not bolt.
The braided rein-end of her squaw bridle lashed him stingingly; the
moccasined heels dug without mercy into the tender part of his flanks.
He came lunging down over the first rim of the bluff; then since he
must, he gathered himself for the ordeal and came leaping down and down
and down, gaining momentum with every jump. He could not have stopped
then if he had tried--and Annie-Many-Ponies, still the incarnation of
eager pursuit, would not let him try.

At the big flat rock of which Jean had warned her, the pinto would have
swerved. But she yanked him into the straighter descent, down over the
bank. He leaped, and he fell and slid twice his own length, his nose
rooting the soil. Annie-Many-Ponies lurched, came hard against a boulder
and somehow flung herself into place again on the horse. She lifted
his head and called to him in short, harsh, Indian words. The pinto
scrambled to his knees, got to his feet and felt again the sting of the
rein-end in his flanks. Like a rabbit he came bounding down, down
where the way was steepest and most treacherous. And at every jump the
rein-end fell, first on one side and then along the other, as a skilled
canoeman shifts the paddle to force his slight craft forward in a
treacherous current.

Down the last slope he came thundering. On his back Annie-Many-Ponies
lashed him steadily, straining her eyes in the direction which Jean had
taken past the camera. She knew that they were watching her--she knew
also that the camera crank in Pete Lowry’s hands was turning, turning,
recording every move of hers, every little changing expression. She
swept down upon them so close that Pete grabbed the tripod with one
hand, ready to lift it and dodge away from the coming collision. Still
leaning, still lashing and straining every nerve in pursuit, she dashed
past, pivoted the pinto upon his hind feet, darted back toward the
staring group and jumped off while he was yet running.

Now that she had done it; now that she had proven that she also had
nerve and much skill in riding, black loneliness settled upon her again.
She came slowly back, and as she came she heard them praise the ride she
had made. She heard them saying how frightened they had been when the
pinto fell, and she heard Wagalexa Conka call to her that she had made
a strong scene for him. She did not answer. She sat down upon a rock, a
little apart from them, and looking as remote as the Sandias Mountains,
miles away to the north, folded her blanket around her and spoke no word
to anyone.

Soon Ramon mounted his horse to return to his camp. He came riding down
to her--for his trail lay that way--and as he rode he called to the
others a good natured “Hasta luego!” which is the Mexican equivalent of
“See you later.” He did not seem to notice Annie-Many-Ponies at all as
he rode past her. He was gazing off down the arroyo and riding with all
his weight on one stirrup and the other foot swinging free, as is the
nonchalant way of accustomed riders who would ease their muscles now
and then. But as he passed the rock where she was sitting he murmured,
“Tonight by the rock I wait for you, querida mia.” Though she gave no
sign that she had heard, the heart of Annie-Many-Ponies gave a throb of
gladness that was almost pain.



CHAPTER VII. ADVENTURE COMES SMILING

Luck, in the course of his enthusiastic picture making, reached the
point where he must find a bank that was willing to be robbed--in broad
daylight and for screen purposes only. If you know anything at all about
our financial storehouses, you know that they are sensitive about being
robbed, or even having it appear that they are being subjected to so
humiliating a procedure. What Luck needed was a bank that was not only
willing, but one that faced the sun as well. He was lucky, as usual. The
Bernalillo County Bank stands on a corner facing east and south. It is
an unpretentious little bank of the older style of architecture, and
might well be located in the centre of any small range town and hold the
shipping receipts of a cattleman who was growing rich as he grew old.

Luck stopped across the street and looked the bank over, and saw how the
sun would shine in at the door and through the wide windows during the
greater part of the afternoon, and hoped that the cashier was a human
being and would not object to a fake robbery. Not liking suspense,
he stepped off the pavement and dodged a jitney, and hurried over to
interview the cashier.

You never know what secret ambitions hide behind the impassive courtesy
of the average business man. This cashier, for instance, wore a green
eyeshade whenever his hat was not on his, head. His hair was thin and
his complexion pasty and his shoulders were too stooped for a man of
his age. You never would have suspected, just to look at him through the
fancy grating of his window, how he thirsted for that kind of adventure
which fiction writers call red-blooded. He had never had an adventure
in his life; but at night, after he had gone to bed and adjusted the
electric light at his head, and his green eyeshade, and had put two
pillows under the back of his neck, he read--you will scarcely believe
it, but it is true--he read about the James boys and Kit. Carson and
Pawnee Bill, and he could tell you--only he wouldn’t mention it, of
course--just how many Texans were killed in the Alamo. He loved gun
catalogues, and he frequently went out of his way to pass a store that
displayed real, business-looking stock-saddles and quirts and spurs and
things. He longed to be down in Mexico in the thick of the scrap there,
and he knew every prominent Federal leader and every revolutionist that
got into the papers; knew them by spelling at least, even if he couldn’t
pronounce the names correctly.

He had come to Albuquerque for his lungs’ sake a few years ago, and he
still thrilled at the sight of bright-shawled Pueblo Indians padding
along the pavements in their moccasins and queer leggings that looked
like joints of whitewashed stove-pipe; while to ride in an automobile
out to Isleta, which is a terribly realistic Indian village of adobe
huts, made the blood beat in his temples and his fingers tremble upon
his knees. Even Martinez Town with its squatty houses and narrow streets
held for him a peculiar fascination.

You can imagine, maybe, how his weak eyes snapped with excitement under
that misleading green shade when Luck Lindsay walked in and smiled at
him through the wicket, and explained who he was and what was the favor
he had come to ask of the bank. You can, perhaps, imagine how he stood
and made little marks on a blotter with his pencil while Luck explained
just what he would want; and how he clung to the noncommittal manner
which is a cashier’s professional shield, while Luck smiled his smile
to cover his own feeling of doubt and stated that he merely wanted two
Mexicans to enter, presumably overpower the cashier, and depart with a
bag or two of gold.

The cashier made a few more pencil marks and said that it might be
arranged, if Luck could find it convenient to make the picture just
after the bank’s closing time. Obviously the cashier could not permit
the bank’s patrons to be disturbed in any way--but what he really wanted
was to have the thrill of the adventure all to himself.

With the two of them anxious to have the pictured robbery take place,
of course they arranged it after a polite sparring on the part of the
cashier, whose craving for adventure was carefully guarded as a guilty
secret.

At three o’clock the next day, then--although Luck would have greatly
preferred an earlier hour--the cashier had the bank cleared of patrons
and superfluous clerks, and was watching, with his nerves all atingle
and the sun shining in upon him through a side window, while Pete Lowry
and Bill Holmes fussed outside with the camera, getting ready for the
arrival of those realistic bandits, Ramon Chavez and Luis Rojas. On
the street corner opposite, the Happy Family foregathered clannishly,
waiting until they were called into the street-fight scene which Luck
meant to make later.

The cashier’s cheeks were quite pink with excitement when finally Ramon
and the Rojas villain walked past the window and looked in at him before
going on to the door. He was disappointed because they were not masked,
and because they did not wear bright sashes with fringe and striped
serapes draped across their shoulders, and the hilts of wicked knives
showing somewhere. They did not look like bandits at all--thanks to
Luck’s sure knowledge and fine sense of realism. Still, they answered
the purpose, and when they opened the door and came in the cashier got
quite a start from the greedy look in their eyes when they saw the gold
he had stacked in profusion on the counter before him.

They made the scene twice--the walking past the window and coming in at
the door; and the second time Luck swore at them because they stopped
too abruptly at the window and lingered too long there, looking in at
the cashier and his gold, and exchanging meaning glances before they
went to the door.

Later, there was an interior scene with reflectors almost blinding the
cashier while he struggled self-consciously and ineffectually with Ramon
Chavez. The gold that Ramon scraped from the cashier’s keeping into his
own was not, of course, the real gold which the bandits had seen through
the window. Luck, careful of his responsibilities, had waited while the
cashier locked the bank’s money in the vault, and had replaced it with
brass coins that looked real--to the camera.

The cashier lived then the biggest moments of his life. He was forced
upon his back across a desk that had been carefully cleared of the
bank’s papers and as carefully strewn with worthless ones which Luck
had brought. A realistically uncomfortable gag had been forced into the
mouth of the cashier--where it brought twinges from some fresh dental
work, by the way--and the bandits had taken everything in sight that
they fancied.

Ramon and Luis Rojas had proven themselves artists in this particular
line of work, and the cashier, when it was all over and the camera and
company were busily at work elsewhere, lived it in his imagination
and felt that he was at least tasting the full flavor of red-blooded
adventure without having to pay the usual price of bitterness and bodily
suffering. He was mistaken, of course--as I am going to explain. What
the cashier had taken part in was not the adventure itself but merely a
rehearsal and general preparation for the real performance.

This had been on Wednesday, just after three o’clock in the afternoon.
On Saturday forenoon the cashier was called upon the phone and asked
if a part of that robbery stuff could be retaken that day. The cashier
thrilled instantly at the thought of it. Certainly, they could retake as
much as they pleased. Lucks voice--or a voice very like Luck’s--thanked
him and said that they would not need to retake the interior stuff. What
he wanted was to get the approach to the bank the entrance and going
back to the cashier. That part of the negative was under-timed, said the
voice. And would the cashier make a display of gold behind the wicket,
so that the camera could register it through the window? The cashier
thought that he could. “Just stack it up good and high,” directed the
voice. “The more the better. And clear the bank--have the clerks out,
and every thing as near as possible to what it was the other day. And
you take up the same position. The scene ends where Ramon comes back and
grabs you.”

“And listen! You did so well the other day that I’m going to leave this
to you, to see that they get it the same. I can’t be there myself--I’ve
got to catch some atmosphere stuff down here in Old Town. I’m just
sending my assistant camera man and the two heavies and my scenic
artist for this retake. It won’t be much--but be sure you have the bank
cleared, old man--because it would ruin the following scenes to have
extra people registered in this; see? You did such dandy work in that
struggle that I want it to stand. Boy, your work’s sure going to stand
out on the screen!”

Can you blame the cashier for drinking in every word of that, and for
emptying the vault of gold and stacking it up in beautiful, high piles
where the sun shone on it through the window--and where it would be
within easy reach, by the way!--so that the camera could “register” it?

At ten minutes past twelve he had gotten rid of patrons and clerks, and
he had the gold out and his green eyeshade adjusted as becomingly as a
green eyeshade may be adjusted. He looked out and saw that the street
was practically empty, because of the hour and the heat that was almost
intolerable where the sun shone full. He saw a big red machine drive up
to the corner and stop, and he saw a man climb out with camera already
screwed, to the tripod. He saw the bandits throw away their cigarettes
and follow the camera man, and then he hurried back and took up his
station beside the stacks of gold, and waited in a twitter of excitement
for this unhoped-for encore of last Wednesday’s glorious performance.
Through the window he watched the camera being set up, and he watched
also, from under his eyeshade, the approach of the two bandits.

From there on a gap occurs in the cashier’s memory of that day.

Ramon and Luis went into the bank, and in a few minutes they came out
again burdened with bags of specie and pulled the door shut with the
spring lock set and the blinds down that proclaimed the bank was closed.
They climbed into the red automobile, the camera and its operator
followed, and the machine went away down the street to the post-office,
turned and went purring into the Mexican quarter which spreads itself
out toward the lower bridge that spans the Rio Grande. This much a dozen
persons could tell you. Beyond that no man seemed to know what became of
the outfit.

In the bank, the cashier lay back across a desk with a gag in his mouth
and his hands and feet tied, and with a welt on the side of his head
that swelled and bled sluggishly for a while and then stopped and became
an angry purple. Where the gold had been stacked high in the sunshine
the marble glistened whitely, with not so much as a five-dollar piece
to give it a touch of color. The window blinds were drawn down--the bank
was closed. And people passed the windows and never guessed that within
there lay a sickly young man who had craved adventure and found it, and
would presently awake to taste its bitter flavor.

Away off across the mesa, sweltering among the rocks in Bear Canon,
Luck Lindsay panted and sweated and cussed the heat and painstakingly
directed his scenes, and never dreamed that a likeness of his voice had
beguiled the cashier of the Bernalillo County Bank into consenting to be
robbed and beaten into oblivion of his betrayal.

And--although some heartless teller of tales might keep you in the
dark about this--the red automobile, having dodged hurriedly into a
high-boarded enclosure behind a Mexican saloon, emerged presently and
went boldly off across the bridge and up through Atrisco to the sand
hills which is the beginning of the desert off that way. But another
automobile, bigger and more powerful and black, slipped out of this same
enclosure upon another street, and turned eastward instead of west. This
machine made for the mesa by a somewhat roundabout course, and emerged,
by way of a rough trail up a certain draw in the edge of the tableland,
to the main road where it turns the corner of the cemetery. From there
the driver drove as fast as he dared until he reached the hill that
borders Tijeras Arroyo. There being no sign of pursuit to this point, he
crossed the Arroyo at a more leisurely pace. Then he went speeding away
into the edge of the mountains until they reached one of those deep,
deserted dry washes that cut the foothills here and there near Coyote
Springs. There his passengers left him and disappeared up the dry wash.

Before the wound on the cashier’s head had stopped bleeding, the black
automobile was returning innocently to town and no man guessed what
business had called it out upon the mesa.



CHAPTER VIII. THE SONG OF THE OMAHA

“Me, I theenk yoh not lov’ me so moch as a pin,” Ramon complained in
soft reproach, down in the dry wash where Applehead had looked in vain
for baling wire. “Sometimes I show yoh what is like the Spanish lov’.
Like stars, like fire--sometimes I seeng the jota for you that tell
how moch I lov’ yoh. ‘Te quiero, Baturra, te quiero,’” he began
humming softly while he looked at her with eyes that shone soft in the
starlight. “Sometimes me, I learn yoh dat song--and moch more I learn
yoh--”

Annie-Many-Ponies stood before him, straight and slim and with that air
of aloofness which so fired Ramon’s desire for her. She lifted a hand to
check him, and Ramon stopped instantly and waited. So far had her power
over him grown.

“All time you tell me you heap love,” she said in her crooning soft
voice. “Why you not talk of priest to make us marry? You say words for
love--you say no word for wife. Why you no say--”

“Esposa!” Ramon’s teeth gleamed white as a wolf’s in the dusk. “When
the padre marry us I maybe teach you many ways to say wife!” He laughed
under his breath. “How I calls yoh wife when I not gets one kees, me?
Now I calls yoh la sweetheart--good enough when I no gets so moch as
touches hand weeth yoh.”

“I go way with you, you gets priest for make us marry?”
 Annie-Many-Ponies edged closer so that she might read what was in his
face.

“Why yoh no trus’ Ramon? Sure, I gets padre! W’at yoh theenk for speak
lies, me? Sure, I gets padre, foolish one! Me, I not like for yoh no
trus’ Ramon. Looks like not moch yoh lov’ Ramon.”

“I good girl,” Annie-Many-Ponies stated simply. “I love my husband when
priest says that’s right thing to do. You no gets priest, I no go with
you. I think mens not much cares for marry all time. Womens not care,
they go to hell. That’s what priest tells. Girls got to care. That’s
truth.” Simple as two-plus-two was the rule of life as Annie-Many-Ponies
laid it down in words before him. No fine distinctions between virtue
and superwomanhood there, if you please! No slurring of wrong so that
it may look like an exalted right. “Womens got to care,” said
Annie-Many-Ponies with a calm certainty that would brook no argument.

“Sure theeng,” Ramon agreed easily. “Yoh theenk I lov’ yoh so moch if
yoh not good?”

“You gets priest?” Annie-Many-Ponies persisted.

“Sure, I gets padre. You theenk Ramon lies for soch theeng?”

“You swear, then, all same white mans in picture makes oath.” There was
a new quality of inflexibility under the soft music of her voice. “You
lift up hand and says, ‘Help me by God I makes you for-sure my wife!’”
 She had pondered long upon this oath, and she spoke it now with an easy
certainty that it was absolutely binding, and that no man would dare
break it. “You makes that swear now,” she urged gently.

“Foolish one! Yoh theenk I mus’ swear I do what my hearts she’s want?
I tell yoh many times we go on one ranch my brother Tomas says she’s be
mine. We lives there in fine house weeth mooch flowers, yoh not so moch
as lif’ one finger for work, querida mia. Yoh theenk I not be trus’, me,
Ramon what loves yoh?”

“No hurt for swears what I tells,” Annie-Many-Ponies stepped back from
him a pace, distrust creeping into her voice.

“All right.” Ramon moved nearer. “So I make oath, perhaps you make oath
also! Me, I theenk yoh perhaps not like for leave Luck Leensay--I theenk
perhaps yoh loves heem, yoh so all time watch for ways to please! So I
swear, then yoh mus’ swear also that yoh come for-sure. That square deal
for both--si?”

Annie-Many-Ponies hesitated, a dull ache in her breast when Ramon spoke
of Luck. But if her heart was sore at thought of him, it was because he
no longer looked upon her with the smile in his eyes. It was because he
was not so kind; because he believed that she had secret meetings with
Bill Holmes whom she hated. And in spite of the fact that Bill Holmes
had left the company the other day and was going away, Wagalexa Conka
still looked upon her with cold eyes and listened to the things that
Applehead said against her. The heart of Wagalexa Conka, she told
herself miserably, was like a stone for her. And so her own heart must
be hard. She would swear to Ramon, and she would keep the oath--and
Wagalexa Conka would not even miss her or be sorry that she had gone.

“First you make swears like I tells you,” she said. “Then I make
swears.”

“Muy bueno!” smiled Ramon then. “So I make oath I take you queek to one
good friend me, the Padre Dominguez. Then yoh be my wife for sure. That
good enough for yoh, perhaps? Queeck yoh make oath yoh leave these place
Manana--tomorra. Yoh go by ol’ rancho where we talk so many time.
I leave horse for yoh. Yoh ride pas’ that mountain, yoh come for
Bernalillo. Yoh wait. I come queeck as can when she’s dark. Yoh do that,
sweetheart?”

Annie-Many-Ponies stilled the ache in her heart with the thought of her
proud place beside Ramon who had much land and many cattle and who loved
her so much. She lifted her hand and swore she would go with him.

She slipped away then and crept into her tent in the little cluster
beside the house--for the company ‘had forsaken Applehead’s adobe and
slept under canvas as a matter of choice. With Indian cunning she bided
her time and gave no sign of what was hidden in her heart. She rose with
the others and brushed her glossy hair until it shone in the sunlight
like the hair of a high-caste Chinese woman. She tied upon it the new
bows of red ribbon which she had bought in the secret hope that they
would be a part of her wedding finery. She put on her Indian gala dress
of beaded buckskin with the colored porcupine quills--and then she
smiled cunningly and drew a dress of red-and-blue striped calico over
her head and settled the folds of it about her with little, smoothing
pats, so that the two white women, Rosemary and Jean, should not notice
any unusual bulkiness of her figure.

She did not know how she would manage to escape the keen eyes of
Wagalexa Conka and to steal away from the ranch, especially if she had
to work in the picture that day. But Luck unconsciously opened wide the
trail for her. He announced at breakfast that they would work up in Bear
Canon that day, and that he would not need Jean or Annie either; and
that, as it would be hotter than the hinges of Gehenna up in that canon,
they had better stay at home and enjoy themselves.

Annie-Many-Ponies did not betray by so much as a flicker of the lashes
that she heard him much less that it was the best of good news to her.
She went into her tent and packed all of her clothes into a bundle which
she wrapped in her plaid shawl, and was proud because the bundle was so
big, and because she had much fine beadwork and so many red ribbons, and
a waist of bright blue silk which she would wear when she stood before
the priest, if Ramon did not like the dress of beaded buckskin.

A ring with an immense red stone in it which Ramon had given her, she
slipped upon her finger with her little, inscrutable smile. She was
engaged to be married, now, just like white girls; and tomorrow she
would have a wide ring of shiny gold for that finger, and should be the
wife of Ramon.

Just then Shunka Chistala, lying outside her tent, flapped his tail on
the ground and gave a little, eager whine. Annie-Many-Ponies thrust
her head through the opening and looked out, and then stepped over the
little black dog and stood before her tent to watch the Happy Family
mount and ride away with Wagalexa Conka in their midst and with the
mountain wagon rattling after them loaded with “props” and the camera
and the noonday lunch and Pete Lowry and Tommy Johnson, the scenic
artist. Applehead was going to drive the wagon, and she scowled when he
yanked off the brake and cracked the whip over the team.

Luck, feeling perchance the intensity of her gaze, turned in the saddle
and looked back. The eyes of Annie-Many-Ponies softened and saddened,
because this was the last time she would see Wagalexa Conka riding away
to make pictures--the last time she would see him. She lifted her hand,
and made the Indian sign of farewell--the peace-go-with-you sign that is
used for solemn occasions of parting.

Luck pulled up short and stared. What did she mean by that? He reined
his horse around, half minded to ride back and ask her why she gave him
that peace-sign. She had never done it before, except once or twice in
scenes that he directed. But after all he did not go. They were late
in getting started that morning, which irked his energetic soul; and
women’s whims never did impress Luck Lindsay very deeply. Besides, just
as he was turning to ride back, Annie stooped and went into her tent as
though her gesture had carried no especial meaning.

Then in her tent he heard her singing the high, weird chant of the
Omaha mourning song and again he was half-minded to go back, though the
wailing minor notes, long drawn and mournful, might mean much or they
might mean merely a fit of the blues. The others rode on talking and
laughing together, and Luck rode with them; but the chant of the
Omaha was in his ears and tingling his nerves. And the vision of
Annie-Many-Ponies standing straight before her tent and making the sign
of peace and farewell haunted him that day.

Rosemary and Jean, standing in the porch, waved good-bye to their men
folk until the last bobbing hatcrown had gone down out of sight in the
long, low swale that creased the mesa in that direction. Whereupon they
went into the house.

“What in the world is the matter with Annie?” Jean exploded, with a
little shiver. “I’d rather hear a band of gray wolves tune up when
you’re caught out in the breaks and have to ride in the dark. What is
that caterwaul? Do you suppose she’s on the warpath or anything?”

“Oh, that’s just the squaw coming out in her!” Rosemary slammed the door
shut so they could not hear so plainly. “She’s getting more Injuny every
day of her life. I used to try and treat her like a white girl--but you
just can’t do it, Jean.”

“Hiu-hiu-hi-i-ah-h! Hiu-hiu-hi-i-ah-h-h--hiaaa-h-h!”

Jean stood in the middle of the room and listened. “Br-r-r!” she
shivered--and one could not blame her. “I wonder if she’d be mad,”
 she drawled, “if I went out and told her to shut up. It sounds as if
somebody was dead, or going to die or something. Like Lite says your dog
will howl if anything--”

“Oh, for pity sake!” Rosemary pushed her into the living room with
make-believe savageness. “I’ve heard her and Luck sing that last winter.
And there’s a kind of a teetery dance that goes with it. It’s supposed
to be a mourning song, as Luck explains it. But don’t pay any attention
to her at all. She just does it to get on our nerves. It’d tickle her to
death if she thought it made us nervous.”

“And now the dog is joining in on the chorus! I must say they’re a
cheerful pair to have around the house. And I know one thing--if they
keep that up much longer, I’ll either get out there with a gun, or
saddle up and follow the boys.”

“They’d tease us to death, Jean, if we let Annie run us out.”

“It’s run or be run,” Jean retorted irritatedly. “I wanted to write
poetry today--I thought of an awfully striking sentence about the--for
heaven’s sake, where’s a shotgun?”

“Jean, you wouldn’t!” Rosemary, I may here explain, was very femininely
afraid of guns. “She’d--why, there’s no telling WHAT she might do! Luck
says she carries a knife.”

“What if she does? She ought to carry a few bird-shot, too. She’s got
nothing to mourn about--nobody’s died, has there?

“Hiu-hiu-hia-a-a,ah! Hia-a-a-a-ah!” wailed Annie-Many-Ponies in her
tent, because she would never again look upon the face of Wagalexa
Conka--or if she did it would be to see his anger blaze and burn her
heart to ashes. To her it was as though death sat beside her; the death
of Wagalexa Conka’s friendship for her. She forgot his harshness because
he thought her disobedient and wicked. She forgot that she loved Ramon
Chavez, and that he was rich and would give her a fine home and much
love. She forgot everything but that she had sworn an oath and that she
must keep it though it killed faith and kindness and friendship as with
a knife.

So she wailed, in high-keyed, minor chanting unearthly in its primitive
inarticulateness of sorrow, the chant of the Omaha mourning song. So
had her tribe wailed in the olden days when warriors returned to the
villages and told of their dead. So had her mother wailed when the Great
Spirit took away her first man-child. So had the squaws wailed in their
tepees since the land was young. And the little black dog, sitting on
his haunches before her door, pointed his moist nose into the sunlight
and howled in mournful sympathy.

“Oh, my gracious!” Jean, usually so calm, flung a magazine against the
wall. “This is just about as pleasant as a hanging! let’s saddle up and
ride in after the mail, Rosemary. Maybe the squaw in her will be howled
out by the time we get back.” And she added with a venomous sincerity
that would have warmed the heart of old Applehead, “I’d shoot that dog,
for half a cent! How do you suppose an animal of his size can produce
all that noise?”

“Oh, I don’t know!” Rosemary spoke with the patience of utter weariness.
“I’ve stood her and the dog for about eight months and I’m getting kind
of hardened to it. But I never did hear them go on like that before.
You’d think all her relations were being murdered, wouldn’t you?”

Jean was busy getting into her riding clothes and did not say what she
thought; but you may be sure that it was antipathetic to the grief of
Annie-Many-Ponies, and that Jean’s attitude was caused by a complete
lack of understanding. Which, if you will stop to think, is true of
half the unsympathetic attitudes in the world. Because they did not
understand, the two dressed hastily and tucked their purses safely
inside their shirtwaists and saddled and rode away to town. And the last
they heard as they put the ranch behind them was the wailing chant of
Annie-Many-Ponies and the prodigious, long-drawn howling of the little
black dog.

Annie-Many-Ponies, hearing the beat of hoofs ceased her chanting and
looked out in time to see the girls just disappearing over the low brow
of the hill. She stood for a moment and stared after them with frowning
brows. Rosemary she did not like and never would like, after their
hidden feud of months over such small matters as the cat and the dog,
and unswept floors, and the like. A mountain of unwashed dishes stood
between these two, as it were, and forbade anything like friendship.

But the parting that was at hand had brushed aside her jealousy of Jean
as leading woman. Intuitively she knew that with any encouragement Jean
would have been her friend. Oddly, she remembered now that Jean had been
the first to ask for her when she came to the ranch. So, although
Jean would never know, Annie-Many-Ponies raised her hand and gave the
peace-and-farewell sign of the plains Indians.

The way was open now, and she must go. She had sworn that she would meet
Ramon--but oh, the heart of her was heavier than the bundle which she
bound with her bright red sash and lifted to her shoulders with the
sash drawn across her chest and shoulders. So had the women of her
tribe borne burdens since the land was young; but none had ever borne a
heavier load than did Annie-Many-Ponies when she went soft footed across
the open space to the dry wash and down that to another, and so on and
on until she crossed the low ridge and came down to the deserted old
rancho with its crumbling adobe cabins and the well where she had waited
so often for Ramon.

She was tired when she reached the well, for her back was not used
to burden-bearing as had been her mother’s, and her steps had lagged
because of the heaviness that was in her chest. It seemed to her
that some bad spirit was driving her forth an exile. She could not
understand, last night she had been glad at the thought of going, and if
the thought of leaving Wagalexa Conka so treacherously had hurt like a
knife-thrust, still, she had sworn willingly enough that she would go.

The horse was there, saddled and tied in a tumble-down shed just as
Ramon had promised that it would be. Annie-Many-Ponies did not mount and
ride on immediately, however. It was still early in the forenoon, and
she was not so eager in reality as she had been in anticipation. She
sat down beside the well and stared somberly away to the mountains, and
wondered why she was go sad when she should be happy. She twisted the
ring with the big red stone round and round her finger, but she got no
pleasure from the crimson glow of it. The stone looked to her now like a
great, frozen drop of blood. She wondered grimly whose blood it was, and
stared at it strangely before her eyes went again worshipfully to the
mountains which she loved and which she must leave and perhaps never see
again as they looked from there, and from the ranch.

She must ride and ride until she was around on the other side of that
last one that had the funny, pointed cone top like a big stone tepee.
On the other side was Ramon, and the priest, and the strange new life of
which she was beginning to feel afraid. There would be no more riding up
to camera, laughing or sighing or frowning as Wagalexa Conka commanded
her to do. There would be no more shy greetings of the slim young woman
in riding skirt--the friendship scenes and the black-browed anger, while
Pete Lowry turned the camera and Luck stood beside him telling her just
what she must do, and smiling at her when she did it well.

There would be Ramon, and the priest and the wide ring of shiny
gold--what more? The mountains, all pink and violet and smiling green
and soft gray--the mountains hid the new life from her. And she must
ride around that last, sharp-pointed one, and come into the new life
that was on the other side--and what if it should be bitter? What if
Ramon’s love did not live beyond the wide ring of shiny gold? She had
seen it so, with other men and other maids.

No matter. She had sworn the oath that she would go. But first, there
at the old well where Ramon had taught her the Spanish love words, there
where she had listened shyly and happily to his voice that was so soft
and so steeped in love, Annie-Many-Ponies stood up with her face to the
mountains and sorrow in her eyes, and chanted again the wailing, Omaha
mourning-song. And just behind her the little black dog, that had
followed close to her heels all the way, sat upon his haunches and
pointed his nose to the sky and howled.

For a long time she wailed. Then to the mountains that she loved she
made the sign of peace-and-farewell, and turned herself stoically to the
keeping of her oath. Her bundle that was so big and heavy she placed
in the saddle and fastened with the saddle-string and with the red sash
that had bound it across her chest and shoulders. Then, as her great
grandmother had plodded across the bleak plains of the Dakotas at her
master’s behest, Annie-Many-Ponies took the bridle reins and led the
horse out of the ruin, and started upon her plodding, patient journey
to what lay beyond the mountains. Behind her the black horse walked with
drooping head, half asleep in the warm sunlight. At the heels of the
horse followed the little black dog.



CHAPTER IX. RIDERS IN THE BACKGROUND

Luck, as explained elsewhere, was sweating and swearing at the heat
in Bear Canon. The sun had crept around so that it shone full into a
certain bowlder-strewn defile, and up this sunbaked gash old Applehead
was toiling, leading the scrawniest burro which Luck had been able to
find in the country. The burro was packed with a prospector’s outfit
startlingly real in its pathetic meagerness. Old Applehead was picking
his way among rocks so hot that he could hardly bear to lay his bare
hand upon them, tough as that hand was with years of exposure to heat
and cold alike. Beads of perspiration were standing on his face, which
was a deep, apoplectic crimson, and little trickles of sweat were
dropping off his lower jaw.

He was muttering as he climbed, but the camera fortunately failed to
record the language that he used. Now and then he turned and yanked
savagely at the lead rope; whereupon the burro would sit down upon its
haunches and allow Applehead to stretch its neck as far as bone and
tough hide and tougher sinew would permit Someone among the group
roosting in the shade across the defile and well out of camera range
would laugh, and Luck, standing on a ledge just behind and above the
camera, would shout directions or criticism of the “business.”

“Come on back, Applehead,” Luck yelled when the “prospectorp” had turned
a corner of rock and disappeared from sight of the camera. “We’ll do
that scene over once more before the sun gets too far around.”

“Do it over, will ye?” Applehead snarled as he came toiling obediently
back down the gulch. “Well, now, I ain’t so danged shore about that
there doin’ over--‘nless yuh want to wait and do it after sundown. Ain’t
nobody but a danged fool It would go trailin’ up that there gulch this
kinda’ day. Them rocks up there is hot enough to brile a lizard--now,
I’m tellin’ ye!”

Luck covered a smile with his moist palm. He could not afford to be
merciful at the expense of good “picture-stuff,” however, so he called
down grimly:

“Now you’re just about fagged enough for that close-up I want of you,
Applehead. You went up that gulch a shade too brisk for a fellow that’s
all in from traveling, and starved into the bargain. Come back down here
by this sand bank, and start up towards camera. Back up a little, Pete,
so you can ‘pam’ his approach. I want to get him pulling his burro
up past that bank--sabe? And the close-up of his face with all those
sweat-streaks will prove how far he’s come--and then I want the detail
of that burro and his pack which you’ll get as they go by. You see what
I mean. Let’s see. Will it swing you too far into the sun, Pete, if you
pick him up down there in that dry channel?”

“Not if you let me make it right away,” Pete replied after a squint or
two through the viewfinder. “Sun’s getting pretty far over--”

“Ought to leave a feller time to git his wind,” Applehead complained,
looking up at Luck with eyes bloodshot from the heat. “I calc’late mebby
you think it’s FUN to drag that there burro up over them rocks?”

“Sure, it isn’t fun. We didn’t come out here for fun. Go down and wait
behind that bank, and come out into the channel when I give the word.
I want you coming up all-in, just as you look right now. Sorry, but I
can’t let you wait to cool off, Applehead.”

“Well now,” Applehead began with shortwinded sarcasm, “I’m s’posed to be
outa grub. Why didn’t yuh up In’ starve me fer a week or two, so’st I’d
be gaunted up realistic? Why didn’t yuh break a laig fer me, sos’t I kin
show some five-cent bunch in a pitcher-show how bad I’m off? Danged if
I ain’t jest about gettin’ my hide full uh this here danged fool REELISM
you’re hollerin’ fur all the time. ‘F you send me down there to come
haulin’ that there burro back up here so’s the camery kin watch me sweat
‘n’ puff my danged daylights out--before I git a drink uh water, I’ll
murder ye in cold blood, now I’m tellin’ ye!”

“You go on down there and shut up!” Luck yelled inexorably. “You can
drink a barrel when I’m through with this scene--and not before. Get
that? My Lord! If you can’t lead a burro a hundred yards without setting
down and fanning yourself to sleep, you must be losing your grip for
fair. I’ll stake you to a rocking-chair and let you do old grandpa
parts, if you aren’t able to--”

“Dang you, Luck, if you wasn’t such a little runt I’d come up there and
jest about lick the pants off you! Talk that way to ME, will ye? I’ll
have ye know I kin lead burros with you or any other dang man, heat er
no heat Ef yuh ain’t got no more heart’n to AST it of me, I’ll haul this
here burro up ‘n’ down this dang gulch till there ain’t nothin’ left of
‘im but the lead-rope, and the rocks is all wore down to cobble-stone!
Ole grandpa parts, hey? You’ll swaller them words when I git to ye,
young feller--and you’ll swaller ‘em mighty dang quick, now I’m tellin’
ye!”

He went off down the gulch to the sand bank. The Happy Family, sprawled
at ease in the shade, took cigarettes from their lips that they might
chortle their amusement at the two. Like father and son were Applehead
and Luck, but their bickerings certainly would never lead one to suspect
their affection.

“Get that darned burro outa sight, will you?” Luck bawled impatiently
when Applehead paused to send a murderous glance back toward camera.
“What’s the matter--yuh PARALYZED down there? Haul him in behind that
bank! The moon’ll be up before you get turned around, at that rate!”

“You shet yore haid!” Applehead retorted at the full capacity of his
lungs and with an absolute disregard for Luck’s position as director of
the company. “Who’s leadin’ this here burro--you er me? Fer two cents
I’d come back and knock the tar outa you, Luck! Stand up there on a
rock and flop your wings and crow like a danged banty rooster--‘n’ I was
leadin’ burros ‘fore you was born! I’d like to know who yuh think you
BE?”

Pete Lowry, standing feet-apart and imperturbably focussing the camera
while the two yelled insults at each other, looked up at Luck.

“Riders in the background,” he announced laconically, and returned
to his squinting and fussing. “Maybe you can make ‘em hear with the
megaphone,” he hinted, looking again at Luck. “They’re riding straight
up the canon, in the middle distance. They’ll register in the scene, if
you can’t turn ‘em.”

“Applehead!” Luck called through the megaphone to his irritated
prospector. “Get those riders outa the canon--they’re in the scene!”

Applehead promptly appeared, glaring up at luck. “Well, now, if I’ve got
to haul this here dang jackass up this dang gulch, I cal’clate that’ll
be about job enough for one man,” he yelled. “How yuh expect me t’ go
two ways ‘t once? Hey? Yuh figured that out yit?” He turned then for a
look at the interrupting strangers, and immediately they saw his manner
change. He straightened up, and his right hand crept back significantly
toward his hip. Applehead, I may here explain, was an ex-sheriff, and
what range men call a “go-getter.” He had notches on the ivory handle of
his gun--three of them. In fair fights and in upholding the law he had
killed, and he would kill again if the need ever arose, as those who
knew him never doubted.

Luck, seeing that backward movement of the hand, unconsciously hitched
his own gun into position on his hip and came down off his rock ledge
with one leap. Just as instinctively the Happy Family scrambled out
of the shade and followed luck down the gulch to where Applehead stood
facing down the canon, watchfulness in every tense line of his lank
figure. Tommy Johnson, who never seemed to be greatly interested in
anything save his work, got up from where he lay close beside the camera
tripod and went over to the other side of the gulch where he could see
plainer.

Like a hunter poising his shotgun and making ready when his trained
bird-dog points, Luck walked guardedly down the gulch to where Applehead
stood watching the horsemen who had for the moment passed out of sight
of those above.

“Now, what’s that danged shurf want, prowlin’ up HERE with a couple uh
depittys?” Applehead grumbled when he heard Luck’s footsteps crunching
behind him. “Uh course,” he added grimly, “he MIGHT be viewin’ the
scenery--but it’s dang pore weather fur pleasure-ridin’, now I’m tellin’
ye! Them a comin’ up here don’t look good to ME, Luck--‘n’ if they
ain’t--”

“How do you know it’s the sheriff?” Luck for no reason whatever felt a
sudden heaviness of spirit.

“Hey? Think my eyes is failin’ me?” Applehead gave him a sidelong glance
of hasty indignation. “I’d know ole Hank Miller a mile off with m’ eyes
shet.”

By then the three riders rode out into plain view. Perhaps the sight of
Luck and Applehead standing there awaiting their arrival, with the
whole Happy Family and Big Aleck Douglas and Lite Avery moving down in
a close-bunched, expectant group behind the two, was construed as
hostility rather than curiosity. At any rate the sheriff and his
deputies shifted meaningly in their saddles and came up sour-faced and
grim, and with their guns out and pointing at the group.

“Don’t go making any foolish play, boys,” the sheriff warned. “We
don’t want trouble--we aren’t looking for any. But we ain’t taking any
chances.”

“Well now, you’re takin’ a dang long chance, Hank Miller, when yuh come
ridin’ up on us fellers like yuh was cornerin’ a bunch uh outlaws,”
 Applehead exploded. But Luck pushed him aside and stepped to the front.

“Nobody’s making any foolish play but you,” he answered the sheriff
calmly. “You may not know it, but you’re blocking my scene and the
light’s going. If you’ve got any business with me or my company, get it
over and then get out so we aim make this scene. What d’yuh want?”

“You,” snapped the sheriff. “You and your bunch.”

“Me?” Luck took a step forward. “What for?”

“For pulling off that robbery at the bank today.” The sheriff could be
pretty blunt, and he shot the charge straight, without any quibbling.

Luck looked a little blank; and old Applehead, shaking with a very real
anger now, shoved Luck away and stepped up where he could shake his fist
under the sheriff’s nose.

“We don’t know, and we don’t give a cuss, what you’re aimin’ at,” he
thundered. “We been out here workin’ in this brilin’ sun sense nine
o’clock this mornin’. Luck ain’t robbed no bank, ner he ain’t the kind
that DOES rob banks, and I’m here to see you swaller them words ‘fore I
haul ye off’n that horse and plumb wear ye out! Yuh wanta think twicet
‘fore ye come ridin’ up where I kin hear yuh call Luck Lindsay a thief,
now I’m tellin’ ye! If a bank was robbed, ye better be gittin’ out after
them that done it, and git outa the way uh that camery sos’t we can git
t’ work! Git!”

The sheriff did not “git” exactly, but he did look considerably
embarrassed. His eyes went to Luck apologetically.

“Cashier come to and said you’d called him up on the phone about eleven,
claimin’ you wanted to make a movin’ pitcher of the bank being robbed,”
 he explained--though he was careful not to lower his gun. “He swore it
was your men that done the work and took the gold you told him to pile
out on the--”

“_I_ told him?” Luck’s voice had the sharpened quality that caused
laggard actors to jump. “Be a little more exact in the words you use.”

“Well-l--somebody on the phone ‘t he THOUGHT was you,” the sheriff
amended obediently. “Your men--and they sure WAS your men, because
three or four fellers besides the cashier seen ‘em goin’ in and comin’
out--they gagged the cashier and took his keys away from him and cleaned
the safe, besides taking what gold he’d piled on the counter for y--for
‘em.

“So,” he finished vigorously, “I an’ my men hit the trail fer the ranch
and was told by the women that you was out here. And here we are, and
you might just as well come along peaceable as to make a fuss--”

“That thar is shore enough outa YOU, Hank Miller!” Applehead exploded
again. “I calc’late you kin count ME in, when you go mixin’ up with
Luck, here. I’m one of his men--and if he was to pull off a bank robbery
I calc’late I’d be in on that there performance too, I’m tellin’ you!
Luck don’t go no whars ner do nothin’ that I AIN’T in on.

“I’ve had some considerable experience as shurf myself, if you’ll take
the trouble to recolleck; and I calc’late my word’ll go about as fur as
the next. When I tell ye thar ain’t goin’ to be no arrest made in Bear
Canon, and that you ain’t goin’ to take luck in fer no bank robbery, you
kin be dang shore I mean every word uh that thar!” He moved a step or
two nearer the sheriff, and the sheriff backed his horse away from him.

“Ef you kin cut out this here accusin’ Luck, and talk like a white man,”
 Applehead continued heatedly, “we’d like to hear the straight uh this
here robbery. I would, ‘n’ I know Luck would, seein’ they’ve gone t’
work and mixed him into it. His bunch is all here, as you kin see fer
yourself. Now we’re listenin’ ‘s long’s you talk polite--‘n’ you kin
tell us what men them was that was seen goin’ in and comin’ out--and all
about the hull dang business.”

The sheriff had not ridden to Bear Canon expecting to be bullied into
civil speech and lengthy explanations; but he knew Applehead Furrman,
and he had sufficient intelligence to read correctly the character of
the group of men that stood behind Applehead. Honest men or thieves,
they were to, be reckoned with if any attempt were made to place Luck
under arrest; any fool could see that--and Hank Miller was not a fool.

He proceeded therefore to explain his errand and the robbery as the
cashier had described it to the clerks who returned after lunch to
finish their Saturday’s work at the bank.

“Fifteen thousand they claim is what the fellers got. And one of your
men that runs the camera was keeping up a bluff of taking a pitcher of
it all the time--that’s why they got away with it. Nobody suspicioned
it was anything more’n moving-pitcher acting till they found the cashier
and brought him toy along about one o’clock. It was that Chavez feller
that you had working for yuh, and Luis Rojas that done it--them and a
couple fellers stalling outside with the camera.”

“I wonder,” hazarded Pete Lowry, who had come down and joined the group,
“if that wasn’t Bill Holmes with the camera? He was a lot more friendly
with Ramon than he tried to let on.”

“The point is,” Luck broke in, “that they took advantage of my holdup
scene to pull off the robbery. I can see how the cashier would fall
for a retake like that, especially since he don’t know much about
picture-making. Gather up the props, boys, and let’s go home. I’m going
to get the rights of this thing.”

“You’ve got it now,” the sheriff informed him huffily. “Think I been
loading you up with hot air? I was sent out to round you up--”

“Forget all that!” snapped luck. “I don’t know as I enjoy having you
fellows jump at the notion I’m a bank-robber--or that if I had robbed a
bank I would have come right back here and gone to work. What kind of
a simp do you think I am, for gosh sake? Can you see where anyone but a
lunatic would go like that in broad daylight and pull off a robbery
as raw as that one must have been, and not even make an attempt at a
gateway? I’ll gamble Applehead, here, wouldn’t have fallen for a play as
coarse as that was if he was sheriff yet. He’d have seen right away that
the camera part was just the coarsest kind of a blind.

“My Lord! Think of grown men--officers of the law at that--being
simple-minded enough to come fogging out here to me, instead of getting
on the trail of the men that were seen on the spot! You say they came in
a machine to the bank and you never so much as tried to trace it, or to
get the license number even, I’ll bet a month’s salary you didn’t! It
was a moving-picture stall, and so you come blundering out here to the
only picture company in the country, thinking, by gravy, that it was
all straight goods--oh, can you beat that for a boob?” He shook back his
heavy mane of gray hair and turned to his boys disgustedly.

“Pete and Tommy, you can drive the wagon back all right, can’t you?
We’ll go on ahead and see what there is at the bottom of this yarn.”



CHAPTER X. DEPUTIES ALL

At the ranch, whither they rode in haste, Luck meant to leave his boys
and go on with the sheriff to town. But the Happy Family flatly refused
to be left behind. Even old Aleck Douglas--whom years and trouble
had enfeebled until his very presence here with Jean and Lite was a
health-seeking mission in the wonderful air of New Mexico--even old
Aleck Douglas stamped his foot at Jean and declared that he was going,
along to see that “the boy” got a square deal. There wouldn’t be any
railroading Luck to the pew for something he didn’t do, he asserted with
a tragic meaning that wrung the heart of Jean. It took Lite’s arguments
and Luck’s optimism and, finally, the assurance of the sheriff that Luck
was not under arrest and was in no danger of it, to keep the old man at
the ranch. Also, they promised to return with all speed and not to keep
supper waiting, before the two women were satisfied to let them go.

“Oh, Luck Lindsay,” Rosemary bethought her to announce just as they were
leaving, “you better keep an eye out for Annie, while you’re in town.
She’s gone--and the dog and all her clothes and everything. Maybe she
took the train back to the reservation. I just wanted you to know, so if
you feel you ought to bother--”

“Annie gone?” Even in his preoccupation the mews came with a stab. “When
did she go?”

“We don’t know. She set up an awful yowling when you boys went to work.
And the dog commenced howling, till it was simply awful. So we rode
in to town after the mail, and when we came back she was gone, bag and
baggage. We didn’t see anything of her on the trail, but she could dodge
us if she wanted to--she’s Injun enough for that.”

So Luck carried a double load of anxiety with him to town, and the first
thing he did when he reached it was to seek, not the beaten cashier
who had accused him, but the ticket agent at the depot, and the baggage
men--anyone who would be apt to remember Annie-Many-Ponies if she took a
train out of town.

You might think that, with so many Indians coming and going at the
depot, selling their wares and making picturesque setting for the
curios which are purveyed there, that Luck stood a very slight chance of
gaining any information whatever. But a Sioux squaw in Albuquerque would
be as noticeable as a Hindoo. Pueblos, Navajos--they may come and go
unnoticed because of their numbers. But an Indian of another tribe and
style of dress would be conspicuous enough to be remembered. So, when no
one remembered seeing Annie-Many-Ponies, Luck dismissed the conjecture
that she had taken the train, and turned his attention to picking up the
trail of the bank-robbers.

Here the Happy Family, with Applehead and Lite Avery, had managed
to accomplish a good deal in a very short time. The Native Son, for
instance, had ridden straight out from the bank into the Mexican
quarter, as soon as he learned that the red automobile had gone up
Silver Street and turned south on Fourth. By the time Luck reached the
bank Miguel came loping back with the news that the red machine had
crossed the lower bridge and had turned up toward Atrisco, that little
Mexican hamlet which lies between the river and the bluffs where the
white sand of the desert spills over into the nearest corrals and little
pastures.

The others had learned definitely that Bill Holmes had manipulated the
fake camera while the bank was being robbed, and that the man with him,
who bad also driven the machine, was a certain chauffeur of colorless
personality and an unsavory reputation among other drivers; and that
the number of the automobile was a matter of conjecture, since three
different men who were positive they remembered it gave three different
numbers.

In company with the sheriff they called upon the cashier, who was in bed
with his head bandaged and his nerves very much unstrung. He was much
calmer, however, than when he had hysterically accused Luck of betraying
him into putting the money out to be stolen. He admitted now that he
was not at all sure of the voice which talked with him over the phone;
indeed, now when he heard luck speak, he felt extremely doubtful of the
similarity of that other voice. He protested against being blamed for
being too confiding. He had never dreamed, he said, that anyone could be
so bold as to plan a thing like that. It all sounded straight, about the
spoiled negative and so forth. He was very sorry that he had caused
Luck Lindsay any inconvenience or annoyance, and he begged Luck’s pardon
several times in the course of his explanation of the details.

They left him still protesting and apologizing and explaining and
touching his bandaged head with self-pitying tenderness. In the street
Luck turned to the sheriff as though his mind was made up to something
which argument could not alter in the slightest degree.

“I realize that in a way I’m partly responsible for this,” he said
crisply. “The scenes I took the other day made this play possible
for Ramon and his bunch. What you’d better do right now is to swear
Applehead and me in as deputies--and any of the boys that want to come
along and help round up that bunch. We’ll do it, if it’s to be done at
all. I feel I kind of owe it to that poor simp in there to get the money
back--sabe? And I owe it to myself to bring in Ramon and Bill Holmes,
and whoever else is with ‘em on this; young Rojas we know is for one.”

“Where do you aim to look for ‘em, if you don’t mind telling?” Hank
Miller was staring doubtfully down at Luck.

“Where? Miguel here says they went toward Atrisco. That means they’re
hitting for the Navajo reservation. There’s three hundred miles of
country straight west, and not so much as a telegraph pole! Mighty few
service stations for the machine, too, when you think of it--and rough
country to travel over. If they try to go by automobile, we’ll overhaul
them, most likely, before they get far. Also, we can trace ‘em easy
enough.”

The sheriff pulled at his stubby mustache and looked the bunch over.
“You know that country?” he asked, still doubtfully. “Them Navvies are
plumb snaky, lemme tell yuh. Ain’t like the Pueblos--you’re taking a
risk when yuh ride into the Navvy country. They’ll get yuh if they get
a chancet; run off your horses, head yuh away from water--they’re plumb
MEAN!”

“Well, now, I calc’late I know them Navvies putty tol’ble well,”
 Applehead cut in. “I’ve fit ‘em comin’ and goin’. Why, my shucks! Ef I
notched my gun for the Navvies I’ve got off an’ on in the course uh my
travels, she’d shore look like a saw-blade, now I’m tellin’ yuh!”

“Yes, an’ yuh got a couple too many fer to go monkeyin’ around on their
groun’ agin,” the sheriff informed him bluntly. “They ain’t forgot the
trip you made over there after Jose Martinez. Best fer you to keep off’n
that reservation, Applehead--and I’m speakin’ as a friend.”

“As a friend you kin shet up,” Applehead retorted pettishly. “Ef
Luck hits fer the Navvy country after them skunks, I calc’late ole
Applehead’ll be somers close handy by--”

“Hurry up and swear us in,” Luck interrupted. “We’ve got to get to the
ranch and back with an outfit, yet tonight, so we can hit the trail as
soon as possible. No use for you to take the oath, Andy--what you better
do is to stay at the ranch with the women folks.”

“Aleck will be there, and Pete and Tommy and the cook,” Andy rebelled
instantly. His hand went up to take the oath with the others.

There on the corner of the street where the shadows lay under a gently
whispering box-elder tree, Hank Miller faced the group that stood with
right hands uplifted and swore them as he had sworn--with the oath that
made deputy sheriffs of them all. He told them that while he did not
believe the thieves had gone to the reservation, and would look for them
elsewhere, the idea was worth acting upon--seeing they wanted to do it
anyway; and that the sheriff’s office stood ready to assist them in
any way possible. He wished them luck and hurried away, evidently much
relieved to get away and out of an uncomfortable position.

In the next two hours Luck managed to accomplish a good deal, which
was one of the reasons why he was manager and director of the Flying
U Feature Films. Just for example, he went to a friend who was
also something of a detective, and put him on the job of find
Annie-Many-Ponies--a bigger task than it looked to Luck, as we have
occasion to know. He sent some of the boys back to the ranch in a
machine, and told them just what to bring back with them in the way
of rifles, bedding rolls, extra horses and so on. The horses they had
ridden into town he had housed in a livery stable. He took the Native
Son and a Mexican driver and went over to Atrisco, routed perfectly
polite and terribly sleepy individuals out of their beds and learned
beyond all question that a red automobile with several men in it had
passed through the dusty lanes and had labored up the hill to the desert
mesa beyond and that no one had seen it return.

He sent a hundred-and-fifty-word message to Dewitt of the Great Western
Company in Los Angeles, explaining with perfect frankness the situation
and his determination to get out after the robbers, and made it plain
also that he would not expect salary for the time he spent in the chase.
He ended by saying tersely, “My reputation and standing of company here
at stake,” and signed his name in a hasty scrawl that made the operator
scratch his ear reflectively with his pencil when he had counted the
words down to the signature. After that, Luck gave every ounce of his
energy and every bit of his brain to the outfitting of the expedition.

So well did he accomplish the task that by one O’clock that night a
low-voiced company of men rode away from a livery stable in the heart of
the town, leading four pack-horses and heading as straight as might be
for the bridge. They met no one; they saw scarcely a light in any of the
windows that they passed. A chill wind crept up the river so that they
buttoned their coats when the hoofbeats of the horses sounded hollow on
the bridge. Out through the lane that leads to Atrisco, which slept
in the stolid blackness of low adobe houses with flat roofs and tiny
windows, they rode at a trot. Dogs barked, ran but to the road and
barked again, ran back to the adobe huts and kept on barking. In one
field some loose horses, seeing so many of their kind in the lane,
galloped up to the fence and stood there snorting. These were still in
their colthood, however, and the saddle-horses merely flicked ears in
their direction and gave them no more heed.

“I’m glad you’re sure of the country, up here on top,” Luck said to
Applehead when they had climbed, by the twisting, sandy trail, to the
sand dunes that lay on the edge of the mesa and stretched vaguely away
under the stars. To the rim-rook line that separated this first mesa
from the higher one beyond, Luck himself knew the sand-hills well.
But beyond the broken line of hills off to the northwest he had never
gone--and there lay the territory that belongs to the Navajos, who are
a tricky tribe and do not love the white people who buy their rugs and
blankets and, so claim the Navajos, steal their cattle and their horses
as well.

At the rim of lava rock they made a dry camp and lay down in what
comfort they could achieve, to doze and wait for daylight so that they
could pick up the trail of the red automobile.



CHAPTER XI. ALL THIS WAR-TALK ABOUT INJUNS

Over his second cup of coffee the pale eyes of Big Medicine goggled
thoughtfully at the forbidding wall of lava rock that stretched before
them as far as he could see to left or right. There were places here and
there where he believed that a man could climb to the top with the aid
of his hands as well as his feet, but for the horses he was extremely
skeptical; and as for a certain big red automobile.... His eyes swung
from the brown rampart and rested grievedly upon the impassive face of
Luck, who was just then reaching forward to spear another slice of bacon
from the frying pan.

“Kinda looks to me, by cripes, as if we’d come to the end uh the trail,”
 he observed in his usual full-lunged bellow, as though he had all his
life been accustomed to pitching his voice above some unending clamor.
“Yuh got any idee of how an autyMObile clumb that there rim-rock?”

Old Applehead, squatting on his heels across the little camp-fire,
leaned and picked a coal out of the ashes for his pipe and afterwards
cocked his eyes toward Big Medicine.

“What yuh calc’late yuh tryin’ to do?” he inquired pettishly. “Start
up an argyment uh some kind? Cause if ye air, lemme tell yuh I got the
yer-ache from listenin’ to you las’ night.”

Big Medicine looked at him as though he was going to spring upon him in
deadly combat--but that was only a peculiar facial trick of his. What
he did do was to pour that last swallow of hot, black coffee down his
throat and then laugh his big haw-haw-haw that could be heard half a
mile off.

“Y’ oughta kep Applehead to home with the wimmin folks, Luck,” he bawled
unabashed. “Night air’s bad fer ‘im, and the trail ain’t goin’ to be
smooth goin’,--not if we gotta ride our hawses straight up, by cripes!”

“We haven’t got to.” Luck balanced his slice of bacon upon the
unscorched side of a bannock and glanced indifferently at the rim of
rock that was worrying the other. “I swung down here to make camp off
the trail But it’s only a half mile or so over this rise that looks
level to you, to where the lava ledge peters out so we can ride over it
easier than we rode up off the river-flat in that loose sand. That ease
your mind any?”

“Helps some,” Big Medicine admitted, his eyes going speculatively to the
rise that looked perfectly level. “I’m willin’ to take your word fer
it, boss. But what’s gittin’ to worry me, by cripes, is all this here
war-talk about Injuns. Honest to grandma, I feel like as if I’d been
readin’--”

“Aw, it’s jest a josh, Bud!” Happy Jack asserted boredly. “I betche
there ain’t been a Injun on the fight here sence hell was a tradin’
post!”

“You think there hasn’t?” Luck looked up quickly to ask. But old
Applehead rose up and shook an indignant finger at Happy Jack.

“There ain’t, hey? Well, I calc’late that fer a josh, them thar Navvies
has got a right keen sense uh humor, and I’ve knowed men to laff
theirselves to death on their danged resavation--now I’m tellin’ yuh I
It was all a josh mebby, when they riz up a year or two back ‘cause one
uh their tribe was goin’ t’ be arrested er some darn thing! Ole General
Scott, he didn’t call it no joke when he, went in thar to settle ‘em
down, did he? I calc’late, mebby it was jest fer a josh them troops
waited on the aidge, ready to go in if he didn’t git back a certain
time! ‘N’ that wasn’t so fur back, shorely,--only two years. Why dang
your fool heart, I’ve laid out there in them hills myself and fit
off the Navvies--‘n’ _I_ didn’t see nothin’ much to laugh at, now I’m
tellin’ yuh! Time I went there after Jose Martinez--”

“Better get under way, boys,” Luck interrupted, having heard many times
the details of that fight and capture. “We’ll throw out a circle and
pick up the trail of that machine, or whatever they made their getaway
in. My idea is that they must have stached some horses out here
somewhere. I don’t believe they’d take the risk of trying to get away
in a machine; that would hold them to the main trails, mostly. I know it
wouldn’t be my way of getting outa reach. I’d want horses so I could get
into rough country, and I’ve doped it out that Ramon is too trail-wise
to bank very high on an automobile once he got out away from town.
Applehead, you and Lite and Pink and Weary form one party if it comes
to where we want to divide forces. Pack a complete camp outfit on the
sorrel and the black--you notice that’s the way I had ‘em packed first.
Keep their packs just as we started out, then you’ll be ready to strike
out by yourselves whenever it seems best. Get me?”

“We get you, boss,” Weary sang out cheerfully, and went to work
gathering up the breakfast things and putting them into two little piles
for the packs. Pink led up the black and the sorrel, and helped to pack
them with bedding and supplies for four, as Luck had ordered, while Lite
and Applehead saddled their horses and then came up to help throw the
diamond hitches on the packs.

A couple of rods nearer the rock wall Happy Jack was grumbling, across
the canvas pack of a little bay, at Big Medicine, who was warning
him against leaving his hair so long as a direct temptation to
scalp-lifting. Luck bad already mounted and ridden out a little way,
where he could view the country behind them with his field glasses,
to make sure that in the darkness they had not passed by anything that
deserved a closer inspection. He came back at a lope and motioned to
Andy and the Native Son.

“That red automobile is standing back about half a mile,” he announced
hurriedly. “Empty and deserted, looks like. We’ll go back and take a
look at it. The rest of you can finish packing and wait here till we
come back. No use making extra travel for your horses. They’ll get all
they need, the chances are.”

The red automobile was empty of everything but the upholstering and a
jack in the toolbox. The state license number was gone, and the serial
number on the engine had been hammered into illegibility. What tracks
there were had been blown nearly full of the white sand of that
particular locality There was nothing to be learned there, except the
very patent fact that the machine bad been abandoned for some reason.
Luck took a look at the engine and saw nothing wrong with it. There was
oil and there was “gas”--a whole tank full. Andy and Miguel, riding
an ever-widening circle around the machine while Luck was looking for
evidence of a breakdown, ran across a lot of hoofprints that seemed to
head straight away past the rim-rock and on to the hills.

They picked up the trail of the hoofprints and followed it. When they
returned to the others they found the boys all mounted and waiting
impatiently like hounds on the leash eager to get away on the chase. Six
horses there were, and even old Applehead, who was in a bad humor that
morning and seemed to hate agreeing with anyone, admitted that probably
the four who had committed the robbery and left town in the machine had
been met out here by a man who brought horses for them and one extra
pack horse. This explained the number in the most plausible manner, and
satisfied everyone that they were on the right trail.

Riding together--since they were on a plain trail and there was nothing
to be gained by separating--they climbed to the higher mesa, crossed the
ridge of the three barren hills that none of them but Applehead had ever
passed, and went on and on and on as the hoofprints led them, straight
toward the reservation.

They discussed the robbery from every angle--they could think of, and
once or twice someone hazarded a guess at Annie-Many-Ponies’ reason
for leaving and her probable destination. They wondered how old Dave
Wiswell, the dried little cattleman of The Phantom Herd, was making out
in Denver, where he had gone to consult a specialist about some kidney
trouble that had interfered with his riding all spring. Weary suggested
that maybe Annie-Many-Ponies had taken a notion to go and visit old
Dave, since the two were old friends.

It was here that Applehead unwittingly put into words the vague
suspicion which Luck had been trying to stifle and had not yet faced as
a definite idea.

“I calc’late we’ll likely find that thar squaw putty tol’ble close to
whar we find Bill Holmes,” Applehead remarked sourly. “Her goin’
off same, day they stuck up that bank don’t look to me like no
happenstance--now I’m tellin’ yuh! ‘N’ if I was shurf, and was ast to
locate that squaw, I’d keep right on the trail uh Bill Holmes, jest as
we’re doin’ now.”

“That isn’t like Annie,” Luck said sharply to, still the conviction in
his own mind. “Whatever faults she may have, she’s been loyal to me, and
honest. Look how she stuck last winter, when she didn’t have anything at
stake, wasn’t getting any salary, and yet worked like a dog to help
make the picture a success. Look how she got up in the night when the
blizzard struck, and fed our horses and cooked breakfast of her own
accord, just so I could get out early and get my scenes. I’ve known
her since she was a dirty-faced papoose, and I never knew her to lie
or steal. She wasn’t in on that robbery--I’ll bank on that, and she
wouldn’t go off with a thief. It isn’t like Annie.”

“Well,” said Big Medicine, thinking of his own past, “the best uh women
goes wrong when some knot-headed man gits to lovemakin’. They’ll do
things fer the wrong kinda man, by cripes, that they wouldn’t do fer no
other human on earth. I’ve knowed a good woman to lie and steal--fer
a man that wasn’t fit, by cripes, to tip his hat to ‘er in the street!
Women,” he added pessimistically, “is something yuh can’t bank on, as
safe as yuh can on a locoed horse!” He kicked his mount unnecessarily
by way of easing the resentment which one woman had managed to instil
against the sex in general.

“That’s where you’re darned right, Bud,” Pink attested with a sudden
bitterness which memory brought. “I wouldn’t trust the best woman that
ever lived outa my sight, when you come right down to cases.”

“Aw, here!” Andy Green, thinking loyally of his Rosemary, swung his
horse indignantly toward the two. “Cut that out, both of you! Just
because you two got stung, is no reason why you’ve got to run down all
the rest of the women. I happen to know one--”

“Aw, nobody was talking about Rosemary,” Big Medicine apologized
gruffly. “She’s different; any fool knows that.”

“Well, I’ve got a six-gun here that’ll talk for another one,” silent
Lite Avery spoke up suddenly. “One that would tip the scales on the
woman’s side for goodness if the rest of the whole sex was bad.”

“Oh, thunder!” Pink cried, somewhat redder than the climbing sun alone
would warrant. “I’ll take it back. I didn’t mean THEM--you know darned
well I didn’t mean them--nor lots of other women I know. What I meant
was--”

“What you meant was Annie,” Luck broke in uncompromisingly. “And I’m not
condemning her just because things look black. You don’t know Indians
the way I know them. There’s some things an Indian will do, and then
again there’s some things they won’t do. You boys don’t know it--but
yesterday morning when we left the ranch, Annie-Many-Ponies made me the
peace-sign. And after that she went into her tent and began to sing the
Omaha. It didn’t mean anything to you--Old Dave is the only one that
would have sabed, and he wasn’t there. But it meant enough to me that
I came pretty near riding back to have a pow-wow with Annie, even if we
were late. I wish I had. I’d have less on my conscience right now.”

“Fur’s I kin see,” Applehead dissented impatiently, “you ain’t got
no call to have nothin’ on your conscience where that thar squaw is
concerned. You treated her a hull lot whiter’n what she deserved--now
I’m tellin’ ye! ‘N’ her traipsin’ around at nights ‘n’--”

“I tell you, you don’t know Indians!” Luck swung round in the saddle
so that he could face Applehead. “You don’t know the Sioux, anyway. She
wouldn’t have made me that peace-sign if she’d been double-crossing me,
I tell you. And she wouldn’t have sung the Omaha if she was going to
throw in with a thief that was trying to lay me wide open to suspicion.
I’ve been studying things over in my mind, and there’s something in this
affair I can’t sabe. And until you’ve got some proof, the less you say
about Annie-Many-Ponies the better I’ll be pleased.”

That, coming from Luck in just that tone and with just that look in his
eyes, was tantamount to an ultimatum, and it was received as one. Old
Applehead grunted and chewed upon a wisp of his sunburned mustache that
looked like dried cornsilk after a frost. The Happy Family exchanged
careful glances and rode meekly along in silence. There was not a man
of them but believed that Applehead was nearer right than Luck, but they
were not so foolish as to express that belief.

After a while Big Medicine began bellowing tunelessly that old ditty,
once popular but now half forgotten:

   “Nava, Nava, My Navaho-o
   I have a love for you that will grow-ow!”

Which stirred old Applehead to an irritated monologue upon the theme of
certain persons whose ignorance is not blissful, but trouble-inviting.
Applehead, it would seem from his speech upon the subject, would be a
much surprised ex-sheriff--now a deputy--if they were not all captured
and scalped, if not worse, the minute their feet touched the forbidden
soil of these demons in human form, the Navajo Indians.

“If they were not too busy weaving blankets for Fred Harvey,” Luck
qualified with his soft Texan drawl and the smile that went with it.
“You talk as if these boys were tourists.”

“Yes,” added Andy Green maliciously, “here comes a war-party now, boys.
Duck behind a rock, Applehead, they’re liable to charge yuh fer them
blankets!”

The Happy Family laughed uproariously, to the evident bewilderment of
the two Indians who, swathed in blankets and with their hair knotted and
tied with a green ribbon and a yellow, drove leisurely toward the group
in an old wagon that had a bright new seat and was drawn by a weazened
span of mangy-looking bay ponies. In the back of the wagon sat a young
squaw and two papooses, and beside them were stacked three or four
of the gay, handwoven rugs for which the white people will pay many
dollars.

“Buenas dias,” said the driver of the wagon, who was an oldish Indian
with a true picture-postal face. And: “Hello,” said the other, who was
young and wore a bright blue coat, such as young Mexicans affect.

“Hello, folks,” cried the Happy Family genially, and lifted their
hats to the good-looking young squaw in the wagon-bed, who tittered in
bashful appreciation of the attention.

“Mama! They sure are wild and warlike,” Weary commented drily as he
turned to stare after the wagon.

“Us little deputies had better run home,” Pink added with mock alarm.

“By cripes, I know now what went with Applehead’s hair!” bawled Big
Medicine. “Chances is, it’s weaved into that red blanket the old buck is
wearin’--Haw-haw-haw!”

“Laff, dang ye, laff!” Applehead cried furiously. “But do your laffing
where I can’t hear ye, fer I’m tellin’ ye right now I’ve had enough of
yore dang foolishness. And the next feller that makes a crack is goin’
to wisht he hadn’t now I’m tellin’ ye!”

This was not so much an ultimatum as a declaration of war--and the Happy
Family suddenly found themselves all out of the notion of laughing at
anything at all.



CHAPTER XII. THE WILD-GOOSE CHASE

Because they had no human means of knowing anything about the black
automobile that bad whirled across the mesa to the southeast and left
its mysterious passengers in one of the arroyos that leads into the
Sandias Mountains near Coyote Springs, nine cowpuncher deputy-sheriffs
bored their way steadily through sun and wind and thirst, traveling due
northwest, keeping always on the trail of the six horses that traveled
steadily before them Always a day’s march behind, always watching
hopefully for some sign of delay--for an encouraging freshness in the
tracks that would show a lessening distance between the two parties,
Luck and his Happy Family rode--from dawn till dusk, from another dawn
to another dusk. Their horses, full of little exuberant outbursts of
horse-foolishness when they had left town, settled clown to a dogged,
plodding half walk, half trot which is variously described upon the
range; Luck, for instance, calling it poco-poco; while the Happy Family
termed it running-walk, trail-trot, fox-trot--whatever came easiest to
their tongues at the time. Call it what they pleased, the horses came to
a point where they took the gait mechanically whenever the country was
decently level. They forgot to shy at strange objects, and they never
danced away from a foot lifted to the stirrup when the sky was flaunting
gorgeous bantiers to herald the coming of the sun. More than once they
were thankful to have the dust washed from their nostrils and to let
that pass for a drink. For water holes were few and far between when
they struck that wide, barren land ridged here and there with hills of
rock.

Twice the trail of the six horses was lost, because herds of cattle had
passed between those who rode in baste before, and those who followed in
haste a day’s ride behind. They saw riders in the distance nearly
every day, but only occasionally did any Indians come within speaking
distance. These were mostly headed townward in wagons and rickety old
buggies, with the men riding dignifiedly on the spring seat and the
squaws and papooses sitting flat in the bottom behind. These family
parties became more and more inclined to turn and stare after the Happy
Family, as if they were puzzling over the errand that would take nine
men riding close-grouped across the desert, with four pack-horses to
proclaim the journey a long one.

When the trail swung sharply away from the dim wagon road and into the
northwest where the land lay parched and pitiless under the hot sun, the
Happy Family hitched their gun-belts into place, saw to it that their
canteens were brimming with the water that was so precious, and turned
doggedly that way, following the lead of Applehead, who knew the country
fairly well, and of Luck, who did not know the country, but who knew
that he meant to overhaul Ramon Chavez and Bill Holmes, go where they
would, and take them back to jail. If they could ride across this barren
stretch, said Luck to Applehead, he and his bunch could certainly follow
them.

“Well, this is kinda takin’ chances,” Applehead observed soberly,
“unless Ramon, he knows whar’s the water-holes. If he does hit water
regular, I calc’late we kin purty nigh foller his lead. They’s things
I don’t like about the way this here trail is leading out this way, now
I’m tellin’ yuh! Way we’re goin’, we’ll be in the Seven Lakes country
‘fore we know it. Looks to me like them greasers must stand in purty
well with the Navvies--‘n’ if they do, it’ll be dang hard pullin’ to git
‘em away ‘n! outa here. ‘N’ if they don’t stand in, they’d oughta bore
more west than what they’re doin’. Looks dang queer to me, now I’m
tellin’ ye!”

“Well, all I want is to overtake them. We’ll do it, too. The little
grain these horses get is showing its worth right now,” Luck cheered
him. “They’re keeping up better than I was afraid they would. We’ve
got that advantage--a Mexican don’t as a rule grain his horses, and the
chances are that Ramon thought more about the gold than he did about
carrying horse-feed. We can hold on longer than he can, Applehead.”

“We can’t either,” Applehead disputed, “because if Ramon takes a notion
he’ll steal fresh horses from the Injuns.”

“I thought you said he stood in with the Injuns,” Weary spoke up from
the ambling group, behind. “You’re kinda talkin’ in circles, ain’t you,
Applehead?”

“Well, I calc’late yuh jest about got to talk in circles to git
anywheres near Ramon,” Applehead retorted, looking back at the others.
“They’s so, dang many things he MIGHT be aimin’ to do, that I ain’t been
right easy in my mind the last day or two, and I’m tellin’ ye so. ‘S
like a storm--I kin smell trouble two days off; that’s mebby why I’m
still alive an’ able to fork a boss. An’ I’m tellin’ you right now, I
kin smell trouble stronger’n a polecat under the chicken-house!”

“Well, by cripes, let ‘er come!” Big Medicine roared cheerfully,
inspecting a battered plug of “chewin’” to see where was the most
inviting corner in which to set his teeth. “Me’n’ trouble has locked
horns more’n once, ‘n’ I’d feel right lonesome if I thought our trails’d
never cross agin. Why, down in Coconino County--” He went off into a
long recital of certain extremely bloody chapters in the history of
that famed county as chronicled by one Bud Welch, otherwise known as Big
Medicine--and not because of his modesty, you may be sure.

Noon of that day found them plodding across a high, barren mesa under a
burning sun. Since red dawn they had been riding, and the horses showed
their need of water. They lagged often into a heavy-footed walk and
their ears drooped dispiritedly. Even Big Medicine found nothing
cheerful to say. Luck went out of his way to gain the top of every
little rise, and to scan the surrounding country through his field
glasses. The last time he came sliding down to the others his face
was not so heavy with anxiety and his voice when he spoke had a new
briskness.

“There’s a ranch of some kind straight ahead about two miles,” he
announced. “I could see a green patch, so there must be water around
there somewhere. We’ll make noon camp there, and maybe we can dig up a
little information. Ramon must have stopped there for water, and we’ll
find out just how far we are behind.”

The ranch, when they finally neared it, proved to be a huddle of
low, octagon-shaped huts (called hogans) made of short cedar logs and
plastered over with adobe, with a hole in the center of the lid-like
roof to let the smoke out and a little light in; and dogs, that ran out
and barked and yelped and trailed into mourning rumbles and then barked
again; and half-naked papooses that scurried like rabbits for shelter
when they rode up; and two dingy, shapeless squaws that disappeared
within a hogan and peered out at one side of the blanket door.

Luck started to dismount and make some attempt at a polite request for
water, and for information as well, but Applehead objected and finally
had his way.

If the squaws could speak English, he argued, they would lie unless they
refused to talk at all. As to the water, if there was any around the
place the bunch could find it and help themselves. “These yer Navvies
ain’t yore Buffalo-Bill Sioux,” he pointed out to Luck. “Yuh can’t treat
‘em the same. The best we kin look fer is to be left alone--an’ I’m
tellin’ ye straight.”

Luck gave the squalid huts a long stare and turned away toward the
corral and a low shed that served as a stable. A rusty old mower and a
toothless rake and a rickety buckboard stood baking in the sun, and a
few stunted hens fluttered away from their approach. In the corral a
mangy pony blinked in dejected slumber; and all the while, the three
dogs followed them and barked and yapped and growled, until Pink turned
in the saddle with the plain intention of stopping the clamor with a
bullet or two.

“Ye better let ‘em alone!” Applehead warned sharply, and Pink put up his
gun unfired and took down his rope.

“The darned things are getting on my nerves!” he complained, and wheeled
suddenly in pursuit of the meanest-looking dog of the three. “I can
stand a decent dog barking at me, but so help me Josephine, I draw the
line at Injun curs!”

The dog ran yelping toward the hogans with Pink hard at its heels
swinging his loop menacingly. When the dog, with a last hysterical yelp,
suddenly flattened its body and wriggled under a corner of the shed,
Pink turned and rode after the others, who had passed the corral and
were heading for the upper and of a small patch of green stuff that
looked like a half-hearted attempt at a vegetable garden. As he passed
the shed an Indian in dirty overalls and gingham shirt craned his neck
around the doorway and watched him malevolently; but Pink, sighting the
green patch and remembering their dire need of water, was kicking
his horse into a trot and never once thought to cast an eye over his
shoulder.

In that arid land, where was green vegetation you may be sure there was
water also. And presently the nine were distributed along a rod or
two of irrigating ditch, thankfully watching the swallows of water go
sliding hurriedly down the outstretched gullets of their horses that
leaned forward with half-bent, trembling knees, fetlock deep in the wet
sand of the ditch-banks.

“Drink, you sons-uh-guns, drink!” Weary exclaimed jubilantly, “you’ve
sure got it coming--and mama, how I do hate to see a good horse
suffering for a feed or water, or shelter from a storm!”

They pulled them away before they were satisfied, and led them back to
where green grass was growing. There they pulled the saddles off and let
the poor brutes feed while they unpacked food for themselves.

“It’ll pay in the long run,” said Luck, “to give them an hour here. I’ll
pay the Injuns for what grass they eat. Ramon must have stopped here
yesterday. I’m going up and see if I can’t pry a little information
loose from those squaws and papooses. Come on, Applehead--you can talk a
little Navvy; you come and tell ‘em what I want.”

Applehead hesitated, and with a very good reason. He might, for all he
knew, be trespassing upon the allotment of a friend or relative of
some of the Indians he had been compelled to “get” in the course of his
duties as sheriff. And at any rate they all knew him--or at least knew
of him.

“Aw, gwan, Applehead,” Happy Jack urged facetiously, sure that Applehead
had tried to scare him with tales of Indians whose pastoral pursuits
proclaimed aloud their purity of souls. “Gwan! You ain’t afraid of a
couple of squaws, are yuh? Go on and talk to the ladies. Mebby yuh might
win a wife if yuh just had a little nerve!”

Applehead turned and glowered. But Luck was already walking slowly
toward the hogans and looking back frequently, so Applehead contented
himself by saying, “You wait till this yere trip’s over, ‘fore ye git so
dang funny in yore remarks, young man!” and stalked after Luck, hitching
his six-shooter forward as he went.

At the shed, the Indian who had peered after Pink stood in the doorway
and stared unwinkingly as they came up. Applehead glanced at him sharply
from under his sorrel eyebrows and grunted. He knew him by sight well
enough, and he took it for granted that the recognition was mutual. But
he gave no sign of remembrance. Instead, he asked how much the Indian
wanted for the grass the horses would eat in an hour.

The Indian looked at the two impassively and did not say anything at
all; so Applehead flipped him a dollar.

“Now, what time did them fellows pass here yesterday?” Applehead asked,
in the half Indian, half Mexican jargon which nearly all New Mexico
Indians speak.

The Indian looked at the dollar and moved his head of bobbed hair
vaguely from left to right.

“All right, dang ye, don’t talk if ye don’t feel like it,” Applehead
commented in wasted sarcasm, and looked at Luck for some hint of what
was wanted next. Luck seemed uncertain, so Applehead turned toward the
ditch, and the food his empty stomach craved.

“No use tryin’ to make ‘em talk if they ain’t in the notion,” he told
Luck impatiently. “He’s got his dollar, and we’ll take what grass
our hosses kin pack away in their bellies. That kinda winds up the
transaction, fur’s I kin see.”

“I wonder if another dollar--”

But Applehead interrupted him. “Another dollar might git him warmed up
so’s he’d shake his danged head twicet instid uh once’t,” he asserted
pessimistically, “but that’s all you’d git outa him. That thar buck
ain’t TALKIN’ today. Yuh better come an’ eat ‘n’ rest yer laigs. If he
talked, he’d lie. We’re a heap better off jest doin’ our own trailin’
same as we been doin. That bunch come by here; the tracks show that. If
they went on, the tracks’ll show where they headed fur. ‘N’ my idee is
that they’ll take their time from now on. They don’t know we’re trailin’
‘em up. I’ll bet they never throwed back any scout t’ watch the back
trail, In’ they’re in Navvy country now--whar they’re purty tol’ble safe
if they stand in with the Injuns. ‘N’ I’m tellin’ yuh right now, Luck,
I wisht I could say as much fer us!” Applehead lifted his hat and rubbed
his palm over his bald pate that was covered thickly with beads of
perspiration, as if his head were a stone jar filled with cold water.
“If we have to sep’rate, Luck, you take a fool’s advice and keep yore
dang eyes open. The boys, they think I been stringin’ ‘em along. Mebby
you think so too, but I kin tell ye right now ‘t we gotta keep our dang
eyes in our haids!”

“I’m taking your word for it, Applehead,” Luck told him, lowering his
voice a little because they were nearing the others. “Besides, I’ve
heard a lot about these tricky boys with the Dutch-cut on their hair.
I’m keeping it all in mind don’t worry. But I sure am going to overhaul
Ramon, if we have to follow him to salt water.”

“Well, now, I ain’t never turned back on a trail yit, fer want uh nerve
to foller it,” Applehead stated offendedly. “When I was shurf--”

The enlivened jumble of voices, each proclaiming the owner’s hopes or
desires or disbelief to ears that were not listening, quite submerged
Applehead’s remarks upon the subject of his wellknown prowess when he
was “shurf.” The Happy Family were sprawled in unwonted luxury on the
shady side of an outcropping of rock from under which a little spring
seeped and made a small oasis in the general barrenness. They had shade,
they Had water and food, and through the thin aromatic smoke of their
cigarettes they could watch their horses cropping avidly the green grass
that meant so much to them. The knowledge that an hour later they would
be traveling again in the blazing heat of midday but emphasized their
present comfort. They were enjoying every minute to its full sixty
seconds. Laughter came easily and the hardships of the trail were pushed
into the background of their minds.

They were not particularly anxious over the success or failure of
Luck’s trip to the hogans. They were on Ramon’s trail (or so they firmly
believed) and sooner or later they would overhaul him and Bill Holmes.
When that happened they believed that they would be fully equal to the
occasion, and that Ramon and Bill and those who were with him would
learn what it means to turn traitor to the hand that has fed them, and
to fling upon that hand the mud of public suspicion. But just now they
were not talking about these things; they were arguing very earnestly
over a very trivial matter indeed, and they got as much satisfaction out
of the contention as though it really amounted to something.

When Luck had eaten and smoked and had ground his cigarette stub under
his heel in the moist earth beside the spring, and had looked at his
watch and got upon his feet with a sigh to say: “Well, boys, let’s go,”
 the Happy Family (who by the way must now be understood as including
Lite Avery) sighed also and pulled their reluctant feet toward them and
got up also, with sundry hitchings-into-place as to gun-belts and sundry
resettlings as to hats. They pulled their horses more reluctant even
than their riders--away from the green grass; resaddled, recinched the
packs on the four animals that carried the camp supplies, gave them a
last drink at the little irrigating ditch and mounted and straggled out
again upon the trail of the six whom they seemed never able to overtake.

They did not know that the silent Indian with the dingy overalls and the
bobbed hair had watched every movement they made. Through all that hour
of rest not even a papoose had been visible around the hogans--which,
while there was nothing warlike in their keeping under cover, was not
exactly a friendly attitude. Applehead had kept turning his keen, bright
blue eyes that way while he ate and afterwards smoked an after-dinner
pipe, but when they were actually started again upon the trail he
appeared to lay aside his misgivings.

Not even Applehead suspected that the Indian had led a pony carefully
down into a draw, keeping the buildings always between himself and
the party of white men; nor that he watched them while they spread out
beyond the cultivated patch of irrigated ground until they picked up
the trail of the six horses, when they closed the gaps between them and
followed the trail straight away into the parched mesa that was lined
with deep washes and canons and crossed with stony ridges where the heat
radiated up from the bare rocks as from a Heating stove when the fire is
blazing within. When they rode away together, the Indian ran back into
the draw, mounted his pony and lashed it into a heavy, sure-footed
gallop.



CHAPTER XIII. SET AFOOT

The tracks of the six horses led down into a rock-bottomed arroyo so
deep in most places that all view of the surrounding mesa was shut off
completely, save where the ragged tops of a distant line of hills pushed
up into the dazzling blue of the sky. The heat, down here among the
rocks, was all but unbearable; and when they discovered that no tracks
led out of the arroyo on the farther side, the Happy Family dismounted
and walked to save their horses while they divided into two parties and
hunted up and down the arroyo for the best trail.

It was just such vexatious delays as this which had kept them always a
day’s ride or more behind their quarry, and Luck’s hand trembled with
nervous irritability when he turned back and banded Applehead one of
those small, shrill police whistles whose sound carries so far, and
which are much used by motion-picture producers for the long-distance
direction of scenes.

“I happened to have a couple in my pocket,” he explained hurriedly. “You
know the signals, don’t you? One long, two short will mean you’ve picked
up the trail. Three or more short, quick ones is an emergency call, for
all hands to come running.”

“Well, they’s one thing you want to keep in mind, Luck,” Applehead urged
from his superior trail craft. “They might be sharp enough to ride in
here a ways and come out the same side they rode in at. Yuh want to hunt
both sides as yuh go up.”

“Sure,” said Luck, and hurried away up the arroyo with Pink, Big
Medicine, Andy and the Native Son at his heels, leading the two
pack-horses that belonged to their party. In the opposite direction went
Applehead and the others, their eyes upon the ground watching for the
faintest sign of hoofprints.

That blazing ball of torment, the sun, slid farther and farther down to
the skyline, tempering its heat with the cool promise of dusk. Away up
the arroyo, Luck stopped for breath after a sharp climb up through a
narrow gash in the sheer wall of what was now a small canon, and saw
that to search any farther in that direction would be useless. Across
the arroyo--that had narrowed and deepened until it was a canon--Andy
Green was mopping his face with his handkerchief and studying a bold
hump of jumbled bowlders and ledges, evidently considering whether it
was worth while toiling up to the top. A little below him, the Native
Son was flinging rocks at a rattlesnake with the vicious precision of
frank abhorrence. Down in the canon bottom Big Medicine and Pink were
holding the horses on the shady side of the gorge, and the smoke of
their cigarettes floated lazily upward with the jumbled monotone of
their voices.

Andy, glancing across at Luck, waved his hand and sat down on a
rock that was shaded by a high bowlder; reached mechanically for his
“makings” and with his feet far apart and his elbows on his thighs,
wearily rolled a cigarette.

“How about it, boss?” he asked, scarcely raising his voice above the
ordinary conversational tone, though a hard fifteen-minutes’ climb up
and down separated the two; “they never came up the arroyo, if you ask
ME. My side don’t show a hoof track from where we left the boys down
below.”

“Mine either,” Luck replied, by the power of suggestion seating himself
and reaching for his own tobacco and papers. “We might as well work back
down and connect with Applehead. Wish there was some sign of water in
this darn gulch. By the time we get down where we started from, it’ll be
sundown.” He glanced down at Bud and Pink. “Hey! You can start back any,
time,” he called. “Nothing up this way.”

“Here’s the grandfather of all rattlers,” Miguel called across to Luck,
and held up by the tail a great snake that had not ceased its muscular
writhings. “Twelve rattles and a button. Have I got time to skin him? He
tried to bite me on the leg--but I beard him and got outa reach.”

“We’ve got to be moving,” Luck answered. “It’s a long ways back where
we started from, and we’ve got to locate water, if we can.” He rose with
the deliberateness that indicated tired muscles, and started back; and
to himself he muttered exasperatedly: “A good three hours all shot to
pieces--and not a mile gained on that bunch!”

The Native Son, calmly pinching the rattles of the snake he had not time
to skin, climbed down into the Canon and took his horse by the bridle
reins. Behind him Andy Green came scrambling; but Luck, still faintly
hoping for a clue, kept to the upper rim of the arroyo, scanning every
bit of soft ground where it seemed possible for a horse to climb up from
below. He had always recognized the native cunning of Ramon, but he had
never dreamed him as cunning as this latest ruse would seem to prove
him.

As for Bill Holmes, Luck dismissed him with a shrug of contempt. Bill
Holmes had been stranded in Albuquerque when the cold weather was coming
on; he had been hungry and shelterless and ill-clad--one of those bits
of flotsam which drift into our towns and stand dejectedly upon our
street-corners when they do not prowl down alleys to the back doors of
our restaurants in the hope of being permitted to wash the soiled dishes
of more fortunate men for the food which diners have left beside their
plates. Luck had fed Bill Holmes, and he had given him work to do and
the best food and shelter he could afford; and for thanks, Bill had--as
Luck believed--made sly, dishonest love to Annie-Many-Ponies, for whose
physical and moral welfare Luck would be held responsible. Bill had
deliberately chosen to steal rather than work for honest wages, and had
preferred the unstable friendship of Ramon Chavez to the cleaner life
in Luck’s company. He did not credit Bill Holmes with anything stronger
than a weak-souled treachery. Ramon, he told himself while he made his
way down the arroyo side, was at least working out a clever scheme of
his own, and it rested with Luck and his posse to see that Ramon was
cheated of success.

So deeply was he engrossed that before he realized it he was down where
they had left Applehead’s party. There was no sign of them anywhere, so
Luck went down and mounted his horse and led the way down the arroyo.

Already the heat was lessening and the land was taking on those
translucent opal tints which make of New Mexico a land of enchantment.
The far hills enveloped themselves in a faint, purplish haze through
which they seemed to blush unwittingly. The mesa, no longer showing
itself an and waste of heat and untracked wilderness, lay soft under a
thin veil of many ethereal tints. Away off to the northeast they heard
the thin, vague clamor of a band of sheep and the staccato barking of a
dog.

Luck rode for some distance, his uneasiness growing as the shadows
deepened with the setting of the sun. They had gone too far to hear
any whistled signal, but it seemed to him reasonable to suppose that
Applehead would return to their starting point, whether he found the
trail or not; or at least send a man back. Luck began to think more
seriously of Applehead’s numerous warnings about the Indians--and yet,
there had been no sound of shooting, which is the first sign of trouble
in this country. Rifle shots can be heard a long way in this clear air;
so Luck presently dismissed that worry and gave his mind to the very
real one which assailed them all; which was water for their horses.

The boys were riding along in silence, sitting over to one side with a
foot dangling free of its stirrup; except Andy, who had hooked one
leg over the saddle-horn and was riding sidewise, smoking a meditative
cigarette and staring out between the ears of his horse. They were
tired; horses and men, they were tired to the middle of their bones.
But they went ahead without making any complaints whatever or rasping
oneanother’s tempers with ill-chosen remarks; and for that Luck’s eyes
brightened with appreciation.

Presently, when they had ridden at least a mile down the arroyo, a gray
hat-crown came bobbing into sight over a low tongue of rocky ground
that cut the channel almost in two. The horses threw up their heads and
perked cars forward inquiringly, and in a moment Happy Tack came into
view, his gloomy, sunburned face wearing a reluctant grin.

“Well, we got on the trail,” he announced as soon as he was close
enough. “And we follered it to water. Applehead says fer you to come on
and make camp. Tracks are fresher around that’ water-hole’n what they
have been, an’ Applehead, he’s all enthused. I betche we land them
fellers t’morrow.”

Out of the arroyo in a place where the scant grassland lapped down over
the edge, Happy Jack led the way and the rest followed eagerly. Too
often had they made dry camp not to feel jubilant over the prospect even
of a brackish water-hole. Even the horses seemed to know and to step out
more briskly. Straight across the mesa with its deceptive lights that
concealed distance behind a glamor of intimate nearness, they rode into
the deepening dusk that had a glow all through it. After a while they
dipped into a grassy draw so shallow that they hardly realized the
descent until they dismounted at the bottom, where Applehead was already
starting a fire and the others were laying out their beds and doing the
hundred little things that make for comfort in camp.

A few bushes and a stunted tree or two marked the spring that seeped
down and fed a shallow water-hole where the horses drank thirstily.
Applehead grinned and pointed to the now familiar hoofprints which they
had followed so far.

“I calc’late Ramon done a heap uh millin’ around back there in that
rocky arroyo,” he observed, “‘fore he struck off over here. Er else they
was held up fer some reason, ‘cause them tracks is fresher a hull lot
than what them was that passed the Injun ranch. Musta laid over here
las’ night, by the looks. But I figgered that we’d best camp whilst we
had water, ‘n’ take up the trail agin at daybreak. Ain’t that about the
way you see it, Luck?”

“Why, certainly,” Luck assured him with as much heartiness as his utter
weariness would permit. “Men and horses, we’re about all in. If Ramon
was just over the next ridge, I don’t know but it would pay to take our
rest before we overhaul them.”

“They’s grass here, yuh notice,” Applehead pointed out. “I’ll put the
bell on Johnny, and if Pink’ll bobble that buckskin that’s allus wantin’
to wander off by hisself, I calc’late we kin settle down an’ rest our
bones quite awhile b’fore anybody needs to go on guard. Them ponies
ain’t goin’ to stray fur off if they don’t have to, after the groun’
they covered t’day--now I’m tellin’ yuh! They’ll save their steps.”

There is a superstition about prophesying too boastfully that a certain
thing will or will not happen; you will remember that there is also a
provision that the rash prophet may avert disaster by knocking wood.
Applehead should, if there is any grain of sense in the rite, have
knocked wood with his fingers crossed as an extra precaution, against
evil fortune.

For after they had eaten and methodically packed away the food, and
while they were lying around the cheerful glow of their little campfire,
misfortune stole up out of the darkness unaware. They talked desultorily
as tired men will, their alertness dulled by the contented tinkle-tinkle
of the little bell strapped around the neck of big, bay Johnny,
Applehead’s companion of many a desert wandering. That brilliant
constellation which seems to hang just over one’s head in the high
altitude of our sagebrush states, held hypnotically the sleepy gaze of
Pink, whose duty it was to go on guard when the others turned in for the
night. He lay with his locked fingers under his head, staring up at one
particularly bright group of stars, and listened to the droning voice
of Applehead telling of a trip he had made out into this country five or
six years before; and soaking in the peace and the comfort which was all
the more precious because he knew that soon he must drag his weary body
into the saddle and ride out to stand guard over the horses. Once he
half rose, every movement showing his reluctance.

Whereupon Weary, who sprawled next to him, reached out a languid foot
and gave him a poke. “Aw, lay down,” he advised. “They’re all right out
there for another hour. Don’t yuh hear the bell?”

They all listened for a minute. The intermittent tinkle of the cheap
little sheep bell came plainly to them from farther down the draw as
though Johnny was eating contentedly with his mates, thankful for the
leisure and the short, sweet grass that was better than hay. Pink lay
back with a sigh of relief, and Luck told him to sleep a little if he
wanted to, because everything was all right and he would call him if the
horses got to straying too far off.

Down the draw--where there were no horses feeding--an Indian in dirty
overalls and gingham shirt and moccasins, and with his hair bobbed to
his collar, stood up and peered toward the vague figures grouped in the
fire-glow. He lifted his hand and moved it slightly, so that the bell he
was holding tinkled exactly as it had done when it was strapped around
Johnny’s neck; Johnny, who was at that moment trailing disgustedly over
a ridge half a mile away with his mates, driven by two horsemen who rode
very carefully, so as to make no noise.

The figures settled back reassured, and the Indian grinned sourly and
tinkled the little bell painstakingly, with the matchless patience of
the Indian. It was an hour before he dimly saw Pink get up from the
dying coals and mount his horse. Then, still tinkling the bell as a
feeding horse would have made it ring, he moved slowly down the draw;
slowly, so that Pink did not at first suspect that the bell sounded
farther off than before; slowly yet surely, leading Pink farther and
farther in the hope of speedily overtaking the horses that he cursed for
their wandering.

Pink wondered, after a little, what was the matter with the darned
things, wandering off like that by themselves, and with no possible
excuse that he could see. For some time he was not uneasy; he expected
to overtake them within the next five or ten minutes. They would stop to
feed, surely, or to look back and listen--in a strange country like this
it was against horse-nature that they should wander far away at night
unless they were thirsty and on the scent of water. These horses had
drunk their fill at the little pool below the spring. They should
be feeding now, or they should lie down and sleep, or stand up and
sleep--anything but travel like this, deliberately away from camp.

Pink tried loping, but the ground was too treacherous and his horse too
leg-weary to handle its feet properly in the dark. It stumbled several
times, so he pulled down again to a fast walk. For a few minutes he
did not hear the bell at all, and when he did it was not where he had
expected to hear it, but away off to one side. So he had gained nothing
save in anger and uneasiness.

There was no use going back to camp and rousing the boys, for he was now
a mile or so away; and they would be afoot, since their custom was to
keep but one horse saddled. When he went in to call the next guard he
would be expected to bring that man’s horse back with him, and would
turn his own loose before he went to sleep. Certainly there was nothing
to be gained by rousing the camp.

He did not suspect the trick being played upon him, though he did wonder
if someone was leading the horses away. Still, in that case whoever
did it would surely have sense enough to muffle the bell. Besides, it
sounded exactly like a horse feeding and moving away at random--which,
to those familiar with the sound, can never be mistaken for the tinkle
of an animal traveling steadily to some definite point.

It was an extremely puzzled young man who rode and rode that night in
pursuit of that evasive, nagging, altogether maddening tinkle. Always
just over the next little rise he would hear it, or down in the next
little draw; never close enough for him to discover the trick; never far
enough away for him to give up the chase. The stars he had been watching
in camp swam through the purple immensity above him and slid behind
the skyline. Other stars as brilliant appeared and began their slow,
swimming journey. Pink rode, and stopped to listen, and rode on again
until it seemed to him that he must be dreaming some terribly realistic
nightmare.

He was sitting on his horse on a lava-crusted ridge, straining bloodshot
eyes into the mesa that stretched dimly before him, when dawn came
streaking the sky with blood orange and purple and crimson. The stars
were quenched in that flood of light; and Pink, looking now with clearer
vision, saw that there was no living thing in sight save a coyote
trotting home from his night’s hunting. He turned short around and,
getting his bearings from his memory of certain stars and from the sun
that was peering at him from the top of a bare peak, and from that sense
of direction which becomes second nature to a man who had lived long on
the range, started for camp with his ill news.



CHAPTER XIV. ONE PUT OVER ON THE BUNCH

“Sounds to me,” volunteered the irrepressible Big Medicine after a heavy
silence, “like as if you’d gone to sleep on your hawse, Little One, and
dreamed that there tinkle-tinkle stuff. By cripes, I’d like to see the
bell-hawse that could walk away from ME ‘nless I was asleep an’ dreamin’
about it. Sounds like--”

“Sounds like Navvy work,” Applehead put in, eyeing the surrounding rim
of sun-gilded mesa, where little brown birds fluttered in short, swift
flights and chirped with exasperating cheerfulness.

“If it was anybody, it was Ramon Chavez,” Luck declared with the
positiveness of his firm conviction. “By the tracks here, we’re crowding
up on him. And no man that’s guilty of a crime, Applehead, is going to
ride day after day without wanting to take a look over his shoulder
to see if be’s followed. He’s probably seen us from some of these
ridges--yesterday, most likely. And do you think he wouldn’t know this
bunch as far as he could see us, even without glasses? The chances are
he has them, though. He’d be a fool if he didn’t stake himself to a
pair.”

“Say, by gracious,” Andy observed somewhat irrelevantly, his eyes going
over the group, “this would sure make great picture dope, wouldn’t it?
Why didn’t we bring Pete along, darn it? Us all standing around here,
plumb helpless because we’re afoot--”

“Aw, shut up!” snapped Pink, upon whom the burden of responsibility
lay heavy. “I oughta be hung for laying around the fire here instead of
being out there on guard! I oughta--”

“It ain’t your fault,” Weary championed him warmly. “We all heard the
bell--”

“Yes--and damn it,_I_ heard the bell from then on till daylight!” Pink’s
lips quivered perceptibly with the mortification that burned within him.
“If I’d been on guard--”

“Well, I calc’late you’d a been laid out now with a knife-cut in yuh
som’ers,” Applehead stopped twisting his sunburnt mustache to say
bluntly. “‘S a dang lucky thing fer you, young man, ‘t you WASN’T on
guard, ‘n’ the only thing’t looks queer to me is that you wasn’t potted
las’ night when yuh got out away from here. Musta been only one of ‘em
stayed behind, an’ he had t’ keep out in front uh yuh t’ tinkle that
dang bell. Figgered on wearin’ out yer hoss, I reckon, ‘n’ didn’t
skurcely dare t’ take the risk uh killin’ you off ‘nless they was a
bunch around t’ handle us.” His bright blue eyes with their range squint
went from one to another with a certain speculative pride in the glance.
“‘N’ they shore want t’ bring a crowd along when they tie into this yere
outfit, now I’m tellin’ yuh!”

Lite Avery, who had gone prowling down the draw by himself, came back
to camp, tilting stiff-leggedly along in his high-heeled boots and
betraying, in every step he took, just how handicapped a cowpuncher is
when set afoot upon the range and forced to walk where he has always
been accustomed to ride. He stopped to give Pink’s exhausted horse a
sympathetic pat on the shoulder, and came on, grinning a little with the
comers of his mouth tipped down.

“Here’s what’s left of the hobbles the buckskin wore,” he said, holding
up the cut loops of a figure-eight rope hobble. “Kinda speaks for
itself, don’t it?”

They crowded around to inspect this plain evidence of stealing.
Afterwards they stood hard-eyed and with a flush on their cheek-bones,
considering what was the best and wisest way to meet this emergency. As
to hunting afoot for their horses, the chance of success was almost
too small to be considered at all, Pink’s horse was not fit for further
travel until he had rested. There was one pair of field glasses--and
there were nine irate men to whom inaction was intolerable.

“One thing we can do, if we have to,” Luck said at last, with the
fighting look in his face which moving-picture people had cause to
remember. “We can help ourselves to any horses we run across. Applehead,
how’s the best way to go about it?”

Applehead, thus pushed into leadership, chewed his mustache and eyed the
mesa sourly. “Well, seein’ they’ve set us afoot, I calc’late we’re
jest about entitled to any dang thing we run across that’s ridable,” he
acceded. “‘N’ the way I’d do, would be to git on high groun’ with them
glasses ‘n’ look fer hosses. ‘N’ then head fer ‘em ‘n’ round ‘em up
afoot ‘n’ rope out what we want. They’s enough of us t’ mebby git a
mount apiece, but it shore ain’t goin’ t’ be no snap, now I’m tellin’
ye. ‘N’ if yuh do that,” he added, “yuh want t’ leave a man er two in
camp--‘n’ they want to keep their dang eyes peeled, lemme tell yuh! Ef
we was t’ find ourselves afoot an’ our grub ‘n’ outfit stole--”

“We won’t give them that chance at us.” Luck was searching with his eyes
for the nearest high point that was yet not too far from camp. “I think
I’ll just take Andy up on that pinnacle there, and camp down by that
pile of boulders. The rest of you stay around camp and rest yourselves
while you’ve got the chance. In a couple of hours, Applehead, you and
Lite come up and take our place; then Miguel and Bud, and after that
Weary and Happy. Pink, you go and bed down in the shade somewhere and go
to sleep--and quit worrying over last night. Nobody could have done
any better than you did. It was just one put over on the bunch, and you
happened to be the particular goat, that’s all.

“Now, if one of us waves his hat over his head, all of you but Happy and
Bud and Pink come up with your rifles and your ropes, because we’ll have
some horses sighted. If we wave from side to side, like this, about even
with our belts, you boys want to look out for trouble. So one of you
keep an eye on us all the time we’re up there. We’ll be up outa reach
of any trouble ourselves, if I remember that little pinnacle right.”
 He hung the strap that held the leather case of the glasses over one
shoulder, picked up his rifle and his rope and started off, with Andy
similarly equipped coming close behind him.

The mesa, when they reached the pinnacle and looked down over the wide
expanse of it, glimmered like clear, running water with the heat waves
that rose from the sand. Away to the southward a scattered band of sheep
showed in a mirage that made them look long-legged as camels and half
convinced them both that they were seeing the lost horses, until the
vision changed and shrunk the moving objects to mere dots upon the mesa.

Often before they had watched the fantastic air-pictures of the desert
mirage, and they knew well enough that what they saw might be one mile
away or twenty. But unless the atmospheric conditions happened to be
just right, what was pictured in the air could not be depended upon
to portray truthfully what was reflected. They sat there and saw the
animals suddenly grow clearly defined and very close, and discovered at
last that they were sheep, and that a man was walking beside the flock;
and even while they watched it and wondered if the sheep were really
as close as they seemed, the vision slowly faded into blank, wavery
distance and the mesa lay empty and quivering under the sun.

“Fine chance we’ve got of locating anything,” Andy grumbled, “if it’s
going to be miragy all day. We could run our fool heads off trying to
get up to a bunch that would puff out into nothing. Makes a fellow think
of the stories they tell about old prospectors going crazy trying to
find mirage water-holes. I’m glad we didn’t get hung up at a dry camp,
Luck. Yuh realize what that would be like?”

“Oh, I may have some faint idea,” Luck drawled whimsically. “Look over
there, Andy over toward Albuquerque. Is that a mirage again, or do you
see something moving?”

Andy, having the glasses, swung them slowly to the southeast. After a
minute or two he shook his head and gave the glasses to Luck. “There
was one square look I got, and I’d been willing to swear it was our
saddle-bunch,” he said. “And then they got to wobbling and I couldn’t
make out what they are. They might be field mice, or they might be
giraffes--I’m darned if I know which.”

Luck focussed the glasses, but whatever the objects had been, they were
no longer to be seen. So the two hours passed and they saw Applehead and
Lite come slowly up the hill from camp bearing their rifles and their
ropes and a canteen of fresh water, as the three things they might find
most use for.

These two settled themselves to watch for horses--their own range
horses. When they were relieved they reported nothing save a continued
inclination on the part of the atmosphere to be what Andy called miragy.
So, the day passed, chafing their spirits worse than any amount of
active trouble would have done. Pink slept and brooded by turns, still
blaming himself for the misfortune. The others moped, or took their
turns on the pinnacle to strain their eyes unavailingly into the four
corners of the earth--or as much as they could in those directions.

With the going of the sun Applehead and Lite, sitting out their second
guard on the pinnacle, discussed seriously the desperate idea of going
in the night to the nearest Navajo ranch and helping themselves to what
horses they could find about the place. The biggest obstacle was their
absolute ignorance of where the nearest ranch lay. Not, surely, that
half-day’s ride back towards Albuquerque, where they had seen but one
pony and that a poor specimen of horseflesh. Another obstacle would be
the dogs, which could be quieted only with bullets.

“We might git hold of something to ride,” Applehead stated glumly, “an’
then agin the chances is we wouldn’t git nothin’ more’n a scrap on our
hands. ‘N’ I’m tellin’ yuh right now, Lite, I ain’t hankerin’ fer no
fuss till I git a hoss under me.”

“Me either,” Lite testified succinctly. “Say, is that something coming,
away up that draw the camp’s in? Seems to me I saw something pass that
line of lava, about half a mile over.”

Applehead stood up and peered into the half darkness. In a couple of
minutes he said: “Ye better git down an’ tell the boys t’ be on the
watch, Lite. They can’t see no hat-wavin’ this time uh day. They’s
somethin’ movin’ up to-wards camp, but what er who they be I can’t make
out in the dark. Tell Luck--”

“What’s the matter with us both going?” Lite asked, cupping his hands
around his eyes that he might see better. “It’s getting too dark to do
any good up here--”

“Well, I calc’late mebby yore right,” Applehead admitted, and began to
pick his way down over the rocks. “Ef them’s Injuns, the bigger we stack
up in camp the better. If it’s Ramon ‘n’ his bunch, I want t’ git m’
hands on ‘im.”

He must have turned the matter over pretty thoroughly in his mind,
for when the two reached camp he had his ideas fixed and his plans all
perfected. He told Luck that somebody was working down the draw in the
dark, and that it looked like a Navvy trick; and that they had better
be ready for them, because they weren’t coming just to pass the time of
day--“now I’m tellin’ ye!”

The nerves of the Happy Family were raw enough by now to welcome
anything that promised action; even an Indian fight would not be so much
a disaster as a novel way of breaking the monotony. Applehead, with the
experience gathered in the old days when he was a young fellow with a
freighting outfit and old Geronimo was terrorizing all this country,
sent them back in compact half circle just within the shelter of the
trees and several rods away from their campfire and the waterhole.
There, lying crouched behind their saddles with their rifles across the
seat-sides and with ammunition belts full of cartridges, they waited for
whatever might be coming in the dark.

“It’s horses,” Pink exclaimed under his breath, as faint sounds came
down the draw. “Maybe--”

“Horses--and an Injun laying along the back of every one, most likely,”
 Applehead returned grimly. “An old Navvy trick, that is--don’t let
‘em fool ye, boys! You jest wait, ‘n’ I’ll tell ye ‘when t’ shoot, er
whether t’ shoot at all. They can’t fool ME--now I’m tellin’ yuh!”

After that they were silent, listening strainedly to the growing sounds
of approach. There was the dull, unmistakable click of a hoof striking
against a rock, the softer sound of treading on yielding soil. Then a
blur of dark objects became visible, moving slowly and steadily toward
the camp.

“Aw, it’s just horses,” Happy Jack muttered disgustedly.

Applehead stretched a lean leg in his direction and gave Happy Jack a
kick. “They’re cunnin’,” he hissed warningly. “Don’t yuh be fooled--”

“That’s Johnny in the lead,” Pink whispered excitedly. “I’d know the way
he walks--”

“‘N’ you THOUGHT yuh knowed how he jingled his dang bell,” Applehead
retorted unkindly. “Sh-sh-sh--”

Reminded by the taunt of the clever trick that had been played upon
them the night before, the Happy Family stiffened again into strained,
waiting silence, their rifles aimed straight at the advancing objects.
These, still vague in the first real darkness of early night, moved
steadily in a scattered group behind a leader that was undoubtedly
Johnny of the erstwhile tinkling bell. He circled the campfire just
without its radius of light, so that they could not tell whether an
Indian lay along his back, and beaded straight for the water-hole. The
others followed him, and not one came into the firelight--a detail which
sharpened the suspicions of the men crouched there in the edge of the
bushes, and tingled their nerves with the sense of something sinister in
the very unconcernedness of the animals.

They splashed into the water-hole and drank thirstily and long. They
stood there as though they were luxuriating in the feel of more water
than they could drink, and one horse blew the moisture from his nostrils
with a sound that made Happy Jack jump.

After a few minutes that seemed an hour to those who waited with fingers
crooked upon gun-triggers, the horse that looked vaguely like Johnny
turned away from the water-hole and sneezed while he appeared to be
wondering what to do next. He moved slowly toward the packs that were
thrown down just where they had been taken from the horses, and began
nosing tentatively about.

The others loitered still at the water-hole, save one--the buckskin, by
his lighter look in the dark--that came over to Johnny. The two horses
nosed the packs. A dull sound of clashing metal came to the ears of the
Happy Family.

“Hey! Get outa that grain, doggone your fool hide,” Pink called out
impulsively, crawling over his saddle and catching his foot in the
stirrup leather so that he came near going headlong.

Applehead yelled something, but Pink had recovered his balance and
was running to save the precious horsefeed from waste, and Johnny from
foundering. There might have been two Indiana on every horse in sight,
but Pink was not thinking of that possibility just then.

Johnny whirled guiltily away from the grain bag, licking his lips and
blowing dust from his nostrils. Pink went up to him and slipped a rope
around his neck. “Where’s that bell?” he called out in his soft treble.
“Or do you think we better tie the old son-of-a-gun up and be sure of
him?”

“Aw,” said Happy Jack disgustedly a few minutes later, when the Happy
Family had crawled out of their ambush and were feeling particularly
foolish. “Nex’ time old granny Furrman says Injuns t’ this bunch,
somebody oughta gag him.”

“I notice you waited till he’d gone outa hearing before you said that,”
 Luck told him drily. “We’re going to put out extra guards tonight, just
the same. And I guess you can stand the first shift, Happy, up there on
the ridge--you’re so sure of things!”



CHAPTER XV. “NOW, DANG IT, RIDE!”

Indians are Indians, though they wear the green sweater and overalls of
civilization and set upon their black hair the hat made famous by John
B. Stetson. You may meet them in town and think them tamed to stupidity.
You may travel out upon their reservations and find them shearing sheep
or hoeing corn or plodding along the furrow, plowing their fields; or
you may watch them dancing grotesquely in their festivals, and still
think that civilization is fast erasing the savage instincts from their
natures. You will be partly right--but you will also be partly mistaken.
An Indian is always an Indian, and a Navajo Indian carries a thinner
crust of civilization than do some others; as I am going to illustrate.

As you have suspected, the Happy Family was not following the trail of
Ramon Chavez and his band. Ramon was a good many miles away in another
direction; unwittingly the Happy Family was keeping doggedly upon the
trail of a party of renegade Navajos who had been out on a thieving
expedition among those Mexicans who live upon the Rio Grande bottomland.
Having plenty of reasons for hurrying back to their stronghold, and
having plenty of lawlessness to account for, when they realized that
they were being followed by nine white men who had four packed horses
with them to provide for their needs on a long journey, it was no more
than natural that the Indians should take it for granted that they were
being pursued, and that if they were caught they would be taken back
to town and shut up in that evil place which the white men called their
jail.

When it was known that the nine men who followed had twice recovered the
trail after sheep and cattle had trampled it out, the renegades became
sufficiently alarmed to call upon their tribesmen for help. And that was
perfectly natural and sensible from their point of view.

Now, the Navajos are peaceable enough if you leave them strictly
alone and do not come snooping upon their reservation trying to arrest
somebody. But they don’t like jails, and if you persist in trailing
their lawbreakers you are going to have trouble on your hands. The Happy
Family, with Luck and Applehead, had no intention whatever of molesting
the Navajos; but the Navajos did not know that, and they acted according
to their lights and their ideas of honorable warfare.

Roused to resistance in behalf of their fellows, they straightway
forsook their looms, where they wove rugs for tourists, and the silver
which they fashioned into odd bracelets and rings; and the flocks of
sheep whose wool they used in the rugs and they went upon a quiet,
crafty warpath against these persistent white men.

They stole their horses and started them well on the trail back to
Albuquerque--since it is just as well to keep within the white men’s
law, if it may be done without suffering any great inconvenience. They
would have preferred to keep the horses, but they decided to start them
home and let them go. You could not call that stealing, and no one need
go to jail for it. They failed to realize that these horses might be so
thoroughly broken to camp ways that they would prefer the camp of the
Happy Family to a long trail that held only a memory of discomfort;
they did not know that every night these horses were given grain by the
camp-fire, and that they would remember it when feeding time came again.
So the horses, led by wise old Johnny, swung in a large circle when
their Indian drivers left them, and went back to their men.

Then the Navajos, finding that simple maneuver a failure--and too late
to prevent its failing without risk of being discovered and forced into
an open fight--got together and tried something else; something more
characteristically Indian and therefore more actively hostile. They rode
in haste that night to a point well out upon the fresh trail of their
fleeing tribesmen, where the tracks came out of a barren, lava-encrusted
hollow to softer soil beyond. They summoned their squaws and their
half-grown papooses armed with branches that had stiff twigs and
answered the purpose of brooms. With great care about leaving any
betraying tracks of their own until they were quite ready to leave a
trail, a party was formed to represent the six whom the Happy Family
bad been following. These divided and made off in different directions,
leaving a plain trail behind them to lure the white men into the traps
which would be prepared for them farther on.

When dawn made it possible to do so effectively, the squaws began
to whip out the trail of the six renegade Indians, and the chance
footprints of those who bad gone ahead to leave the false trail for the
white men to follow. Very painstakingly the squaws worked, and the young
ones who could be trusted. Brushing the sand smoothly across a hoofprint
here, and another one there; walking backward, their bodies bent, their
sharp eyes scanning every little depression, every faint trace of the
passing of their tribesmen; brushing, replacing pebbles kicked aside
by a hoof, wiping out completely that trail which the Happy Family bad
followed with such persistence, the squaws did their part, while their
men went on to prepare the trap.

Years ago--yet not so many after all--the mothers of these squaws, and
their grandmothers, had walked backward and stooped with little branches
in their hands to wipe out the trail of their warriors and themselves to
circumvent the cunning of the enemy who pursued. So had they brushed
out the trail when their men had raided the ranchos of the first
daring settlers, and had driven off horses and cattle into the remoter
wilderness.

And these, mind you, were the squaws and bucks whom you might meet
any day on the streets in Albuquerque, padding along the pavement and
staring in at the shop windows, admiring silken gowns with marked-down
price tags, and exclaiming over flaxen-haired dolls and bright ribbon
streamers; squaws and bucks who brought rugs and blankets to sell,
and who would bargain with you in broken English and smile and nod
in friendly fashion if you spoke to them in Spanish or paid without
bickering the price they asked for a rug. You might see them in the
fifteen-cent store, buying cheap candy and staring in mute admiration at
all the gay things piled high on the tables. Remember that, when I tell
you what more they did out here in the wilderness. Remember that and do
not imagine that I am trying to take you back into the untamed days of
the pioneers.


Luck and the Happy Family--so well had the squaws done their
work--passed unsuspectingly over the wiped-out trail, circled at fault
on the far side of the rocky gulch for an hour or so and then found the
false trail just as the Indian decoys had intended that they should
do. And from a farther flat topped ridge a group of Indians with Dutch
hair-cuts and Stetson hats and moccasins (the two hall-marks of two
races) watched them take the false trail, and looked at one another and
grinned sourly.

The false trail forked, showing that the six had separated into two
parties of three riders, each aiming to pass--so the hoofprints would
lead one to believe--around the two ends of a lone hill that sat
squarely down on the mesa like a stone treasure chest dropped there by
the gods when the world was young.

The Happy Family drew rein and eyed the parting of the ways dubiously.

“Wonder what they did that for?” Andy Green grumbled, mopping his red
face irritatedly. “We’ve got trouble enough without having them split up
on us.”

“From the looks, I should say we’re overhauling the bunch,” Luck
hazarded. “They maybe met on the other side of this butte somewhere.
And the tracks were made early this morning, I should say. How about it,
Applehead?”

“Well, they look fresher ‘n what we bin follerin’ before,” Applehead
admitted. “But I don’t like this here move uh theirn, and I’m tellin’
yuh so. The way--”

“I don’t like anything about ‘em,” snapped Luck, standing in his
stirrups as though that extra three inches would let him see over the
hill. “And I don’t like this tagging along behind, either. You take your
boys and follow those tracks to the right, Applehead. I and my bunch
will go this other way. And RIDE! We can’t be so awfully much behind.
If they meet, we’ll meet where they do. If they scatter, we’ll have to
scatter too, I reckon. But get’em is the word, boys!”

“And where,” asked Applehead with heavy irony, while he pulled at his
mustache, “do yuh calc’late we’ll git t’gether agin if we go scatterin’
out?”

Luck looked at him and smiled his smile. “We aren’t any of us
tenderfeet, exactly,” he said calmly. “We’ll meet at the jail when we
bring in our men, if we don’t meet anywhere else this side. But if you
land your men, come back to that camp where we lost the horses. That’s
one, place we KNOW has got grass and water both. If you come and don’t
see any sign of us, wait a day before you start back to town. We’ll do
the same. And leave a note anchored in the crack of that big bowlder by
the spring, telling the news. We’ll do the same if we get there first
and don’t wait for you.” He hesitated, betraying that even in his
eagerness he too dreaded the parting of the ways. “Well, so long,
boys--take care of yourselves.”

“Well, now, I ain’t so dang shore--” Applehead began querulously.

But Luck only grinned and waved his hand as he led the way to the south
on the trail that obviously had skirted the side of the square butte.
The four who went with him looked back and waved non-committal adieu;
and Big Medicine, once he was fairly away, shouted back to them to look
out for Navvies, and then laughed with a mirthless uproar that deceived
no one into thinking he was amused. Pink and Weary raised their voices
sufficiently to tell him where he could go, and settled themselves
dejectedly in their saddles again.

“Well, I ain’t so darned sure, either,” Lite Avery tardily echoed
Applehead’s vague statement, in the dry way he had of speaking detached
sentiments from the mental activities that went on behind his calm,
mask-like face and his quiet eyes. “Something feels snaky around here
today.”

Applehead looked at him with a glimmer of relief in his eyes, but he did
not reply to the foreboding directly. “Boys, git yore rifles where you
kin use ‘em quick,” he advised them grimly. “I kin smell shootin’ along
this dang trail.”

Pink’s dimples showed languidly for a moment, and he looked a question
at Weary. Weary grinned answer and pulled his rifle from the “boot”
 where it was slung under his right leg, and jerked the lever forward
until a cartridge slid with a click up into the chamber; let the hammer
gently down with his thumb and laid the gun across his thighs.

“She’s ready for bear,” he observed placidly.

“Well, now, you boys show some kinda sense,” Applehead told them when
Pink had followed Weary’s example. “Fellers like Happy and Bud, they
shore do show their ign’rance uh this here, dang country, when they up
‘n’ laff at the idee uh trouble--now I’m tellin’ yuh!”

From the ridge which was no more than a high claw of the square butte,
four Indians in greasy, gray Stetsons with flat crowns nodded with grim
satisfaction, and then made baste to point the toes of their moccasins
down to where their unkempt ponies stood waiting. They were too far away
to, see the shifting of rifles to the laps of the riders, or perhaps
they would not have felt quite so satisfied with the steady advance of
the four who had taken the right-hand fork of the trail. They could not
even tell just which four men made up the party. They did not greatly
care, so long as the force of the white men was divided. They galloped
away upon urgent business of their own, elated because their ruse had
worked out as they had planned and hoped.

Applehead took a restrained pull at the canteen, cocked his eyes back at
the butte they had just passed, squinted ahead over the flat waste that
shimmered with heat to the very skyline that was notched and
gashed crudely with more barren hills, and then, screwing the top
absent-mindedly on the canteen-mouth, leaned and peered long at the
hoofprints they were following. Beside him Lite Avery, tall and lean to
the point of being skinny, followed his movements with quiet attention
and himself took to studying more closely the hoofprints in the sandy
soil.

Applehead looked up, gauged the probable direction the trail was taking,
and gave a grunt.

“You kin call me a fool,” he said with a certain challenge in his tone,
“but this yere trail don’t look good to me, somehow. These yere tracks,
they don’t size up the same as they done all the way out here. ‘N’
another thing, they ain’t aimed t’ meet up with the bunch that Luck’s
trailin’. We’re headed straight out away from whar Luck’s headed. ‘N’
any way yuh look at it, we’re headed into country whar there ain’t no
more water’n what the rich man got in hell. What would any uh Ramon’s
outfit want to come away off in here fur? They ain’t nothin’ up in here
to call ‘em.”

“These,” said Lite suddenly, “are different horse-tracks. They’re
smaller, for one thing. The bunch we followed out from the red machine
rode bigger horses.”

“And carried honey on one side and fresh meat on the other; and
one horse was blind in the right eye,” enlarged Pink banteringly,
remembering the story of the Careful Observer in an old schoolreader of
his childhood days.

“Yes, how do you make that out, Lite? I never noticed any difference in
the tracks.”

“The stride is a little shorter today for one thing.” Lite looked around
and grinned at Pink, as though he too remembered the dromedary loaded
with honey and meat. “Ain’t it, Applehead?”

“It shore is,” Applehead testified, his face bent toward the hot ground.
“Ain’t ary one uh the three that travels like they bin a travelin’--‘n’
that shore means something, now I’m tellin’ yuh!” He straightened and
stared worriedly ahead of them again. “Uh course, they might a picked up
fresh horses,” he admitted. “I calc’late they needed ‘em bad enough, if
they ain’t been grainin’ their own on the trip.”

“We didn’t see any signs of their horses being turned loose anywhere
along,” Lite pointed out with a calm confidence that he was right.

Still, they followed the footprints even though they were beginning
to admit with perfect frankness their uneasiness. They were swinging
gradually toward one of those isolated bumps of red rockridges which you
will find scattered at random through certain parts of the southwest.
Perhaps they held some faint hope that what lay on the other side of the
ridge would be more promising, just as we all find ourselves building
air-castles upon what lies just over the horizon which divides present
facts from future possibilities. Besides, these flat-faced ledges
frequently formed a sharp dividing line between barren land and fertile,
and the hoofprints led that way; so it was with a tacit understanding
that they would see what lay beyond the ridge that they rode forward.

Suddenly Applehead, eyeing the rocks speculatively, turned his head
suddenly to look behind and to either side like one who seeks a way of
escape from sudden peril.

“Don’t make no quick moves, boys,” he said, waving one gloved band
nonchalantly toward the flat land from which they were turning, “but
foller my lead ‘n’ angle down into that draw off here. Mebbe it’s deep
enough to put us outa sight, ‘n’ mebbe it ain’t. But we’ll try it.”

“What’s up? What did yuh see?” Pink and Weary spoke in a duet, urging
their horses a little closer.

“You fellers keep back thar ‘n’ don’t act excited!” Applehead eyed them
sternly over his shoulder. “I calc’late we’re just about t’ walk into
a trap.” He bent--on the side away from the ridge--low over his horse’s
shoulder and spoke while he appeared to be scanning the ground. “I seen
gun-shine up among them rocks, er I’m a goat. ‘N’ if it’s Navvies, you
kin bet they got guns as good as ours, and kin shoot mighty nigh as
straight as the best of us--except Lite, uh course, that’s a expert.” He
pointed aimlessly at the ground and edged toward the draw.

“Ef they think we’re jest follerin’ a stray track, they’ll likely
hold off till we git back in the trail ‘n’ start comin’ on agin,” he
explained craftily, still pointing at the ground ahead of him and still
urging his horse to the draw. “Ef they suspicion ‘t we’re shyin’ off
from the ridge, they’ll draw a fine bead ‘n’ cut loose. I knowed it,”
 he added with a lugubrious complacency. “I told ye all day that I could
smell trouble a-comin’; I knowed dang well ‘t we’d stir up a mess uh
fightin’ over here. I never come onto this dang res’vation yit, that I
didn’t have t’ kill off a mess uh Navvies before I got offen it agin.

“Now,” he said when they reached the edge of the sandy depression that
had been gouged deeper by freshets and offered some shelter in case of
attack, “you boys jest fool around here on the aidge ‘n’ foller me down
here like you was jest curiouslike over what I’m locatin’. That’ll
keep them babies up there guessin’ till we’re all outa sight MEBBY!” He
pulled down the corners of his mouth till his mustache-ends dropped a
full inch, and lifted himself off his horse with a bored deliberation
that was masterly in its convincingness. He stood looking at the ground
for a moment and then began to descend leisurely into the draw, leading
his horse behind him.

“You go next, Pink,” Weary said shortly, and with his horse began
edging him closer to the bank until Pink, unless he made some unwise
demonstration of unwillingness, was almost forced to ride down the steep
little slope.

“Don’t look towards the ridge, boys,” Applehead warned from below.
“Weary, you come on down here next. Lite kin might’ nigh shoot the dang
triggers offen their guns ‘fore they kin pull, if they go t’ work ‘n’
start anything.”

So Weary, leaving Lite up there grinning sheepishly over the compliment,
rode down because he was told to do so by the man in command. “You seem
to forget that Lite’s got a wife on his hands,” he reproved as he went.

“Lite’s a-comin’ right now,” Applehead retorted, peering at the ridge
a couple of hundred yards distant. “Git back down the draw ‘s fur’s
yuh kin b’fore yuh take out into the open agin. I’ll wait a minute ‘n’
see--”

“Ping-NG-NG!” a bullet, striking a rock on the edge of the draw fifty
feet short of the mark, glanced and went humming over the hot waste.

“Well, now, that shows they got a lookout up high, ‘t seen me watchin’
that way. But it’s hard t’ git the range shootin’ down, like that,”
 Applehead remarked, pulling his horse behind a higher part of the bank.

Close beside him Lite’s rifle spoke, its little steelshod message flying
straight as a homing honeybee for the spitting flash he had glimpsed up
there among the rocks. Whether he did any damage or not, a dozen rifles
answered venomously and flicked up tiny spurts of sand in the close
neighborhood of the four.

“If they keep on trying,” Lite commented drily, “they might make a
killing, soon as they learn how to shoot straight.”

“‘S jest like them dang Injuns!” Applehead grumbled, shooing the three
before him down the draw. “Four t’ our one--it takes jest about that big
a majority ‘fore they feel comftable about buildin’ up a fight. Lead
yore bosses down till we’re outa easy shootin’ distance, boys, ‘n’ then
we’ll head out fer where Luck ought t’ be. If they fixed a trap fer us,
they’ve fixed another fer him, chances is, ‘n! the sooner us fellers git
t’gether the better show we’ll all of us have. You kin see, the way they
worked it to split the bunch, that they ain’t so dang anxious t’ tie
into us when we’re t’gether--‘n’ that’s why we can’t git t’ Luck a dang
bit too soon, now I’m tellin’ yuh!”

Weary and Pink were finding things to say, also, but old Applehead went
on with his monologue just as though they were listening. Lite showed
a disposition to stop and take issue with the shooters who kept up a
spiteful firing from the ridge. But Applehead stopped him as he was
leveling his rifle.

“If yuh shoot,” he pointed out, “they’ll know jest where we air and how
fast we’re gittin’ outa here. If yuh don’t, unless their lookout kin
see us movin’ out, they got t’ do a heap uh guessin’ in the next few
minutes. They only got one chancet in three uh guessin’ right, ‘cause
we might be camped in one spot, ‘n’ then agin we might be crawlin’ up
closer, fer all they kin tell.”

If they were guessing, they must have guessed right; for presently the
four heard faint yells from behind them, and Applehead crawled up the
bank to where he could look out across the level. What he saw made him
slide hastily to the bottom again.

“They’ve clumb down and straddled their ponies,” he announced grimly.
“An’ about a dozen is comin’ down this way, keepin’ under cover all they
kin. I calc’late mebby we better crawl our bosses ‘n’ do some ridin’
ourselves, boys.” And he added grimly, “They ain’t in good shootin’
distance yit, ‘n’ they dassent show theirselves neither. We’ll keep in
this draw long as we kin. They’re bound t’ come careful till they git us
located.”

The footing was none the best, but the horses they rode had been running
over untracked mesa-land since they were bandy-legged colts. They loped
along easily, picking automatically the safest places whereon to set
their feet, and leaving their riders free to attend to other important
matters which proved their true value as horses that knew their
business.

Soon the draw shallowed until they found themselves out in the open,
with the square-topped mountain five miles or so ahead and a little to
the left; a high, untraversable sandstone ledge to their right, and what
looked like plain sailing straight ahead past the mountain.

Applehead twisted his body in the saddle and gave a grunt. “Throw some
lead back at them hombres, Lite,” he snapped. “And make a killin’ if yuh
kin. It’ll make ‘em mad, but it’ll hold ‘em back fer a spell.”

Lite, the crack rifle-shot of Luck’s company and the man who had taught
Jean Douglas to shoot with such wonderful precision, wheeled his horse
short around and pulled him to a stand, lined up his rifle sights and
crooked his finger on the trigger. And away back there among the Indians
a pony reared, and then pitched forward.

“I sure do bate to shoot down a horse,” Lite explained shamefacedly,
“but I never did kill a man--”

“We-ell, I calc’late mebby yuh will, ‘fore you’re let out from this yere
meetin’,” Applehead prophesied drily. “Now, dang it, RIDE!”


CHAPTER XVI. ANNIE-MANY-PONIES WAITS

In the magic light of many unnamable soft shades which the sun leaves
in New Mexico as a love token for his dark mistress night,
Annie-Many-Ponies sat with her back against a high, flat rock at the
place where Ramon had said she must wait for him, and stared somber-eyed
at what she could see of the new land that bad held her future behind
the Sandias; waiting for Ramon; and she wondered if Wagalexa Conka had
come home from his picture-making in Bear Canon and was angry because
she had gone; and shrank from the thought, and tried to picture what
life with Ramon would be like, and whether his love would last beyond
the wide ring of shiny gold that was to make her a wife.

At her feet the little black dog lay licking his sore paws that had
padded patiently after her all day. Beside the rock the black horse
stood nibbling at some weeds awkwardly, because of the Spanish bit in
his mouth. The horse was hungry, and the little black dog was hungry;
Annie-Many-Ponies was hungry also, but she did not feel her, hunger so
much, because of the heaviness that was in her heart.

When Ramon came he would bring food, or he would tell her where she
might buy. The horse, too, would be fed--when Ramon came. And he would
take her to the priest who was his friend, and together they would kneel
before the priest. But first, if Ramon would wait, she wanted to confess
her sins, so that she need not go into the new life bearing the sins of
the old. The priest could pray away the ache that was in her heart; and
then, with her heart light as air, she would be married with Ramon.
It was long since she had confessed--not since the priest came to the
agency when she was there, before she ran away to work in pictures for
Wagalexa Conka.

Before her the glow deepened and darkened. A rabbit hopped out of a
thick clump of stunted bushes, sniffed the air that blew the wrong way
to warn him, and began feeding. Shunka Chistala gathered his soft paws
under him, scratched softly for a firm foothold in the ground, and when
the rabbit, his back turned and the evening wind blowing full in his
face, fed unsuspectingly upon some young bark that he liked, the little
black dog launched himself suddenly across the space that divided them.
There was a squeak and a thin, whimpering crying--and the little black
dog, at least, was sure of his supper.

Annie-Many-Ponies, roused from her brooding, shivered a little when the
rabbit cried. She started forward to save it--she who had taught the
little black dog to hunt gophers and prairie-dogs!--and when she was
too late she scolded the dog in the language of the Sioux. She tore the
rabbit away from him while he eyed her reproachfully; but when she saw
that it was quite dead, she flung the warm body back to him and went and
sat down again with her back to the rock.

A train whistled for the little station of Bernalillo, and soon she saw
its headlight paint the squat houses that had before been hidden behind
the creeping dusk. Ramon was late in coming and for one breath she
caught herself hoping that he would not come at all. But immediately she
remembered the love words he had taught her, and smiled her inscrutable
little smile that had now a tinge of sadness. Perhaps, she thought
wishfully, Ramon had come on the train from Albuquerque. Perhaps he had
a horse in the town, and would ride out and meet her here where he had
told her to wait.

The train shrieked and painted swiftly hill and embankment and little
adobe huts and a corral full of huddled sheep, and went churning away to
the northeast. Annie-Many-Ponies followed its course absently with her
eyes until the last winking light from its windows and the last wisp of
smoke was hidden behind hills and trees. The little black dog finished
the rabbit, nosed its tracks back to where it had hopped out of the
brush, and came back and curled up at the feet of his mistress, licking
his lips and again his travel-sore paws. In a moment, feeling in his
dumb way her loneliness, perhaps, he reached up and laid his pink tongue
caressingly upon her brown hand.

Dark came softly and with it a noisy wind that whistled and murmured and
at last, growing more boisterous as the night deepened, whooped over her
bead and tossed wildly the branches of a clump of trees that grew
near. Annie-Many-Ponies listened to the wind and thought it a brother,
perhaps, of the night wind that came to the Dakota prairies and caroused
there until dawn bade it be still. Too red the blood of her people ran
in her veins for her to be afraid of the night, even though she peopled
it with dim shapes of her fancy.

After a long while the wind grew chill. Annie-Many-Ponies shivered, and
then rose and went to the horse and, reaching into the bundle which was
still bound to the saddle, she worked a plaid shawl loose from the other
things and pulled it out and wrapped it close around her and pulled it
over her head like a cowl. Then she went back and sat down against the
bowlder, waiting, with the sublime patience of her kind, for Ramon.

Until the wind hushed, listening for the dawn, she sat there and waited.
At her feet the little black dog slept with his nose folded between his
front paws over which he whimpered sometimes in his dreams. At every
little sound all through--the night Annie-Many-Ponies had listened,
thinking that at last here came Ramon to take her to the priest, but for
the first time since she had stolen out on the mesa to meet him, Ramon
did not keep the tryst--and this was to be their marriage meeting!
Annie-Many-Ponies grew very still and voiceless in her heart, as if her
very soul waited. She did not even speculate upon what the future would
be like if Ramon never came. She was waiting.

Then, just before the sky lightened, someone stepped cautiously along
a little path that led through rocks and bushes back into the hills.
Annie-Many Ponies turned her face that way and listened. But the steps
were not the steps of Ramon; Annie-Many-Ponies had too much of the
Indian keenness to be fooled by the hasty footsteps of this man. And
since it was not Ramon--her slim fingers closed upon the keen-edged
knife she carried always in its sinew-sewed buckskin sheath near her
heart.

The little black dog lifted his head suddenly and growled, and the
footsteps came to a sudden stop quite near the rock.

“It is you?” asked a cautious voice with the unmistakable Mexican tone
and soft, slurring accent, “speak me what yoh name.”

“Ramon comes?” Annie asked him quietly, and the footsteps came swiftly
nearer until his form was silhouetted by the rock.

“Sh-sh--yoh not spik dat name,” he whispered. “Luis Rojas me. I come for
breeng yoh. No can come, yoh man. No spik name--som’bodys maybe hears.”

Annie-Many-Ponies rose and stood peering at him through the dark.
“What’s wrong?” she asked abruptly, borrowing the curt phrase from Luck
Lindsay. “Why I not speak name? Why--some body--?” she laid ironical
stress upon the word--“not come? What business you got, Luis Rojas?”

“No--don’ spik names, me!” The figure was seen to throw out an imploring
hand. “Moch troubles, yoh bet! Yoh come now--somebodys she wait in
dam-hurry!”

Annie-Many-Ponies, with her fingers still closed upon the bone handle of
her sharp-edged knife, thought swiftly. Wariness had been born into her
blood--therefore she could understand and meet halfway the wariness of
another. Perhaps Wagalexa Conka had suspected that she was going
with Ramon; Wagalexa Conka was very keen, and his anger blazed hot as
pitch-pine flame. Perhaps Ramon feared Wagalexa Conka--as she, too,
feared him. She was not afraid--she would go to Ramon.

She stepped away from the rock and took the black horse by its dropped
bridle-reins and followed Luis Rojas up the dim path that wound through
trees and rocks until it dropped into a little ravine that was chocked
with brush, so that Annie-Many-Ponies had to put the stiff branches
aside with her hand lest they scratch her face as she passed.

Luis went swiftly along the path, as though his haste was great; but he
went stealthily as well, and she knew that he had some unknown cause for
secrecy. She wondered a little at this. Had Wagalexa Conka discovered
where she and Ramon were to meet? But how could he discover that which
had been spoken but once, and then in the quiet loneliness of that place
far back on the mesa? Wagalexa Conka bad not been within three miles of
that place, as Annie-Many-Ponies knew well. How then did he know? For he
must have followed, since Ramon dared not come to the place he had named
for their meeting.

Dawn came while they were still following the little, brush-choked
ravine with its faint pathway up the middle of it, made by cattle or
sheep or goats, perhaps all three. Luis hurried along, stopping now and
then and holding up a hand for silence so that he might listen. Fast as
he went, Annie-Many-Ponies kept within two long steps of his heels, her
plaid shawl drawn smoothly over her black head and folded together under
her chin. Her mouth was set in a straight line, and her chin had the
square firmness of the Indian. Luis, looking back at her curiously,
could not even guess at her thoughts, but he thought her too calm and
cold for his effervescent nature--though he would have liked to tell her
that she was beautiful. He did not, because he was afraid of Ramon.

“Poco tiempo, come to his camp, Ramon,” he said when the sun was peering
over the high shoulder of a ridge; and he spoke in a hushed tone, as if
he feared that someone might overhear him.

“You ‘fraid Wagalexa Conka, he come?” Annie-Many-Ponies asked abruptly,
looking at him full.

Luis did not understand her, so he lifted his shoulders in the Mexican
gesture which may mean much or nothing. “Quien sabe?” he muttered
vaguely and went on. Annie-Many-Ponies did not know what he meant, but
she guessed that he did not want to be questioned upon the subject;
so she readjusted the shawl that had slipped from her head and went on
silently, two long steps behind him.

In a little he turned from the ravine, which was becoming more open and
not quite so deep. They scrambled over boulders which the horse must
negotiate carefully to avoid a broken leg, and then they were in another
little ravine, walled round with rocks and high, brushy slopes. Luis
went a little way, stopped beside a huge, jutting boulder and gave a
little exclamation of dismay.

“No more here, Ramon,” he said, staring down at the faintly smoking
embers of a little fire. “She’s go som’ place, I don’t know, me.”

The slim right hand of Annie-Many-Ponies went instinctively to her bosom
and to what lay hidden there. But she waited, looking from the little
campfire that was now almost dead, to Luis whom she suspected of
treachery. Luis glanced up at her apologetically, caught something of
menace in that unwinking, glittering stare, and began hastily searching
here and there for some sign that would enlighten him further.

“She’s here when I go, Ramon,” he explained deprecatingly. “I don’
un’stan’, me. She’s tell me go breeng yoh thees place. She’s say I mus’
huree w’ile dark she’s las’. I’m sure s’prised, me!” Luis was a slender
young man with a thin, patrician face that had certain picture values
for Luck, but which greatly belied his lawless nature. Until he stood
by the rock where she had waited for Ramon, Annie-Many-Ponies had
never spoken to him. She did not know him, therefore she did not trust
him--and she looked her distrust.

Luis turned from her after another hasty glance, and began searching
for some sign of Ramon. Presently, in a tiny cleft near the top of the
boulder, his black eyes spied a folded paper--two folded papers, as he
discovered when he reached up eagerly and pulled them out.

“She’s write letter, Ramon,” he cried with a certain furtive excitement.
“Thees for yoh.” And he smiled while he gave her a folded note with
“Ana” scrawled hastily across the face of it.

Annie-Many-Ponies extended her left hand for it, and backed the few
steps away from him which would insure her safety against a sudden
attack, before she opened the paper and read:

“Querida mia, you go with Luis. Hes all rite you trus him. He bring you
where i am. i lov you. Ramon”

She read it twice and placed the note in her bosom--next the knife--and
looked at Luis, the glitter gone from her eyes. She smiled a little.
“I awful hongry,” she said in her soft voice, and it was the second
sentence she had spoken since they left the rock where she had waited.

Luis smiled back, relief showing in the uplift of his lips and the
lightening of his eyes. “She’s cache grob, Ramon,” he said. “She’s go
som’ place and we go also. She’s wait for us. Dam-long way--tree days, I
theenk me.”

“You find that grub,” said Annie-Many-Ponies, letting her hand drop away
from the knife. “I awful hongry. We eat, then we go.”

“No--no go till dark comes! We walk in night--so somebody don’ see!”

Annie-Many-Ponies looked at him sharply, saw that he was very much in
earnest, and turned away to gather some dry twigs for the fire. Up the
canon a horse whinnied inquiringly, and Luis, hastening furtively that
way, found the horse he had ridden into this place with Ramon. With
the problem of finding provender for the two animals, he had enough to
occupy him until Annie-Many-Ponies, from the coarse food he brought her,
cooked a crude breakfast.

Truly, this was not what she had dreamed the morning would be like--she
who had been worried over the question of whether Ramon would let her
confess to the priest before they were married! Here was no priest and
no Ramon, even; but a keen-eyed young Mexican whom she scarcely knew at
all; and a mysterious hiding-out in closed-in canons until dark before
they might follow Ramon who loved her. Annie-Many-Ponies did not
understand why all this stealthiness should be necessary, for she knew
that proof of her honorable marriage would end Luck’s pursuit--supposing
he did pursue--even though his anger might live always for her. She did
not understand; and when an Indian confronts a situation which puzzles
him, you may be very sure that same Indian is going to be very, very
cautious. Annie-Many-Ponies was Indian to the middle of her bone.



CHAPTER XVII. APPLEHEAD SHOWS THE STUFF HE IS MADE OF

Lite Avery, turning to look back as they galloped up a long slope so
gradual in its rise that it seemed almost level, counted just fourteen
Indians spreading out fanwise in pursuit. He turned to Applehead with
the quiet deference in his manner that had won the old man’s firm
friendship.

“What’s this new move signify, boss?” he asked, tilting his head
backward. “What they spreading out like that for, when they’re outa easy
rifle range?”

Applehead looked behind him, studied the new formation of their enemy,
and scowled in puzzlement. He looked ahead, where he knew the land lay
practically level before them, all sand and rabbit weed, with a little
grass here and there; to the left, where the square butte stood up
bold-faced and grim; to the right where a ragged sandstone ledge blocked
the way.

“‘S some dang new trap uh theirn,” he decided, his voice signifying
disgust for such methods. “Take an Injun ‘n’ he don’t calc’late he’s
fightin’ ‘nless he’s figgurin’ on gittin’ yuh cornered. Mebby they got
some more cached ahead som’ers. Keep yer eye peeled, boys, ‘n’ shoot at
any dang thing yuh see that yuh ain’t dead sure ‘s a rabbit weed. Don’t
go bankin’ on rocks bein’ harmless--‘cause every dang one’s liable to
have an Injun layin’ on his belly behind it. Must be another bunch ahead
som’ers, ‘cause I know it’s smooth goin’ fer five miles yit. After that
they’s a drop down into a rocky kinda pocket that’s hard t’ git out
of except the way yuh go in, account of there bein’ one uh them dang
rim-rocks runnin’ clean ‘round it. Some calls it the Devil’s Fryin’-pan.
No water ner grass ner nothin’ else ‘ceptin’ snakes. ‘N’ Navvies kinda
ownin’ rattlers as bein’ their breed uh cats, they don’t kill ‘em off,
so they’s a heap ‘n’ plenty of ‘em in that basin.

“But I ain’t aimin’ t’ git caught down in there, now I’m tellin’ yuh! I
aim t’ keep along clost t’ that there butte, ‘n’ out on the other side
where we kin pick up luck’s trail. I shore would do some rarin’ around
if that boy rode off into a mess uh trouble, ‘n’ I’m tellin’ yuh
straight!”

“He’s got some good boy at his back,” Weary reminded him, loyal to his
Flying U comrade.

“You’re dang right he has! I ain’t sayin’ he ain’t, am I? Throw some
more lead back at them skunks behind us, will ye, Lite? ‘N’ the rest
of yuh save yore shells fer close-ups!” He grinned a little at the
incongruity of a motion-picture phrase in such a situation as this. “‘N’
don’t be so dang skeered uh hurtin’ somebody!” he adjured Lite, drawing
rein a little so as not to forge ahead of the other. “You’ll have to
kill off a few anyway ‘fore you’re through with ‘em.”

Lite aimed at the man riding in the center of the half-circle, and the
bullet he sent that way created excitement of some sort; but whether the
Indian was badly hit, or only missed by a narrow margin, the four did
not wait to discover. They had held their horses down to a pace that
merely kept them well ahead of the Indians; and though the horses were
sweating, they were holding their own easily enough--with a reserve fund
of speed if their riders needed to call upon it.

Applehead, glancing often behind him, scowled over the puzzle of that
fanlike formation of riders. They would hardly begin so soon to herd him
and his men into that evil little rock basin with the sinister name, and
there was no other reason he could think of which would justify those
tactics, unless another party waited ahead of them. He squinted ahead
uneasily, but the mesa lay parched and empty under the sky--

And then, peering straight into the glare of the sun, he saw, down the
slope which they had climbed without realizing that it would have a
crest, it was so low--Applehead saw the answer to the puzzle; saw and
gave his funny little grunt of astonishment and dismay. Straight as
a chalk line from the sandstone ledge on their right to the
straight-walled butte on their left stretched that boundary line between
the untamed wilderness and the tamed--a barbed wire fence; a four-wire
fence at that, with stout cedar posts whereon the wire was stretched
taut and true. From the look of the posts, it was not new--four or five
years old, perhaps; not six years, certainly, for Applehead had ridden
this way six years before and there had been not so much as a post-hole
to herald the harnessing of the mesa.

Here, then, was the explanation of the fanlike spreading out of the line
of Indians. They knew that the white men would be trapped by the fence,
and they were cutting off the retreat--and keeping out of the hottest
danger-zone of the white men’s guns. Even while the four were grasping
the full significance of the trap that they had ridden into unaware, the
Indians topped the ridge behind them, yip-yip-yipping gleefully their
coyotelike yells of triumph. The sound so stirred the slow wrath of Lite
Avery that, without waiting for the word from Applehead he twisted
half around in his saddle, glanced at the nearest Indian along his
rifle-sights, bent his forefinger with swift deliberation upon the
trigger, and emptied the saddle of one yelling renegade, who made haste
to crawl behind a clump of rabbit weed.

“They howl like a mess uh coyotes,” Lite observed in justification of
the shot, “and I’m getting sick of hearing ‘em.”

“Mama!” Weary, exclaimed annoyedly, “that darn fence is on an up-slope,
so it’s going to be next to impossible to jump it! I guess here’s where
we do about an eight-hundred-foot scene of Indian Warfare, or Fighting
For Their Lives. How yuh feel, Cadwalloper?”

“Me?” Pink’s eyes were purple with sheer, fighting rage. “I feel like
cleaning out that bunch back there. They’ll have something to howl about
when I get through!”

“Stay back uh me, boys!” Applehead’s voice had a masterful sharpness
that made the three tighten reins involuntarily. “You foller me and
don’t crowd up on me, neither. Send back a shot or two if them Injuns
gits too ambitious.”

The three fell in behind him without cavil or question. He was in charge
of the outfit, and that settled it. Pink, released from irksome inaction
by the permission to shoot, turned and fired back at the first Indian
his sights rested upon. He saw a spurt of sand ten jumps in advance of
his target, and he swore and fired again without waiting to steady his
aim. The sorrel pack-horse, loping along fifty yards or so behind with
a rhythmic clump-clump of frying-pan against coffee-pot at every leap he
took, swerved sharply, shook his head as though a bee had stung him,
and came on with a few stiff-legged “crow hops” to register his violent
objection to being shot through the ear.

Pink, with an increased respect for the shooting skill of Lite Avery,
glanced guiltily at the others to see if they had observed where his
second bullet hit. But the others were eyeing Applehead uneasily and
paid no attention to Pink or his attempts to hit an Indian on the run.
And presently Pink forgot it also while he watched Applehead, who was
apparently determined to commit suicide in a violently original form.

“You fellers keep behind, now---and hold the Injuns back fer a minute
er two,” Applehead yelled while he set himself squarely in the saddle,
gathered up his reins as though he were about to “top a bronk” and
jabbed the spurs with a sudden savageness into Johnny’s flanks.

“GIT outa here!” he yelled, and Johnny with an astonished lunge, “got.”

Straight toward the fence they raced, Johnny with his ears laid back
tight against his skull and his nose pointed straight out before him,
with old Applehead leaning forward and yelling to Johnny with a cracked
hoarseness that alone betrayed how far youth was behind him.

They thought at first that he meant to jump the fence, and they knew he
could not make it. When they saw that he meant to ride through it, Weary
and Pink groaned involuntarily at the certainty of a fall and sickening
entanglement in the wires. Only Lite, cool as though he were rounding up
milch cows, rode half-turned in the saddle and sent shot after shot
back at the line of Navajos, with such swift precision that the Indians
swerved and fell back a little, leaving another pony wallowing in the
sand and taking with them one fellow who limped until he had climbed up
behind one who waited for him.

“Go it, Johnny--dang yore measly hide, go to it! We’ll show ‘m we ain’t
so old ‘n’ tender we cain’t turn a trick t’bug their dang eyes out?
Bust into it! WE’LL show ‘em!--” And Applehead shrilled a raucous range
“HOO-EEE-EE!” as Johnny lunged against the taut wires.

It was a long chance he took--a “dang long chance” as Applehead admitted
afterward. But, as he had hoped, it happened that Johnny’s stride
brought him with a forward leap against the wires, so that the full
impact of his eleven-hundred pounds plus the momentum of his speed, plus
the weight of Applehead and the saddle, hit the wires fair and full.
They popped like cut wires on a bale of hay--and it was lucky that they
were tight strung so that there was no slack to take some of the force
away. It was not luck, but plain shrewdness on Applehead’s part, that
Johnny came straight on, so that there was no tearing see-saw of the
strands as they broke. Two inch-long cuts on his chest and a deeper,
longer one on his foreleg was the price Johnny paid, and that was all.
The lower wire he never touched, since it was a leap that landed him
against the fence. He lurched and recovered himself, and went on at a
slower gallop while Applehead beckoned the three to come on.

“I kain’t say I’d want to git in the habit uh bustin’ fences that way,”
 he grinned over his shoulder as the three jumped through the gap he had
made and forged up to him. “But I calc’late if they’s another one Johnny
n’ me kin make it, mebby.”

“Well, I was brought up in a barbed wire country,” Pink exploded, “but
I’ll be darned if I ever saw a stunt like that pulled off before!”

“We-ell, I hed a bronk go hog-wild ‘n’ pop three wires on a fence one
time,” Applehead explained modestly, “‘n’ he didn’t cut hisself a-tall,
skurcely. It’s all accordin’ t’ how yuh hit it, I reckon. Anyway, I
calc’lated it was wuth tryin’, ‘cause we shore woulda had our hands
full if we’d a stopped at that fence, now I’m tellin’ yuh! ‘N’ another
thing,” he added bodefully, “I figgured we’d better be gittin’ to Luck
In’ his bunch. I calc’late they need us, mebby.”

No one made any reply to that statement, but even Lite, who never had
been inclined to laugh at him, looked at Applehead with a new respect.
The Indians, having scurried back out of range of Lite’s uncomfortably
close shooting, yelled a bedlam of yips and howls and came on again in a
closer group than before, shooting as they rode--at the four men first,
and then at the hindmost pack-horse that gave a hop over the wire
left across the gap, and came galloping heavily after the others. They
succeeded in burying a bullet in the packed bedding, but that was all.

Three hundred yards or so in the lead, the four raced down the long,
gentle slope. A mile or two, perhaps three, they could run before their
horses gave out. But then, when they could run no longer, they would
have to stop and fight; and the question that harped continually through
their minds was: Could they run until they reached Luck and the boys
with him? Could they? They did not even know where Luck was, or
what particular angle of direction would carry them to him quickest.
Applehead and Johnny were pointing the way, keeping a length ahead of
the others. But even old Applehead was riding, as he would have put it,
“by-guess and by-gosh” until they crossed a shallow draw, labored up the
hill beyond, and heard, straight away before them, the faint pop-pop of
rifle shots. Old Applehead turned and sent them a blazing blue glance
over his shoulders.

“RIDE, dang ye!” he barked. “They’ve got Luck cornered in the Devil’s
Fryin’-pan!”



CHAPTER XVIII. IN THE DEVIL’S FRYING-PAN

Luck, riding confidently on the trail of the three horsemen who had
taken to the south along the front of the square butte, believed that
the turn of the trail around the southern end meant simply that the
three who came this way would meet their companions on the other side,
and that he, following after, would be certain to meet Applehead. He had
hopes of the speedy capture of Ramon Chavez and his men, and the
hope spread to the four who went with him, so that their spirits rose
considerably. Big Medicine and Happy Jack even found a good deal of
amusement in their exchange of opinions regarding old granny Applehead
and his constant fear of the Navvies. Now and then the Native Son joined
in the laugh, though his attention was chiefly given to the discussion
Andy and Luck were having about Ramon and his manner of using Luck’s
work as an opportunity to rob the bank, and the probable effect it would
have on the general standing of Luck and his company unless they managed
to land the thieves in jail. Being half Mexican himself, the Native Son
was sensitive upon the subject of Ramon, and almost as anxious to see
Ramon in jail as was Luck himself.

So while Applehead and his boys were scenting danger and then finding
themselves in the middle of it, Luck and his party rode along absorbed
in themselves and in the ultimate goal, which was Ramon. They saw
nothing queer about the trail they followed, and they saw no evidence
of treachery anywhere. They rode with the rifles slung under their
right thighs and their six-shooters at their hips, and their eyes roving
casually over their immediate surroundings while their minds roved
elsewhere--not because they were growing careless, but because there was
absolutely nothing to rouse their suspicions, now that they no longer
bad Applehead along to preach danger and keep them keyed up to expect
it.

They followed the tracks through a scattered grove of stunted pinons,
circled at fault for a few minutes in the rocks beyond, and then picked
up the trail. They were then in the narrow neck which was called
the handle of the Devil’s Frying-pan--and they would have ridden
unsuspectingly into the very Pan itself, had not the Native Son’s quick
eyes caught a movement on the rim-rock across the bare, rock-bottomed
basin. He spoke to luck about it, and luck levelled his field glasses
and glimpsed a skulking form up there.

“Hunt yourselves some shelter, boys!” he cried in the sharp tone of
warning. “We’ll make sure who’s ahead before we go any farther.”

They ducked behind rocks or trees and piled off their horses in a burry.
And a scattered fusillade from the rim-rock ahead of them proved how
urgent was their need.

For the first fifteen minutes or so they thought that they were fighting
Ramon and his party, and their keenest emotions were built largely of
resentment, which showed in the booming voice of Big Medicine when he
said grimly:

“Well, I’d jest about as soon pack Ramon in dead, as lead ‘im in alive
‘n’ kickin’, by cripes! Which is him, d’yuh reckon?”

From behind a rock shield luck was studying the ledge. “They’re
Injuns--or there are Injuns in the bunch, at least,” he told them after
a moment. “See that sharp point sticking up straight ahead? I saw an
Injun peeking around the edge--to the south. You watch for him, Andy,
and let him have it where he lives next time be sticks his head out.” He
swung the glasses slowly, taking every inch of the rim in his field of
vision. As he moved them be named the man he wanted to watch each place
where he had reason to suspect that someone was hiding.

The disheartening part of it was that he needed about a dozen more
men than he had; for the rock wall which was the rim of the Frying-pan
seemed alive with shooters who waited only for a fair target. Then the
Native Son, crouched down between a rock and a clump of brush, turned
his head to see what his horse was looking at, back whence they had
come.

“Look behind you, Luck,” he advised with more calmness than one would
expect of a man in his straits. “They’re back in the pines, too.”

“Fight ‘em off--and take care that your backs don’t show to those babies
on the rim-rocks,” he ordered instantly, thrusting his glasses into
their case and snatching his rifle from its boot on the saddle. “They
won’t tackle coming across that bare hollow, even if they can get down
into it without breaking their necks. Happy, lead your horse in
here between these rocks where mine is. Bud, see if you can get the
pack-horses over there outa sight among those bushes and rocks. We’ll
hold ‘em off while you fix the horses--can’t let ourselves be set afoot
out here!”

“I-should-say--NOT!” Andy Green punctuated the sentence with a shot or
two. “Say, I wish they’d quit sneaking around in those trees that way,
so a fellow could see where to shoot!”

A half hour dragged by. From the rim-rock came occasional shots,
to which the besieged could not afford to reply, they were so fully
occupied with holding back those who skulked among the trees. The
horses, fancying perhaps that this was a motion-picture scene, dozed
behind their rock-and-brush shelters and switched apathetically at
buzzing flies and whining bullets alike. Their masters crouched behind
their bowlders and watched catlike for some open demonstration, and
fired when they had the slightest reason to believe that they would hit
something besides scenery.

“Miguel must have upset their plans a little,” Luck deduced after a
lull. “They set the stage for us down in that hollow, I guess. You can
see what we’d have been up against if we had ridden ten rods farther,
out away from these rocks and bushes.”

“Aw, they wouldn’t dast kill a bunch uh white men!” Happy Jack
protested, perhaps for his own comfort.

“You think they wouldn’t? Luck’s voice was surcharged with sarcasm. What
do you think they’re trying to do, then?”

“Aw, the gov’ment wouldn’t STAND fer no such actions!”

“Well, by cripes, I hain’t aimin’ to give the gov’ment no job uh
setting on my remains, investigatin’ why I was killed off!” Big Medicine
asserted, and took a shot at a distant grimy Stetson to prove he meant
what he said.

“Say, they’d have had a SNAP if we’d gone on, and let these fellows back
here in the trees close up behind us!” Andy Green exclaimed suddenly,
with a vividness of gesture that made Happy Jack try to swallow his
Adam’s apple. “By gracious, it would have been a regular rabbit-drive
business. They could set in the shade and pick us off just as they
darned pleased.”

“Aw, is that there the cheerfullest thing you can think of to say?”
 Happy Jack was sweating, with something more than desert heat.

“Why, no. The cheerfullest thing I can think of right now is that
Mig, here, don’t ride with his eyes shut.” He cast a hasty glance of
gratitude toward the Native Son, who flushed under the smooth brown of
his cheeks while he fired at a moving bush a hundred yards back in the
grove.

For another half hour nothing was gained or lost. The Indians fired
desultorily, spatting bit& of lead here and there among the rocks
but hitting nobody. The Happy Family took a shot at every symptom of
movement in the grove, and toward the rim-rock they sent a bullet
now and then, just to assure the watchers up there that they were not
forgotten, and as a hint that caution spelled safety.

For themselves, the boys were amply protected there on the side of the
Frying-pan where the handle stretched out into the open land toward the
mountain. Perhaps here was once a torrent flowing from the basin-like
hollow walled round with rock; at any rate, great bowlders were
scattered all along the rim as though spewed from the basin by some
mighty force of the bygone ages. The soil, as so often happens in the
West, was fertile to the very edge of the Frying-pan and young pinons
and bushes had taken root there and managed to keep themselves alive
with the snow-moisture of winter, in spite of the scanty rainfall the
rest of the year.

The boys were amply protected, yes; but there was not a drop of water
save what they had in their canteens, and there was no feed for their
horses unless they chose to nibble tender twigs off the bushes near them
and call that food. There was, of course, the grain in the packs, but
there was neither time nor opportunity to get it out. If it came to a
siege, luck and his boys were in a bad way, and they knew it. They were
penned as well as protected there in that rocky, brushy neck. The most
that they could do was to discourage any rush from those back in the
grove; as to getting through that grove themselves, and out in the open,
there was not one chance in a hundred that they could do it.

From the outside in to where they were entrenched was just a trifle
easier. The Indiana in the grove were all absorbed in watching the edge
of the Frying-pan and had their backs to the open, never thinking that
white men would be coming that way; for had not the other party been
decoyed around the farther end of the big butte, and did not several
miles and a barbed-wire fence lie between?

So when Applehead and his three, coming in from the north, approached
the grove, they did it under cover of a draw that hid them from sight.
From the shots that were fired, Applehead guessed the truth; that
Luck’s bunch had sensed danger before they had actually ridden into the
Frying-pan itself, and that the Navajos were trying to drive them out of
the rocks, and were not making much of a success of it.

“Now,” Applehead instructed the three when they were as close as they
could get to the grove without being seen, “I calc’late about the best
thing we kin do, boys, is t’ spur up our hosses and ride in amongst ‘em
shooting and a-hollerin’. Mebby we kin jest natcherlay stampede ‘em--but
we’ve sure got t’ git through In’ git under cover mighty dang suddent,
er they’ll come to theirselves an’ wipe us clean off’n the map--if
they’s enough of ‘em. These here that’s comin’ along after us, they’ll
help t’ swell the party, oncet they git here. I calc’late they figger
‘t we’re runnin’ head-on into a mess uh trouble, ‘n’ they don’t want t’
colleck any stray bullets--‘n’ that’s why they’ve dropped back in the
last half mile er so. Haze them pack bosses up this way, Pink, so’st
they won’t git caught up ‘fore they git t’ what the rest air. Best use
yore six-guns fer this, boys--that’ll leave ye one hand t’ guide yore
bosses with, and they’re handier all around in close--work. Air ye
ready? Then come on--foller me ‘n’ come a-whoopin’!”

A-whooping they came, up out of the draw and in among the trees as
though they had a regiment behind them. Certain crouching figures
jumped, sent startled glances behind them and ran like partridges
for cover farther on. Only one or two paused to send a shot at these
charging fiends who seemed bent on riding them down and who yelled like
devils turned loose from the pit. And before they had found safe
covert on the farther fringes of the grove and were ready to meet the
onslaught, the clamor had ceased and the white men had joined those
others among the rocks.

So now there were nine men cornered here on the edge of the Frying-pan,
with no water for their horses and not much hope of getting out of
there.

“Darn you, Applehead, why didn’t you keep out of this mess?” Luck
demanded with his mouth drawn down viciously at the corners and his eyes
warm with affection and gratitude. “What possessed your fool heart to
ride into this trap?”

“We-ell, dang it, we had t’ ride som’ers, didn’t we?” Applehead, safe
behind a bowlder, pulled off his greasy, gray Stetson and polished his
bald head disconcertedly. “Had a bunch uh Navvies hangin’ t’ our heels
like tumbleweed--‘n’ we been doin’ some RIDIN’, now, I’m a tellin’ ye!
‘F Lite, here, hadn’t kep’ droppin’ one now an’ then fur the rest t’
devour, I calc’late we’d bin et up, a mile er two back!”

Lite looked up from shoving more cartridges into his rifle-magazine. “If
we hadn’t had a real, simon-pure go-getter to boss the job,” he drawled,
“I reckon all the shooting I did wouldn’t have cut any ice. Ain’t that
right, boys?”

Pink, resting his rifle in a niche of the boulder and moving it here and
there trying to fix his sights on a certain green sweater back in the
woods that he had glimpsed a minute before, nodded assent. “You’re durn
tootin’ it’s right!” he testified.

Weary looked shining-eyed at Applehead’s purple face. “Sure, that’s
right!” he emphasized. “And I don’t care how much of a trap you call
this, it isn’t a patching to the one Applehead busted us out of. He’s
what I call a Real One, boys.”

“Aw, shet yore dang head ‘n’ git yore rifles workin’!” Applehead
blurted. “This yere ain’t no time fer kiddin’, ‘n’ I’m tellin’ yuh
straight. What’s them fellers acrost the Fryin’-pan think they’re tryin’
t’ do? luck le’s you’n me make a few remarks over that way, ‘n’ leave
the boys t’ do some gun-talk with these here babies behind us. Dang it,
if I knowed of a better place ‘n’ what this is fer holdin’ ‘em off, I’d
say make a run fer it. But I don’t ‘n’ that’s fact. Yuh musta sprung the
trap ‘fore yuh got inside, ‘cause they shore aimed t’ occupy this nest
uh rocks theirselves, with you fellers down there in the Fryin’-pan
where they could git at yuh.

“Thar’s one of ‘em up on the rim-rock--see ‘im?--standin’ thar, by
granny, like he was darin’ somebody t’ cut loose! Here, Lite, you spill
some lead up thar. We’ll learn ‘im t’ act up smart--”

“Hey, hold on!” Luck grabbed Lite’s arm as he was raising his rifle
for a close shot at the fellow. “Don’t shoot! Don’t you see? Thaf’s the
peace-sign he’s making!”

“Well, now, dang it, he better be makin’ peace-signs!” growled Applehead
querulously, and sat down heavily on a shelf of the rock. “‘Cause Lite,
here, shore woulda tuk an ear off’n him in another minute, now I’m
tellin’ ye!”



CHAPTER XIX. PEACE TALK

Across the Frying-pan an Indian stood boldly out upon a jutting point of
rock and raised a hand in the sweeping upward motion of the peace-sign.
The questing bullets that came seeking for bone and flesh among the
rocks and bushes came no more when the signal was passed from those
who saw to those farther back who could not see the figure silhouetted
against the brilliant blue of the sky. A moment he stood, made the sign
again, and waited.

“That’s peace-sign, sure as you’re born!” Luck cried breathlessly, and
went scrambling through the bushes to where he might stand in the open,
on the very rim of the basin. Applehead yelled to him to come back and
not make a dang fool of himself, but luck gave no heed to the warning.
He stood out in the blazing sunshine and gave the peace-sign in reply.

On the-rim rock the Indian stood motionless while he might have taken
three or four breaths. Then with his hand he gave the sign for “pow-wow”
 and waited again.

Luck, his pulse thrilling at the once familiar gesture which his tribal
“father,” old chief Big Turkey, used to give when he came stalking up
for his daily confab with his adopted son, gave back the sign with a
hand that trembled noticeably. Whereupon the Indian on the farther rim
turned and began dignifiedly to climb through a rift in the ledge down
into the Frying-pan.

“He wants a pow-wow,” Luck called back to the bunch. “You fellows stay
where you’re at I’m going out there in the middle and talk to him.”

“Now, Luck, don’t let ‘em make a dang monkey outa ye,” Applehead
protested anxiously. “Injuns is tricky--”

“That’s all right. You can keep a couple of rifles sighted on that old
chief--that’s what he is, I take it, from his actions and his talking
‘sign’ and then if they pot me, you can pot him. But they won’t. I
know Injuns better than you do, Applehead. He just wants to talk things
over--and I’m certainly willing that he should!”

“Well, Lite, you keep your sights lined up on that Injun, then. ‘N’ if
they’s a crooked move made towards Luck, you cut loose--‘n’ say!
You shoot to kill, this time!” He shook his finger in Lite’s face
admonishingly. “‘S all right t’ nip “em here ‘n’ take a hunk out there
jest t’ kinda take their minds off’n us---‘s all right enough so fur,
‘n’ I ain’t kickin’ none ‘cause yuh ain’t killed off yuh hit. But if
this here’s a trick t’ git Luck, you KILL that Injun. ‘N’ if you don’t
do it I’ll go out there m’self ‘n’ choke the dang skunk t’ death!”

“I’ll kill him--don’t worry about that,” Lite promised--and the look
in his eyes told them that the Indian was doomed at the first sign of
treachery.

“You fellers wanta keep an eye peeled fer them in the grove,” Applehead
warned. “We ain’t goin’ t’ give ‘em no chanst t’ sneak up ‘n’ skulp us
whilst we’re watchin’ Luck ‘n’ his dang-fool pow-wowin’ out there in the
middle.”

“Aw, gwan! They wouldn’t DAST skelp white folks!” There was a wail in
the voice of Happy Jack.

“They dast if they git the chanst,” Applehead retorted fretfully. “‘N’
if you don’t wanta loose that there red mop uh yourn ye better keep yer
eyes open, now I’m tellin’ yuh!” He refilled his rifle magazine and took
up his station beside Lite Avery where he could watch the Frying-pan
through the bushes without exposing himself to a treacherous shot from
the rim-rock.

At the foot of the sandstone ledge the Indian stood with his bright red
blanket wrapped around him watching Luck. On his own side Luck stood
just clear of the rock huddle and watched the Indian. Presently he of
the red blanket lifted his hand in the gesture of peace, and started
deliberately out across the bare little basin. From his own side, Luck,
returning again the gesture, went out to meet him. In the center they
met, and eyed each other frankly. Still eyeing Luck, the old Indian put
out his hand Indian fashion, and Luck grave it one downward shake and
let go.

“How?” he grunted; and in the Indian custom of preparing for a leisurely
pow-wow as he had been taught by the Sioux, he squatted upon his boot
heels and reached for his cigarette papers and tobacco.

“How?” replied the Navajo, a flicker of interest in his eyes at
these little Indian touches in Luck’s manner, and sat himself down
cross-legged on the hot sand. Luck rolled a cigarette and passed the
“makings” to the other, who received it gravely and proceeded to help
himself. Luck scratched a match on a stone that lay beside him, lighted
the Indian’s cigarette and then his own, took four puffs and blew the
smoke upward, watching it spread and drift away, and made the gesture
that meant “Our pow-wow will be good,” as he had seen the Sioux medicine
men do before a council. Afterwards he began placidly to smoke and
meditate.

From his manner you would never have guessed that his life and the lives
of the Happy Family hung upon the outcome of this meeting. You would not
have surmised that his stomach was gnawing at his nerves, sending out
insistently the call for food; or that his thirst tormented him; or that
the combination of hunger, heat, thirst and mental strain had bred a
jumping headache that was knotting the veins in his temples. All these
nagging miseries beset him--but he knew the ways of the Indians and
he meant to impress this old man first of all with his plains-Indian
training; so he schooled himself to patience.

The Indian eyed him furtively from under heavy eyebrows while he smoked.
And the sun beat savagely down upon the sand of that basin, and Luck’s
vision blurred with the pain that throbbed behind his eyes. But the
facial discipline of the actor was his to command, and he permitted his
face to give no sign of what he felt or thought.

The Indian leaned slowly, lifted a brown hand, made a studied gesture
or two and waited, his eyes fixed unwinkingly upon Luck. It was as if
he were saying to himself: “We’ll see if this white man can speak in the
sign-talk of the Indians.”

Luck lifted his two hands, drew them slowly apart to say that he had
come a long way. Then, using only his hands--sometimes his fingers
only--he began to talk; to tell the old Navajo that he and eight other
white men were sheriffs and that they were chasing four white men (since
he had no sign that meant Mexican) who had stolen money; that they had
come from Albuquerque--and there he began to draw in the sand between
them a crude but thoroughly understandable sketch of the trail they had
taken and the camps they had made, and the distance they believed the
four thieves had travelled ahead of them.

He marked the camp where their horses had been stolen from them and
told how long they had waited there until the horses of their own accord
returned to camp; thirteen horses, he explained to the old Navajo. He
drew a rough square to indicate the square butte, sketched the fork of
the trail there and told how four men had turned to the north on a false
trail, while he and four others had gone around the southern end of the
hill. He calmly made plain that at the end of both false trails a trap
had been laid, that Indians had fired upon white men and for no just
cause. Why was this go? Why had Indians surrounded them back there in
the grove and tried to kill them? Why were Indians shooting at them from
the ledge of rocks that circled this little basin? They had no quarrel
with the Navajos. They were chasing thieves, to take them to jail.

Folded swelteringly in his red blanket the old Indian sat humped forward
a little, smoking slowly his cigarette and studying the sketch Luck had
drawn for him. With aching head and parched throat and hungry stomach,
Luck sat cross-legged on the hot sand and waited, and would not let his
face betray any emotion at all. Up on the Tim-rock brown faces peered
down steadfastly at the pow-wow. And back among the rocks and bushes
the Happy Family waited restively with eyes turning in all directions
guarding against treachery; and Lite, whose bullets always went straight
to the spot where they were aimed, stood and stared fixedly over his
rifle sights at the red-blanketed figure squatted in the sand and kept
his finger crooked upon the trigger. Beside him Applehead fidgeted and
grumbled and called Luck names for being so dang slow, and wondered if
those two out there meant to sit and chew the rag all day.

The Indian leaned and traced Luck’s trail slowly with his finger. Did
the four white men come that way? he asked in sign. And then, had Luck
seen them? Was he sure that he was following the four who had stolen
money in Albuquerque?

Come to think of it, Luck was not sure to the point of being able to
take oath that it was so. He traced again where the hoofprints had been
discovered near the stalled automobile, and signed that the six horses
they believed to have belonged to the four who had taken two horses
packed with food and blankets--and the stolen money.

Then suddenly Luck remembered that, for proof of his story, he had a
page of the Evening Herald in his pocket, torn from a copy he had bought
on the streets the evening after the robbery. He pulled the folded paper
out, spread it before the other and pointed to the article that told
of the robbery. “Call some young man of your tribe who can read,” he
signed. “Let him read and tell you if I have spoken the truth.”

The Indian took the paper and looked at it curiously.

Now, unless Applehead or some other hot-head spoiled things, Luck
believed that things would smooth down beautifully. There had been
some misunderstanding, evidently--else the Indiana would never have
manifested all this old-fashioned hostility.

The blanketed one showed himself a true diplomat. “Call one of your
white men, that there may be two and two,” he gestured. And he added,
with the first words he had spoken since they met, “Hablo espanol?”

Well, if he spoke Spanish, thought Luck, why the deuce hadn’t he done
it at first? But there is no fathoming the reticence of an Indian--and
Luck, by a sudden impulse, hid his own knowledge of the language. He
stood up and turned toward the rocks, cupped his hands around his lips
and called for the Native Son. “And leave your rifle at home,” he added
as an afterthought and in the interests of peace.

The Indian turned to the rim-rock, held up the fragment of newspaper and
called for one whom he called Juan. Presently Juan’s Stetson appeared
above the ledge, and Juan himself scrambled hastily down the rift and
came to them, grinning with his lips and showing a row of beautifully
even teeth, and asking suspicious questions with his black eyes that
shone through narrowed lids.

Miguel, arriving just then from the opposite direction, sized him up
with one heavy-lashed glance and nodded negligently. He had left his
rifle behind him as he had been told, but his six-shooter hung inside
the waistband of his trousers where he could grip it with a single
drop of his hand. The Native Son, lazy as he looked, was not taking any
chances.

The old Indian explained in Navajo to the young man who eyed the two
white men while he listened. Of the blanket-vending, depot-haunting type
was this young man, with a ready smile and a quick eye for a bargain and
a smattering of English learned in his youth at a mission, and a larger
vocabulary of Mexican that lent him fluency of speech when the mood to
talk was on him. Half of his hair was cut so that it hung even with his
ear-lobes. At the back it was long and looped up in the way a horse’s
tail is looped in muddy weather, and tied with a grimy red ribbon wound
round and round it. He wore a green-and-white roughneck sweater
broadly striped, and the blue overalls that inevitably follow American
civilization into the wild places.

“‘S hot day,” he announced unemotionally, and took the paper which the
red-blanketed one held out to him. His air of condescension could not
hide the fact that behind his pride at being able to read print he was
unhappily aware also of his limitations in the accomplishment. Along the
scare-head Luck had indicated, his dirty forefinger moved slowly while
he spelled out the words. “A-a-bank rob!” he read triumphantly, and
repeated the statement in Spanish. After that he mumbled a good deal
of it, the longer words arresting his finger while he struggled with the
syllables. But he got the sense of it nevertheless, as Luck and Miguel
knew by the version he gave in Spanish to the old Indian, with now and
then a Navajo word to help out.

When he came to the place where Ramon Chavez and Luis Rojas were named
as the thieves, he gave a grunt and looked up at Luck and Miguel, read
in, their faces that these were the men they sought, and grinned.

“Me, I know them feller,” he declared unexpectedly. “Dat day I seen them
feller. They go--”

The old Indian touched him on the shoulder, and Juan turned and
repeated the statement in Spanish. The old man’s eyes went to luck
understandingly, while he asked Juan a question in the Navajo tongue,
and afterwards gave a command. He turned his eyes upon the Native Son
and spoke in Spanish. “The men you want did not come this way,” he said
gravely. “Juan will tell.”

“Yes, I know dat Ramon Chavez. I seen him dat day. I’m start for home,
an’ I seen Ramon Chavez an’ dat Luis Rojas an’ one white feller I’m
don’t know dat feller. They don’t got red car. They got big, black car.
They come outa corral--scare my horse. They go ‘cross railroad. I go
‘cross rio. One red car pass me. I go along, bimeby I pass red car in
sand. Ramon Chavez, he don’t go in dat car. I don’t know them feller.
Ramon Chavez he go ‘cross railroad in big black car.”

“Then who was it we’ve been trailing out this way?” Luck asked the
question in Spanish and glanced from one brown face to the other.

The older Indian shifted his moccasined feet in the sand and looked
away. “Indians,” he said in Mexican. “You follow, Indians think you
maybe take them away--put ‘m in jail. All friends of them Indians pretty
mad. They come fight you. I hear, I come to find out what’s fighting
about.”

Luck gazed at him stupidly for a moment until the full meaning of the
statement seeped through the ache into his brain. He heaved a great
sigh of relief, looked at the Native Son and laughed.

“The joke’s on us, I guess,” he said. “Go, back and tell that to the
boys. I’ll be along in a minute.”

Juan, grinning broadly at what he considered a very good joke on the
nine white men who had traveled all this way for nothing, went back to
explain the mistake to his fellows on the ledge. The old Indian took it
upon himself to disperse the Navajos in the grove, and just as suddenly
as the trouble started it was stopped--and the Happy Family, if they had
been at all inclined to belittle the danger of their position, were
made to realize it when thirty or more Navajos came flocking in from all
quarters. Many of them could--and did--talk English understandably, and
most of them seemed inclined to appreciate the joke. All save those whom
Lite had “nipped and nicked” in the course of their flight from the rock
ridge to the Frying-Pan. These were inclined to be peevish over
their hurts and to nurse them in sullen silence while Luck, having a
rudimentary knowledge of medicine and surgery, gave them what firstaid
treatment was possible.

Applehead, having plenty of reasons for avoiding publicity, had gone
into retirement in the shade of a clump of brush, with Lite to keep him
company while he smoked a meditative pipe or two and studied the puzzle
of Ramon’s probable whereabouts.

“Can’t trust a Navvy,” he muttered in a discreet undertone to Lite.
“I’ve fit ‘em b’fore now, ‘n’ I KNOW. ‘N’ you kin be dang sure they
ain’t fergot the times I’ve fit ‘em, neither! There’s bucks millin’
around here that’s jes’ achin’ fer a chanst at me, t’ pay up fer some
I’ve killed off when I was shurf ‘n’ b’fore. So you keep ‘n’ eye peeled,
Lite, whilst I think out this yere dang move uh Ramon’s. ‘N’ if you see
anybody sneakin’ up on me, you GIT him. I cain’t watch Navvyies ‘n’ mill
things over in m’ haid at the same time.”

Lite grinned and wriggled over so that his back was against a rock.
He laid his six-shooter Ostentatiously across his lap and got out
his tobacco and papers. “Go ahead and think, Applehead,” he consented
placidly. “I’ll guard your scalp-lock.”

Speaking literally, Applehead had no scalplock to guard. But he did have
a shrewd understanding of the mole-like workings of the criminal mind;
and with his own mind free to work on the problem, he presently declared
that he would bet he could land Ramon Chavez in jail within a week, and
sent Lite after Luck.

“I’ve got it figgered out,” he announced when Luck came over to his
retreat. “If Ramon crossed the railroad he was aimin’ t’ hit out across
the mesa to the mountains ‘n’ beyond. He wouldn’t go south, ‘cause he
could be traced among the Injun pueblos--they’s a thousand eyes down,
that way b’fore he’d git t’ wild country. He’d keep away from the valley
country--er I would, if I was him. I know dang well whar I’D hit fer if
I was makin’ a gitaway ‘n’ didn’t come off over here--‘n’ I shore would
keep outa Navvy country, now I’m tellin’ yuh! No, sir, I’d take out
t’other way, through Hell Canon er Tijeras, ‘n’ I’d make fer the Jemes
country. That thar’s plenty wild ‘n’ rough--‘n’ come t’ think of it, the
Chavez boys owns quite a big grant, up in there som’ers, ‘n’ have got
men in their pay up thar, runnin’ their cattle. Ramon could lay low fer
a dang long while up thar ‘n’ be safer’n what he would be out amongst
strangers.

“‘N’ another thing, I’d plan t’ have some hosses stached out in one uh
them canons, ‘n’ I’d mebby use a autymobile t’ git to ‘em, ‘n’ send the
car back t’ town--I could trust the feller that drove it--outa my sight.
‘N’, Luck, if you’ll take my advice, you’ll hit out t’wards the Jemes
country. I know every foot uh the way, ‘n’ we kin make it in a coupla
days by pushin’ the hosses. ‘N’ I’ll bet every dang hoof I own ‘t we
round up that bunch over thar som’ers.”

“You lead out, then,” Luck told him promptly. “I’m willing to admit
you’re better qualified to take charge of the outfit than I am. You know
the country--and you’ve fit Indians.”

“We-ell, now, you’re dang right I have! ‘N’ if some them bucks don’t go
off ‘n’ mind their own business, I’ll likely fight a few morel You shoo
‘em outa camp, Luck, ‘n’ start ‘em about their own dang business. ‘N’
we’ll eat a bite ‘n’ git on about our own. If we show up any grub whilst
this bunch is hangin’ around we’ll have t’ feed ‘em--‘n’ you know dang
well we ain’t got enough skurcely fer the Jemes trip as it is.”

“I’ve been handing out money as it is till I’m about broke,” Luck
confessed, “making presents to those fellows that came in with bullets
in their legs and arms. Funny nobody got hit in the body--except one
poor devil that got shot in the shoulder.”

“We-ell, now, you kin blame Lite’s dang tender heart fer that there,”
 Applehead accused, pulling at his sunbrowned mustache. “We was all
comin’ on the jump, ‘n’ so was the Injuns; ‘n’ it was purty long range
‘n’ nobody but lite could hit ‘n Injun t’ save his soul. ‘N’ Lite,
he wouldn’t shoot t’ kill--he jes’ kep’ on nippin’ an’ nickin’, ‘n’
shootin’ a boss now an’ then. I wisht I was the expert shot Lite is--I’d
shore a got me a few Navvies back there, now I’m tellin’ yuh!”

“Bud’s got a bullet in his arm,” Luck said, “but the bone wasn’t hit, so
he’ll make out, and one of the pack-horses was shot in the ear. We got
off mighty lucky, and I’m certainly glad Lite didn’t get careless. Cost
me about fifty dollars to square us as it is. You stay where you are,
Applehead, till I get rid of the Indians. The old fellow acts like he
feels he ought to stick along till we’re outa here. He’s kind of taken a
notion to me because I can talk sign, and he seems to want to make sure
we don’t mix it again with the tribe. Some of them are kinda peeved,
all right. You’ve got no quarrel with this old fellow, have you? He’s
a big-league medicine man in the tribe, and his Spanish name is Mariano
Pablo Montoya. Know him?”

“No I don’t, ‘n’ I don’t keer to neither,” Applehead retorted crossly.
“Shoo ‘em off, Luck, so’s we kin eat. My belly’s shore a floppin’ agin
m’ backbone, ‘n’ I’m tellin’ yuh right!”



CHAPTER XX. LUIS ROJAS TALKS

Three days of hiding by day in sequestered little groves or deep, hidden
canons, with only Luis Rojas to bear her company--Luis Rojas whom she
did not trust and therefore watched always from under her long straight
lashes, with oblique glances when she seemed to be gazing straight
before her; three nights of tramping through rough places where often
the horses must pause and feel carefully for space to set their feet.
Roads there were, but Luis avoided roads as though they carried the
plague. When he must cross one he invariably turned back and brushed out
their footprints--until he discovered that Annie-Many-Ponies was much
cleverer at this than he was; often he smoked a cigarette while Annie
covered their trail. Three days and three nights, and Ramon was not
there where they stopped for the third day.

“We go slow,” Luis explained nervously because of the look in the
black, unreadable eyes of this straight, slim Indian girl who was
so beautiful--and so silent. “They go muy fas’, Ramon an’ Beel. Poco
tiempo--sure, we fin’ dem little soon.”

Annie-Many-Ponies did not betray by so much as a quiver of an eyelash
that Luis had mentioned Bill unwittingly. But she hid the name away in
her memory, and all that day she sat and pondered over the meager facts
that had come her way, and with the needle of her suspicion she wove
them together patiently until the pattern was almost complete.

Ramon and Bill--what Bill, save Bill Holmes, would be with Ramon?
Ramon and Bill Holmes--memory pictured them again by the rock in the
moonlight, muttering in Spanish mostly, muttering mystery always. Ramon
and Bill Holmes she remembered the sly, knowing glances between these
two at “location” though they scarcely seemed on speaking terms. Ramon
and Bill and this mysterious night-travelling, when there should be no
trouble and no mystery at all beyond the house of the priest! So much
trouble over the marriage of an Indian girl and a young Mexican cattle
king? Annie-Many-Ponies was not so stupid as to believe that; she had
seen too much of civilization in her wanderings with the show, and her
work in pictures. She had seen man and maid “make marriage,” in pictures
and in reality. There should be no trouble, no mysterious following of
Ramon by night.

Something evil there was, since Bill Holmes was with Ramon.
Annie-Many-Ponies knew that it was so. Perhaps--perhaps the evil was
against Wagalexa Conka! Perhaps--her heart forgot to beat when the
thought stabbed her brain--perhaps they had killed Wagalexa Conka! It
might be so, if he had suspected her flight and had followed Ramon, and
they had fought.

In the thick shade of a pinon Luis slept with his face to the ground,
his forehead pressed upon his folded arms. Annie-Many-Ponies got up
silently and went and stood beside him, looking down at him as though
she meant to wrest the truth from his brain. And Luis, feeling in his
sleep the intensity of her gaze, stirred uneasily, yawned and sat up,
looking about him bewilderedly. His glance rested on the girl, and he
sprang to his feet and faced her.

Annie-Many-Ponies smiled her little, tantalizing, wistfully inviting
smile--the smile which luck bad whimsically called heart-twisting.
“I awful lonesome,” she murmured, and sat down with her back nestling
comfortably against a grassy bank. “You talk. I not lets you sleep all
time. You think I not good for talk to?”

“Me, I not tell w’at I’m theenk,” Luis retorted with a crooning note,
and sat down facing her. “Ramon be mad me.”

Annie-Many-Ponies looked at him, her eyes soft and heavy with that
languorous look which will quickest befuddle the sense of a man. “You
tell; Ramon not hear,” she hinted. “Ramon, he got plenty trobles for
thinking about.” She smiled again. “Ramon plenty long ways off. He got
Bill Holmes for talking to. You talk to me.”

How he did it, why he did it, Luis Rojas could never explain afterwards.
Something there was in her smile, in her voice, that bewitched him.
Something there was that made him think she knew and approved of
the thing Ramon had planned. He made swift, Spanish love to
Annie-Many-Ponies, who smiled upon him but would not let him touch her
hand--and so bewitched him the more. He made love--but also he talked.
He told Annie-Many-Ponies all that she wished him to tell; and some
things that she had never dreamed and that she shrank from hearing.

For he told her of the gold they had stolen, and how they had made it
look as though Luck Lindsay had planned the theft. He told her that
he loved her--which did not interest her greatly--and he told her that
Ramon would never marry her--which was like a knife thrust to her soul.
Ramon had many loves, said Luis, and he was true to none; never would he
marry a woman to rule his life and make him trouble--it were easier to
make love and then laugh and ride away. Luis was “muy s’prised”
 that Annie-Many-Ponies had ever believed that Ramon would marry
her, beautiful though she was, charming though she was, altogether
irresistible though she was--Luis became slightly incoherent here and
lapsed into swift rolling Spanish words which she did not understand.

Luis, before the sun went down and it was time to eat supper and go on,
became so thoroughly bewitched that he professed himself eager to let
his share of the gold go, and to take Annie-Many-Ponies to a priest and
marry her--if she wished very much to be married by a priest. In the
middle of his exaltation, Annie-Many-Ponies chilled him with the look
she gave him.

“You big fool,” she told him bluntly. “I not so fool like that. I go to
Ramon--and plenty gold! I think you awful fool. You make me tired!”

Luis was furious enough for a minute to do her violence--but
Annie-Many-Ponies killed that impulse also with the cold contempt in her
eyes. She was not afraid of him, and like an animal he dared not strike
where he could not inspire fear. He muttered a Mexican oath or two and
went mortifiedly away to lead the horses down to the little stream where
they might drink. The girl was right--he was a fool, he told himself
angrily; and sulked for hours.

Fool or not, he had told Annie-Many-Ponies what she wanted to know. He
had given food to her brooding thoughts--food that revived swiftly and
nourished certain traits lying dormant in her nature, buried alive under
the veneer of white man’s civilization--as we are proud to call it.

The two ate in silence, and in silence they saddled the horses and
fared forth again in their quest of Ramon--who had the gold which
Annie-Many-Ponies boldly asserted was an added lure. “The monee--always
the man wins that has muchos monee.” Luis muttered often to himself as
he rode into the dusk. Behind him Annie-Many-Ponies walked and led the
black horse that bore all her worldly possessions bound to the saddle.
The little black dog padded patiently along at his heels.



CHAPTER XXI. “WAGALEXA CONKA--COLA!”

“So good little girl yoh are to true’ Ramon! Now I knows for sure yoh
lov’ me moch as I lov’ yoh! Now we go little ride more to my house high
up in the pinons--then we be so happy like two birds in nes’. Firs’ we
rest ourselves, querida mia. This good place for res’, my sweetheart
that comes so far to be with Ramon. To-morrow we go to my house--to
nes’ of my loved one. Thees cabin, she’s very good little nes’ ontil
tomorrow--yoh theenk so?”

Annie-Many-Ponies, sitting beside the doorway of the primitive little
log cabin where the night-journeys with Luis had ended, looked up into
Ramon’s flushed face with her slow smile. But her eyes were two deep,
black wells whose depths he could not fathom.

“Where them priest you promise?” she asked, her voice lowered to its
softest Indian tone. “Now I think we make plenty marriage; then we go
for live in your house.”

Ramon turned and caught her unexpectedly in his arms. “Ah, now you spik
foolish talk. Yoh not trus’ Ramon! Why yoh talk pries’, pries’ all time?
Lov’, she’s plenty pries’ for us. Pries’ she don’ make us more lov’
each other--pries’ don’ make us happy--we like birds that make nes’
in tree-tops. Yoh think they mus’ have pries’ for help them be happy?
Lov’--that’s plenty for me.”

Annie-Many-Ponies drew herself away from his embrace, but she did it
gently. Bill Holmes, coming up from the spring, furnished excuse enough,
and Ramon let her go.

“You promise me priest for making us marriage,” she persisted in her
soft voice.

Ramon twisted the points of his black mustache and regarded her askance,
smiling crookedly. “Yoh ‘fraid for trus’ me, that’s why I promise,”
 he said at last. “Me, I don’ need padre to mumble-mumble foolish
words before I can be happy. Yoh ‘fraid of Luck Leen’sey, that’s why I
promise. Now yoh come way up here, so luck don’ matter no more. Yoh be
happy weeth me.”

“You promise,” Annie-Many-Ponies repeated, a sullen note creeping into
her voice.

Bill Holmes, lounging up to the doorway, glanced from one to the other
and laughed. “What’s the matter, Ramon?” he bantered. “Can’t you square
it with your squaw? Go after her with a club, why don’t you? That’s what
they’re used to.”

Ramon did not make any reply whatever, and Bill gave another chuckling
laugh and joined Luis, who was going to take the gaunt horses to a tiny
meadow beyond the hill. As he went he said something that made Luis look
back over his shoulder and laugh.

Annie-Many-Ponies lifted her head and stared straight at Ramon. He
did not meet her eyes, nor did he show any resentment of Bill Holmes’
speech; yet he had sworn that he loved her, that he would be proud to
have her for his wife. She, the daughter of a chief, had been insulted
in his presence, and he had made no protest, shown no indignation.

“You promise priest for making us marriage,” she reiterated coldly, as
if she meant to force his real self into the open. “You promise you put
ring of gold for wedding on my finger, like white woman’s got.”

Ramon’s laugh was not pleasant. “Yoh theenk marry squaw?” he sneered.
“Luck Leen’sey, he don’t marry yoh. Why yoh theenk I marry yoh? You be
good, Ramon lov’ yoh. Buy yoh lots pretty theengs, me treat yoh fine.
Yoh lucky girl, yoh bet. Yoh don’t be foolish no more. Yoh run away, be
my womans. W’at yoh theenk? Go back, perhaps? Yoh theenk Luck Leen’sey
take yoh back? You gone off with Ramon Chavez, he say; yoh stay weeth
Ramon then. Yoh Ramon’s woman now. Yoh not be foolish like yoh too good
for be kees. Luck, be kees yoh many times, I bet! Yoh don’ play
good girl no more for Ramon--oh-h, no! That joke she’s w’at yoh call
ches’nut. We don’ want no more soch foolish talk, or else maybe I do
w’at Bill Holmes says she’s good for squaw!”

“You awful big liar,” Annie-Many-Ponies stated with a calm, terrific
frankness. “You plenty big thief. You fool me plenty--now I don’t be
fool no more. You so mean yoh think all mens like you. You think all
girls bad girls. You awful big fool, you think I stay for you. I go.”

Ramon twisted his mustache and laughed at her. “Now yoh so pretty,
when yoh mad,” he teased. “How yoh go? All yoh theengs in cabin--monee,
clothes, grob--how yoh go? Yoh mad now--pretty soon Ramon he makes yoh
glad! Shame for soch cross words--soch cross looks! Now I don’t talk
till yoh be good girl, and says yoh lov’ Ramon. I don’t let yoh go,
neither. Yoh don’t get far way--I promise yoh for true. I breeng yoh
back, sweetheart, I promise I breeng yoh back I Yoh don’t want to go no
more w’en I’m through weeth yoh--I promise yoh! Yoh theenk I let yoh go?
O-oh-h, no! Ramon not let yoh get far away!”

In her heart she knew that he spoke at last the truth; that this was
the real Ramon whom she had never before seen. To every woman must come
sometime the bitter awakening from her dreamworld to the real world in
all its sordidness and selfishness. Annie-Many-Ponies, standing there
looking at Ramon--Ramon who laughed at her goodness--knew now what the
future that had lain behind the mountains held in store for her. Not
happiness, surely; not the wide ring of gold that would say she was
Ramon’s wife. Luis was right. He had spoken the truth, though she had
believed that he lied when he said Ramon would never marry a woman. He
would love and laugh and ride away, Luis had told her. Well, then--

“Shunka Chistala!” she called softly to the little black dog, that came
eagerly, wagging his burr-matted tail. She laid her hand on its head
when the dog jumped up to greet her. She smiled faintly while she
fondled its silky, flapping ears.

“Why you all time pat that dam-dog?” Ramon flashed out jealously. “You
don’t pet yoh man what lov’ yoh!”

“Dogs don’t lie,” said Annie-Many-Ponies coldly, and walked away. She
did not look back, she did not hurry, though she must have known that
Ramon in one bound could have stopped her with his man’s strength. Her
head was high, her shoulders were straight, her eyes were so black the
pupils did not show at all, and a film of inscrutability veiled what
bitter thoughts were behind them.

As it had been with Luis so it was now with Ramon. Her utter disregard
of him held him back from touching her. He stood with wrath in his eyes
and let her go--and to hide his weakness from her strength he sent after
her a sneering laugh and words that were like a whip.

“All right--jus’ for now I let you ron,” he jeered. “Bimeby she’s
different. Bimeby I show yoh who’s boss. I make yoh cry for Ramon be
good to yoh!”

Annie-Many-Ponies did not betray by so much as a glance that she beard
him. But had he seen her face he would have been startled at the look
his words brought there. He would have been startled and perhaps
he would have been warned. For never bad she carried so clearly the
fighting look of her forefathers who went out to battle. With the little
black dog at her heels she climbed a small, round-topped hill that had a
single pine like a cockade growing from the top.

For ten minutes she stood there on the top and stared away to the
southeast, whence she had come to keep her promise to Ramon. Never, it
seemed to her, had a girl been so alone. In all the world there could
not be a soul so bitter. Liar--thief--betrayer of women--and she had
left the clean, steadfast friendship of her brother Wagalexa Conka
for such human vermin as Ramon Chavez! She sat down, and with her face
hidden in her shawl and her slim body rocking back and forth in weird
rhythm to her wailing, she crooned the mourning song of the Omaha.
Death of her past, death of her place among good people, death of her
friendship, death of hope--she sat there with her face turned toward the
far-away, smiling mesa where she had been happy, and wailed softly to
herself as the women of her tribe had wailed when sorrow came to them in
the days that were gone.

All through the afternoon she sat there with her back to the lone pine
tree and her face turned toward the southeast, while the little black
dog lay at her feet and slept. From the cabin Ramon watched her,
stubbornly waiting until she would come down to him of her own accord.
She would come--of that he was sure. She would come if he convinced her
that he would not go up and coax her to come. Ramon had known many
girls who were given to sulking over what he considered their imaginary
wrongs, and he was very sure that he knew women better than they knew
themselves. She would come, give her time enough, and she could not
fling at him then any taunt that he had been over-eager. Certainly she
would come--she was a woman!

But the shadow of the pines lengthened until they lay like long fingers
across the earth; and still she did not come. Bill Holmes and Luis,
secure in the knowledge that Ramon was on guard against any unlooked-for
visitors, slept heavily on the crude bunks in the cabin. Birds began
twittering animatedly as the beat of the day cooled and they came forth
from their shady retreats--and still Annie-Many-Ponies sat on the little
hilltop, within easy calling distance of the cabin, and never once
looked down that way. Still the little black dog curled at her feet
and slept. For all the movement these two made, they might have been of
stone; the pine above was more unquiet than they.

Ramon, watching her while he smoked many cigarettes, became filled with
a vague uneasiness What was she thinking? What did she mean to do? He
began to have faint doubts of her coming down to him. He began to be
aware of something in her nature that was unlike those other women;
something more inflexible, more silent, something that troubled him even
while he told himself that she was like all the rest and he would be her
master.

“Bah! She thinks to play with me, Ramon! Then I will go up and I will
show her--she will follow weeping at my heels--like that dog of hers
that some day I shall kill!”

He got up and threw away his cigarette, glanced within and saw that Bill
and Luis still slept, and started up the hill to where that motionless
figure sat beneath the pine and kept her face turned from him. It would
be better, thought Ramon, to come upon her unawares, and so he went
softly and very slowly, placing each foot as carefully as though he were
stalking a wild thing of the woods.

Annie-Many-Ponies did not hear him coming. All her heart was yearning
toward that far away mesa. “Wagalexa Conka--cola!” she whispered, for
“cola” is the Sioux word for friend. Aloud she dared not speak the
word, lest some tricksy breeze carry it to him and fill him with; anger
because she had betrayed his friendship. “Wagalexa Conka--cola! cola!”

Friendship that was dead--but she yearned for it the more. And it seemed
to her as she whispered, that Wagalexa Conka was very, very near. Her
heart felt his nearness, and her eyes softened. The Indian look--the
look of her fighting forefathers--drifted slowly from her face as fog,
drifts away before the sun. He was near--perhaps he was dead and
his spirit had come to take her spirit by the hand and call her
cola--friend. If that were so, then she wished that her spirit might go
with his spirit, up through all that limitless blue, away and away
and away, and never stop, and never tire and never feel anything but
friendship like warm, bright sunshine!

Down at the cabin a sound--a cry, a shout--startled her. She brushed her
hand across her eyes and looked down. There, surrounding the cabin, were
the Happy Family, and old Applehead whom she hated because he hated her.
And in their midst stood Bill Holmes and Luis, and the setting sun shone
on something bright--like great silver rings--that clasped their wrists.

Coming up the hill toward her was Wagalexa Conka, climbing swiftly,
looking up as he came. Annie-Many-Ponies sprang to her feet, startling
the little black dog that gave a yelp of astonishment. Came he in peace?
She hesitated, watching him unwinkingly. Something swelled in her chest
until she could hardly breathe, and then fluttered there like a prisoned
bird. “COLA!” she gasped, just under her breath, and raised her hand in
the outward, sweeping gesture that spoke peace.

“You theenk to fix trap, you--!”

She whirled and faced Ramon, whose eyes blazed bate and murder and whose
tongue spoke the foulness of his soul. He flung out his arm fiercely and
thrust her aside. “Me, I kill that dam--”

He did not say any more, and the six-shooter he had levelled at Luck
dropped from his nerveless hand like a coiled adder, Annie-Many-Ponies
had struck. Like an avenging spirit she pulled the knife free and held
it high over her head, facing Luck who stared up at her from below.
He thought the look in her eyes was fear of him and of the law, and he
lifted his hand and gave back the peace-sign. It was for him she had
killed and she should not be punished if he could save her. But Luck
failed to read her look aright; it was not fear he saw, but farewell.

For with her free hand she made the sign of peace and farewell--and then
the knife descended straight as a plummet to her heart. But even as
she fell she spurned the dead Ramon with her feet, so that he rolled a
little way while the black dog growled at him with bared teeth; even in
death she would not touch him who had been so foul.

Luck ran the last few, steep steps, and took her in his arms. His eyes
were blurred so that he could not see her face, and his voice shook so
that he could scarcely form the words that brushed back death from her
soul and brought a smile to her eyes.

“Annie--little sister!”

Annie-Many-Ponies raised one creeping hand, groping until her fingers
touched his face.

“Wagalexa Conka--cola!”

He took her fingers and for an instant, while she yet could feel, he
laid them against his lips.





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Heritage of the Sioux" ***

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