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.
“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.
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.”