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.
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:
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.
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.