by B. M. Bower
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 b
unch 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 ass
erted 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. Tomorrow 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.
