The Greatest Works of B. M. Bower - 51 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). B. M. Bower
the close neighborhood of the four.
“If they keep on trying,” Lite commented drily, “they might make a killing, soon as they learn how to shoot straight.”
“‘S jest like them dang Injuns!” Applehead grumbled, shooing the three before him down the draw. “Four t’ our one—it takes jest about that big a majority ‘fore they feel comftable about buildin’ up a fight. Lead yore bosses down till we’re outa easy shootin’ distance, boys, ‘n’ then we’ll head out fer where Luck ought t’ be. If they fixed a trap fer us, they’ve fixed another fer him, chances is, ‘n! the sooner us fellers git t’gether the better show we’ll all of us have. You kin see, the way they worked it to split the bunch, that they ain’t so dang anxious t’ tie into us when we’re t’gether—‘n’ that’s why we can’t git t’ Luck a dang bit too soon, now I’m tellin’ yuh!”
Weary and Pink were finding things to say, also, but old Applehead went on with his monologue just as though they were listening. Lite showed a disposition to stop and take issue with the shooters who kept up a spiteful firing from the ridge. But Applehead stopped him as he was leveling his rifle.
“If yuh shoot,” he pointed out, “they’ll know jest where we air and how fast we’re gittin’ outa here. If yuh don’t, unless their lookout kin see us movin’ out, they got t’ do a heap uh guessin’ in the next few minutes. They only got one chancet in three uh guessin’ right, ‘cause we might be camped in one spot, ‘n’ then agin we might be crawlin’ up closer, fer all they kin tell.”
If they were guessing, they must have guessed right; for presently the four heard faint yells from behind them, and Applehead crawled up the bank to where he could look out across the level. What he saw made him slide hastily to the bottom again.
“They’ve clumb down and straddled their ponies,” he announced grimly. “An’ about a dozen is comin’ down this way, keepin’ under cover all they kin. I calc’late mebby we better crawl our bosses ‘n’ do some ridin’ ourselves, boys.” And he added grimly, “They ain’t in good shootin’ distance yit, ‘n’ they dassent show theirselves neither. We’ll keep in this draw long as we kin. They’re bound t’ come careful till they git us located.”
The footing was none the best, but the horses they rode had been running over untracked mesa-land since they were bandy-legged colts. They loped along easily, picking automatically the safest places whereon to set their feet, and leaving their riders free to attend to other important matters which proved their true value as horses that knew their business.
Soon the draw shallowed until they found themselves out in the open, with the square-topped mountain five miles or so ahead and a little to the left; a high, untraversable sandstone ledge to their right, and what looked like plain sailing straight ahead past the mountain.
Applehead twisted his body in the saddle and gave a grunt. “Throw some lead back at them hombres, Lite,” he snapped. “And make a killin’ if yuh kin. It’ll make ‘em mad, but it’ll hold ‘em back fer a spell.”
Lite, the crack rifle-shot of Luck’s company and the man who had taught Jean Douglas to shoot with such wonderful precision, wheeled his horse short around and pulled him to a stand, lined up his rifle sights and crooked his finger on the trigger. And away back there among the Indians a pony reared, and then pitched forward.
“I sure do bate to shoot down a horse,” Lite explained shamefacedly, “but I never did kill a man—”
“We-ell, I calc’late mebby yuh will, ‘fore you’re let out from this yere meetin’,” Applehead prophesied drily. “Now, dang it, RIDE!”
Chapter XVI. Annie-Many-Ponies Waits
In the magic light of many unnamable soft shades which the sun leaves in New Mexico as a love token for his dark mistress night, Annie-Many-Ponies sat with her back against a high, flat rock at the place where Ramon had said she must wait for him, and stared somber-eyed at what she could see of the new land that bad held her future behind the Sandias; waiting for Ramon; and she wondered if Wagalexa Conka had come home from his picture-making in Bear Canon and was angry because she had gone; and shrank from the thought, and tried to picture what life with Ramon would be like, and whether his love would last beyond the wide ring of shiny gold that was to make her a wife.
At her feet the little black dog lay licking his sore paws that had padded patiently after her all day. Beside the rock the black horse stood nibbling at some weeds awkwardly, because of the Spanish bit in his mouth. The horse was hungry, and the little black dog was hungry; Annie-Many-Ponies was hungry also, but she did not feel her, hunger so much, because of the heaviness that was in her heart.
When Ramon came he would bring food, or he would tell her where she might buy. The horse, too, would be fed—when Ramon came. And he would take her to the priest who was his friend, and together they would kneel before the priest. But first, if Ramon would wait, she wanted to confess her sins, so that she need not go into the new life bearing the sins of the old. The priest could pray away the ache that was in her heart; and then, with her heart light as air, she would be married with Ramon. It was long since she had confessed—not since the priest came to the agency when she was there, before she ran away to work in pictures for Wagalexa Conka.
Before her the glow deepened and darkened. A rabbit hopped out of a thick clump of stunted bushes, sniffed the air that blew the wrong way to warn him, and began feeding. Shunka Chistala gathered his soft paws under him, scratched softly for a firm foothold in the ground, and when the rabbit, his back turned and the evening wind blowing full in his face, fed unsuspectingly upon some young bark that he liked, the little black dog launched himself suddenly across the space that divided them. There was a squeak and a thin, whimpering crying—and the little black dog, at least, was sure of his supper.
Annie-Many-Ponies, roused from her brooding, shivered a little when the rabbit cried. She started forward to save it—she who had taught the little black dog to hunt gophers and prairie-dogs!—and when she was too late she scolded the dog in the language of the Sioux. She tore the rabbit away from him while he eyed her reproachfully; but when she saw that it was quite dead, she flung the warm body back to him and went and sat down again with her back to the rock.
A train whistled for the little station of Bernalillo, and soon she saw its headlight paint the squat houses that had before been hidden behind the creeping dusk. Ramon was late in coming and for one breath she caught herself hoping that he would not come at all. But immediately she remembered the love words he had taught her, and smiled her inscrutable little smile that had now a tinge of sadness. Perhaps, she thought wishfully, Ramon had come on the train from Albuquerque. Perhaps he had a horse in the town, and would ride out and meet her here where he had told her to wait.
The train shrieked and painted swiftly hill and embankment and little adobe huts and a corral full of huddled sheep, and went churning away to the northeast. Annie-Many-Ponies followed its course absently with her eyes until the last winking light from its windows and the last wisp of smoke was hidden behind hills and trees. The little black dog finished the rabbit, nosed its tracks back to where it had hopped out of the brush, and came back and curled up at the feet of his mistress, licking his lips and again his travel-sore paws. In a moment, feeling in his dumb way her loneliness, perhaps, he reached up and laid his pink tongue caressingly upon her brown hand.
Dark came softly and with it a noisy wind that whistled and murmured and at last, growing more boisterous as the night deepened, whooped over her bead and tossed wildly the branches of a clump of trees that grew near. Annie-Many-Ponies listened to the wind and thought it a brother, perhaps, of the night wind that came to the Dakota prairies and caroused there until dawn bade it be still. Too red the blood of her people ran in her veins for her to be afraid of the night, even though she peopled it with dim shapes of her fancy.
After a long while the wind grew chill. Annie-Many-Ponies shivered, and then rose and went to the horse and, reaching into the bundle