B. M. BOWER: Historical Novels, Westerns & Old West Sagas (Illustrated Edition). B. M. Bower
away under the stars. To the rim-rook line that separated this first mesa from the higher one beyond, Luck himself knew the sand-hills well. But beyond the broken line of hills off to the northwest he had never gone—and there lay the territory that belongs to the Navajos, who are a tricky tribe and do not love the white people who buy their rugs and blankets and, so claim the Navajos, steal their cattle and their horses as well.
At the rim of lava rock they made a dry camp and lay down in what comfort they could achieve, to doze and wait for daylight so that they could pick up the trail of the red automobile.
Chapter XI. All this War-Talk About Injuns
Over his second cup of coffee the pale eyes of Big Medicine goggled thoughtfully at the forbidding wall of lava rock that stretched before them as far as he could see to left or right. There were places here and there where he believed that a man could climb to the top with the aid of his hands as well as his feet, but for the horses he was extremely skeptical; and as for a certain big red automobile.... His eyes swung from the brown rampart and rested grievedly upon the impassive face of Luck, who was just then reaching forward to spear another slice of bacon from the frying pan.
“Kinda looks to me, by cripes, as if we’d come to the end uh the trail,” he observed in his usual full-lunged bellow, as though he had all his life been accustomed to pitching his voice above some unending clamor. “Yuh got any idee of how an autyMObile clumb that there rim-rock?”
Old Applehead, squatting on his heels across the little camp-fire, leaned and picked a coal out of the ashes for his pipe and afterwards cocked his eyes toward Big Medicine.
“What yuh calc’late yuh tryin’ to do?” he inquired pettishly. “Start up an argyment uh some kind? Cause if ye air, lemme tell yuh I got the yer-ache from listenin’ to you las’ night.”
Big Medicine looked at him as though he was going to spring upon him in deadly combat—but that was only a peculiar facial trick of his. What he did do was to pour that last swallow of hot, black coffee down his throat and then laugh his big haw-haw-haw that could be heard half a mile off.
“Y’ oughta kep Applehead to home with the wimmin folks, Luck,” he bawled unabashed. “Night air’s bad fer ‘im, and the trail ain’t goin’ to be smooth goin’,—not if we gotta ride our hawses straight up, by cripes!”
“We haven’t got to.” Luck balanced his slice of bacon upon the unscorched side of a bannock and glanced indifferently at the rim of rock that was worrying the other. “I swung down here to make camp off the trail But it’s only a half mile or so over this rise that looks level to you, to where the lava ledge peters out so we can ride over it easier than we rode up off the river-flat in that loose sand. That ease your mind any?”
“Helps some,” Big Medicine admitted, his eyes going speculatively to the rise that looked perfectly level. “I’m willin’ to take your word fer it, boss. But what’s gittin’ to worry me, by cripes, is all this here war-talk about Injuns. Honest to grandma, I feel like as if I’d been readin’—”
“Aw, it’s jest a josh, Bud!” Happy Jack asserted boredly. “I betche there ain’t been a Injun on the fight here sence hell was a tradin’ post!”
“You think there hasn’t?” Luck looked up quickly to ask. But old Applehead rose up and shook an indignant finger at Happy Jack.
“There ain’t, hey? Well, I calc’late that fer a josh, them thar Navvies has got a right keen sense uh humor, and I’ve knowed men to laff theirselves to death on their danged resavation—now I’m tellin’ yuh I It was all a josh mebby, when they riz up a year or two back ‘cause one uh their tribe was goin’ t’ be arrested er some darn thing! Ole General Scott, he didn’t call it no joke when he, went in thar to settle ‘em down, did he? I calc’late, mebby it was jest fer a josh them troops waited on the aidge, ready to go in if he didn’t git back a certain time! ‘N’ that wasn’t so fur back, shorely,—only two years. Why dang your fool heart, I’ve laid out there in them hills myself and fit off the Navvies—‘n’ I didn’t see nothin’ much to laugh at, now I’m tellin’ yuh! Time I went there after Jose Martinez—”
“Better get under way, boys,” Luck interrupted, having heard many times the details of that fight and capture. “We’ll throw out a circle and pick up the trail of that machine, or whatever they made their getaway in. My idea is that they must have stached some horses out here somewhere. I don’t believe they’d take the risk of trying to get away in a machine; that would hold them to the main trails, mostly. I know it wouldn’t be my way of getting outa reach. I’d want horses so I could get into rough country, and I’ve doped it out that Ramon is too trail-wise to bank very high on an automobile once he got out away from town. Applehead, you and Lite and Pink and Weary form one party if it comes to where we want to divide forces. Pack a complete camp outfit on the sorrel and the black—you notice that’s the way I had ‘em packed first. Keep their packs just as we started out, then you’ll be ready to strike out by yourselves whenever it seems best. Get me?”
“We get you, boss,” Weary sang out cheerfully, and went to work gathering up the breakfast things and putting them into two little piles for the packs. Pink led up the black and the sorrel, and helped to pack them with bedding and supplies for four, as Luck had ordered, while Lite and Applehead saddled their horses and then came up to help throw the diamond hitches on the packs.
A couple of rods nearer the rock wall Happy Jack was grumbling, across the canvas pack of a little bay, at Big Medicine, who was warning him against leaving his hair so long as a direct temptation to scalp-lifting. Luck bad already mounted and ridden out a little way, where he could view the country behind them with his field glasses, to make sure that in the darkness they had not passed by anything that deserved a closer inspection. He came back at a lope and motioned to Andy and the Native Son.
“That red automobile is standing back about half a mile,” he announced hurriedly. “Empty and deserted, looks like. We’ll go back and take a look at it. The rest of you can finish packing and wait here till we come back. No use making extra travel for your horses. They’ll get all they need, the chances are.”
The red automobile was empty of everything but the upholstering and a jack in the toolbox. The state license number was gone, and the serial number on the engine had been hammered into illegibility. What tracks there were had been blown nearly full of the white sand of that particular locality There was nothing to be learned there, except the very patent fact that the machine bad been abandoned for some reason. Luck took a look at the engine and saw nothing wrong with it. There was oil and there was “gas”—a whole tank full. Andy and Miguel, riding an ever-widening circle around the machine while Luck was looking for evidence of a breakdown, ran across a lot of hoofprints that seemed to head straight away past the rim-rock and on to the hills.
They picked up the trail of the hoofprints and followed it. When they returned to the others they found the boys all mounted and waiting impatiently like hounds on the leash eager to get away on the chase. Six horses there were, and even old Applehead, who was in a bad humor that morning and seemed to hate agreeing with anyone, admitted that probably the four who had committed the robbery and left town in the machine had been met out here by a man who brought horses for them and one extra pack horse. This explained the number in the most plausible manner, and satisfied everyone that they were on the right trail.
Riding together—since they were on a plain trail and there was nothing to be gained by separating—they climbed to the higher mesa, crossed the ridge of the three barren hills that none of them but Applehead had ever passed, and went on and on and on as the hoofprints led them, straight toward the reservation.
They discussed the robbery from every angle—they could think of, and once or twice someone hazarded a guess at Annie-Many-Ponies’ reason for leaving and her probable destination. They wondered how old Dave Wiswell, the dried little cattleman of The Phantom Herd, was making out in Denver, where he had gone