B. M. BOWER: Historical Novels, Westerns & Old West Sagas (Illustrated Edition). B. M. Bower
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.
Chapter XIII. Set Afoot
The tracks of the six horses led down into a rock-bottomed arroyo so deep in most places that all view of the surrounding mesa was shut off completely, save where the ragged tops of a distant line of hills pushed up into the dazzling blue of the sky. The heat, down here among the rocks, was all but unbearable; and when they discovered that no tracks led out of the arroyo on the farther side, the Happy Family dismounted and walked to save their horses while they