B. M. BOWER: Historical Novels, Westerns & Old West Sagas (Illustrated Edition). B. M. Bower
an Indian stood boldly out upon a jutting point of rock and raised a hand in the sweeping upward motion of the peace-sign. The questing bullets that came seeking for bone and flesh among the rocks and bushes came no more when the signal was passed from those who saw to those farther back who could not see the figure silhouetted against the brilliant blue of the sky. A moment he stood, made the sign again, and waited.
“That’s peace-sign, sure as you’re born!” Luck cried breathlessly, and went scrambling through the bushes to where he might stand in the open, on the very rim of the basin. Applehead yelled to him to come back and not make a dang fool of himself, but luck gave no heed to the warning. He stood out in the blazing sunshine and gave the peace-sign in reply.
On the-rim rock the Indian stood motionless while he might have taken three or four breaths. Then with his hand he gave the sign for “pow-wow” and waited again.
Luck, his pulse thrilling at the once familiar gesture which his tribal “father,” old chief Big Turkey, used to give when he came stalking up for his daily confab with his adopted son, gave back the sign with a hand that trembled noticeably. Whereupon the Indian on the farther rim turned and began dignifiedly to climb through a rift in the ledge down into the Frying-pan.
“He wants a pow-wow,” Luck called back to the bunch. “You fellows stay where you’re at I’m going out there in the middle and talk to him.”
“Now, Luck, don’t let ‘em make a dang monkey outa ye,” Applehead protested anxiously. “Injuns is tricky—”
“That’s all right. You can keep a couple of rifles sighted on that old chief—that’s what he is, I take it, from his actions and his talking ‘sign’ and then if they pot me, you can pot him. But they won’t. I know Injuns better than you do, Applehead. He just wants to talk things over—and I’m certainly willing that he should!”
“Well, Lite, you keep your sights lined up on that Injun, then. ‘N’ if they’s a crooked move made towards Luck, you cut loose—‘n’ say! You shoot to kill, this time!” He shook his finger in Lite’s face admonishingly. “‘S all right t’ nip “em here ‘n’ take a hunk out there jest t’ kinda take their minds off’n us—-’s all right enough so fur, ‘n’ I ain’t kickin’ none ‘cause yuh ain’t killed off yuh hit. But if this here’s a trick t’ git Luck, you KILL that Injun. ‘N’ if you don’t do it I’ll go out there m’self ‘n’ choke the dang skunk t’ death!”
“I’ll kill him—don’t worry about that,” Lite promised—and the look in his eyes told them that the Indian was doomed at the first sign of treachery.
“You fellers wanta keep an eye peeled fer them in the grove,” Applehead warned. “We ain’t goin’ t’ give ‘em no chanst t’ sneak up ‘n’ skulp us whilst we’re watchin’ Luck ‘n’ his dang-fool pow-wowin’ out there in the middle.”
“Aw, gwan! They wouldn’t DAST skelp white folks!” There was a wail in the voice of Happy Jack.
“They dast if they git the chanst,” Applehead retorted fretfully. “‘N’ if you don’t wanta loose that there red mop uh yourn ye better keep yer eyes open, now I’m tellin’ yuh!” He refilled his rifle magazine and took up his station beside Lite Avery where he could watch the Frying-pan through the bushes without exposing himself to a treacherous shot from the rim-rock.
At the foot of the sandstone ledge the Indian stood with his bright red blanket wrapped around him watching Luck. On his own side Luck stood just clear of the rock huddle and watched the Indian. Presently he of the red blanket lifted his hand in the gesture of peace, and started deliberately out across the bare little basin. From his own side, Luck, returning again the gesture, went out to meet him. In the center they met, and eyed each other frankly. Still eyeing Luck, the old Indian put out his hand Indian fashion, and Luck grave it one downward shake and let go.
“How?” he grunted; and in the Indian custom of preparing for a leisurely pow-wow as he had been taught by the Sioux, he squatted upon his boot heels and reached for his cigarette papers and tobacco.
“How?” replied the Navajo, a flicker of interest in his eyes at these little Indian touches in Luck’s manner, and sat himself down cross-legged on the hot sand. Luck rolled a cigarette and passed the “makings” to the other, who received it gravely and proceeded to help himself. Luck scratched a match on a stone that lay beside him, lighted the Indian’s cigarette and then his own, took four puffs and blew the smoke upward, watching it spread and drift away, and made the gesture that meant “Our pow-wow will be good,” as he had seen the Sioux medicine men do before a council. Afterwards he began placidly to smoke and meditate.
From his manner you would never have guessed that his life and the lives of the Happy Family hung upon the outcome of this meeting. You would not have surmised that his stomach was gnawing at his nerves, sending out insistently the call for food; or that his thirst tormented him; or that the combination of hunger, heat, thirst and mental strain had bred a jumping headache that was knotting the veins in his temples. All these nagging miseries beset him—but he knew the ways of the Indians and he meant to impress this old man first of all with his plains-Indian training; so he schooled himself to patience.
The Indian eyed him furtively from under heavy eyebrows while he smoked. And the sun beat savagely down upon the sand of that basin, and Luck’s vision blurred with the pain that throbbed behind his eyes. But the facial discipline of the actor was his to command, and he permitted his face to give no sign of what he felt or thought.
The Indian leaned slowly, lifted a brown hand, made a studied gesture or two and waited, his eyes fixed unwinkingly upon Luck. It was as if he were saying to himself: “We’ll see if this white man can speak in the sign-talk of the Indians.”
Luck lifted his two hands, drew them slowly apart to say that he had come a long way. Then, using only his hands—sometimes his fingers only—he began to talk; to tell the old Navajo that he and eight other white men were sheriffs and that they were chasing four white men (since he had no sign that meant Mexican) who had stolen money; that they had come from Albuquerque—and there he began to draw in the sand between them a crude but thoroughly understandable sketch of the trail they had taken and the camps they had made, and the distance they believed the four thieves had travelled ahead of them.
He marked the camp where their horses had been stolen from them and told how long they had waited there until the horses of their own accord returned to camp; thirteen horses, he explained to the old Navajo. He drew a rough square to indicate the square butte, sketched the fork of the trail there and told how four men had turned to the north on a false trail, while he and four others had gone around the southern end of the hill. He calmly made plain that at the end of both false trails a trap had been laid, that Indians had fired upon white men and for no just cause. Why was this go? Why had Indians surrounded them back there in the grove and tried to kill them? Why were Indians shooting at them from the ledge of rocks that circled this little basin? They had no quarrel with the Navajos. They were chasing thieves, to take them to jail.
Folded swelteringly in his red blanket the old Indian sat humped forward a little, smoking slowly his cigarette and studying the sketch Luck had drawn for him. With aching head and parched throat and hungry stomach, Luck sat cross-legged on the hot sand and waited, and would not let his face betray any emotion at all. Up on the Tim-rock brown faces peered down steadfastly at the pow-wow. And back among the rocks and bushes the Happy Family waited restively with eyes turning in all directions guarding against treachery; and Lite, whose bullets always went straight to the spot where they were aimed, stood and stared fixedly over his rifle sights at the red-blanketed figure squatted in the sand and kept his finger crooked upon the trigger. Beside him Applehead fidgeted and grumbled and called Luck names for being so dang slow, and wondered if those two out there meant to sit and chew the rag all day.
The Indian leaned and traced Luck’s trail slowly with his finger. Did the four white men come that way? he asked in sign. And then, had Luck seen them? Was he sure that he was following the four who had stolen money in Albuquerque?
Come to think of it, Luck