Bower, 1874-1940 - The heritage of the Sioux

" 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 dost skelp white folks! " There was a wail in the voice of Happy Jack.

'* They dast if they git the chanst," Applehead 276

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retorted fretfully. " 'E"' 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 A very 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 gave 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.

THE HERITAGE OF THE SIOUX

" 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 278

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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 279

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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 so? 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 280

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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 rim-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 Ap-plehead 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 was not sure to the 281

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point of being able to take oath that it was so. He traced again where the hoofprints had been discovered near the stalled automobile, and signed that the six horses they believed to have belonged to the four who had taken two horses packed with food and blankets — and the stolen money.

Then suddenly Luck remembered that, for proof of his story, he had a page of the Evening Herald in his pocket, torn from a copy he had bought on the streets the evening after the robbery. He pulled the folded paper out, spread it before the other and pointed to the article that told of the robbery. " Call some young man of your tribe who can read," he signed. " Let him read and tell you if I have spoken the truth."

The Indian took the paper and looked at it curiously.

Now, unless Applehead or some other hot-head spoiled things, Luck believed that things would smooth down beautifully. There had been some misunderstanding, evidently — else the Indians would never have manifested all this old-fashioned hostility.

The blanketed one showed himself a true diplo-282

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mat. " Call one of your white men, that there may be two and two," he gestured. And he added, with the first words he had spoken since they met, " Hablo espafiol ? »

Well, if he spoke Spanish, thought Luck, why the deuce hadn't he done it at first ? But there is no fathoming the reticence of an Indian — and Luck, by a sudden impulse, hid his own knowledge of the language. He stood up and turned toward the rocks, cupped his hands around his lips and called for the Native Son. " And leave your rifle at home," he added as an afterthought and in the interests of peace.