Bower, 1874-1940 - The heritage of the Sioux

The Indian turned to the rim-rock, held up the fragment of newspaper and called for one whom he called Juan. Presently Juan's Stetson appeared above the ledge, and Juan himself scrambled hastily down the rift and came to them, grinning with his lips and showing a row of beautifully even teeth, and asking suspicious questions with his black eyes that shone through narrowed lids.

Miguel, arriving just then from the opposite direction, sized him up with one heavy-lashed glance and nodded negligently. He had left his 283

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rifle behind him as he had been told, but his six-shooter hung inside the waistband of his trousers where he could grip it with a single drop of his hand. The Native Son, lazy as he looked, was not taking any chances.

The old Indian explained in Navajo to the young man who eyed the two white men while he listened. Of the blanket-vending, depot-haunting type was this young man, with a ready smile and a quick eye for a bargain and a smattering of English learned in his youth at a mission, and a larger vocabulary of Mexican that lent him fluency of speech when the mood to talk was on him. Half of his hair was cut so that it hung even with his ear-lobes. At the back it was long and looped up in the way a horse's tail is looped in muddy weather, and tied with a grimy red ribbon wound round and round it. He wore a green-and-white roughneck sweater broadly striped, and the blue overalls that inevitably follow American civilization into the wild places.

" 'S hot day," he announced unemotionally, and took the paper which the red-blanketed one held out to him. His air of condescension could not 284

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hide the fact that behind his pride at being able to read print he was unhappily aware also of his limitations in the accomplishment. Along the scare-head Luck had indicated, his dirty forefinger moved slowly while he spelled out the words. " A-a-bank rob! " he read triumphantly, and repeated the statement in Spanish. After that he mumbled a good deal of it, the longer words arresting his finger while he struggled with the syllables. But he got the sense of it nevertheless, as Luck and Miguel knew by the version he gave in Spanish to the old Indian, with now and then a ISTavajo word to help out.

When he came to the place where Eamon Chavez and Luis Eojas were named as the thieves, he gave a grunt and looked up at Luck and Miguel, read in their faces that these were the men they sought, and grinned.

" Me, I know them feller," he declared unexpectedly. " Dat day I seen them feller. They go-"

The old Indian touched him on the shoulder, and Juan turned and repeated the statement in Spanish. The old man's eyes went to Luck understandingly 285

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while he asked Juan a question in the Navajo tongue, and afterwards gave a command. He turned his eyes upon the Native Son and spoke in Spanish. " The men you want did not come this way/' he said gravely. " Juan will tell."

" Yes, I know dat Ramon Chavez. I seen him dat day. I'm start for home, an' I seen Ramon Chavez an' dat Luis Eojas an' one white feller — I'm don't know dat feller. They don't got red car. They got big, black car. They come outa corral — scare my horse. They go 'cross railroad. I go 'cross rio. One red car pass me. I go along, bimeby I pass red car in sand. Ramon Chavez, he don't go in dat car. I don't know them feller. Ramon Chavez he go 'cross railroad in big black car."

" Then who was it we've been trailing out this way ? " Luck asked the question in Spanish and glanced from one brown face to the other.

The older Indian shifted his moccasined feet in the sand and looked away. " Indians," he said in Mexican. " You follow, Indians think you maybe take them away — put 'm in jail. All friends of them Indians pretty mad. They come fight you. 286

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I hear, I come to find out what's fighting about."

Luck gazed at him stupidly for a moment until the full meaning of the statement seeped through the ache into his brain. He heaved a great sigh of relief, looked at the Native Son and laughed.

" The joke's on us, I guess," he said. " Go back and tell that to the boys. I'll be along in a minute."

Juan, grinning broadly at what he considered a very good joke on the nine white men who had traveled all this way for nothing, went back to explain the mistake to his fellows on the ledge. The old Indian took it upon himself to disperse the Navajos in the grove, and just as suddenly as the trouble started it was stopped — and the Happy Family, if they had been at all inclined to belittle the danger of their position, were made to realize it when thirty or more Navajos came flocking in from all quarters. Many of them could — and did — talk English understandably, and most of them seemed inclined to appreciate the joke. All save those whom Lite had " nipped and nicked " in the course of their flight from the rock ridge to 287

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the Frying-Pan. These were inclined to be peevish over their hurts and to nurse them in sullen silence while Luck, having a rudimentary knowl-'' edge of medicine and surgery, gave them what first-aid treatment was possible.

Applehead, having plenty of reasons for avoiding publicity, had gone into retirement in the shade of a clump of brush, with Lite to keep him company while he smoked a meditative pipe or two and studied the puzzle of Eamon's probable "whereabouts.

" Can't trust a E"awy," he muttered in a discreet undertone to Lite. " I've fit 'em b'fore now, V I know. 'N' you kin be dang sure they ain't fergot the times I've fit 'em, neither! There's bucks millin' around here that's jes' achin' fer a chanst at me, t' pay up fer some I've killed off when I was shurf 'n' b'fore. So you keep 'n eye peeled, Lite, whilst I think out this yere dang move uh Ramon's. 'N' if you see anybody sneakin' up on me, you git him. I cain't watch Nawyies 'n' mill things over in m' haid at the same time."

Lite grinned and wriggled over so that his back 288

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was against a rock. He laid his six-shooter ostentatiously across his lap and got out his tobacco and papers. " Go ahead and think, Applehead," he consented placidly. " I'll guard your scalp-lock."

Speaking literally, Applehead had no scalp-lock to guard. But he did have a shrewd understanding of the mole-like workings of the criminal mind; and with his own mind free to work on the problem, he presently declared that he would bet he could land Ramon Chavez in jail within a week; and sent Lite after Luck.

" I've got it figgered out," he announced when Luck came over to his retreat. " If Ramon crossed the railroad he was aimin' t' hit out across the mesa to the mountains 'n' beyond. He wouldn't go south, 'cause he could be traced among the Injun pueblos — they's a thousand eyes down that way b'fore he'd git t' wild country. He'd keep away from the valley country — er I would, if I was him. I know dang well whar I'd hit fer if I was makin' a gitaway 'n' didn't come off over here — 'n' I shore would keep outa Navvy country, now I'm tellin' yuh! No, sir, I'd take out t' other way, through Hell Canon er Tijeras, 'n' I'd make-289

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fer the Jemes country. That tliar's plenty wild 'n' rough — 'n' come t' think of it, the Chavez boys owns quite a big grant, up in there som'ers, 'n' have got men in their pay up thar, runnin' their cattle. Ramon could lay low fer a dang long while up thar 'n' be safer'n what he would be out amongst strangers.

" ']SP another thing, I'd plan t' have some bosses stached out in one uh them canons, ? n' I'd mebby use a autymobile t' git to 'em, 'n' send the car back t' town — if I could trust the feller that drove it outa my sight. 'N', Luck, if you'll take my advice, you'll hit out t'wards the Jemes country. I know every foot uh the way, 'n' we kin make it in a coupla days by pushin' the bosses. 'N' I'll bet every dang hoof I own 't we round up that bunch over thar som'ers."