by B. M. Bower
CHAPTER XIX. PEACE TALK
Across the Frying-pan an Indian stood boldly out upon a jutting point ofrock and raised a hand in the sweeping upward motion of the peace-sign.The questing bullets that came seeking for bone and flesh among therocks and bushes came no more when the signal was passed from thosewho saw to those farther back who could not see the figure silhouettedagainst the brilliant blue of the sky. A moment he stood, made the signagain, and waited.
"That's peace-sign, sure as you're born!" Luck cried breathlessly, andwent 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 andnot 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 takenthree 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 upfor his daily confab with his adopted son, gave back the sign with ahand that trembled noticeably. Whereupon the Indian on the farther rimturned and began dignifiedly to climb through a rift in the ledge downinto the Frying-pan.
"He wants a pow-wow," Luck called back to the bunch. "You fellows staywhere 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," Appleheadprotested anxiously. "Injuns is tricky--"
"That's all right. You can keep a couple of rifles sighted on that oldchief--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. Iknow Injuns better than you do, Applehead. He just wants to talk thingsover--and I'm certainly willing that he should!"
"Well, Lite, you keep your sights lined up on that Injun, then. 'N' ifthey'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 faceadmonishingly. "'S all right t' nip "em here 'n' take a hunk out therejest 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 ifthis here's a trick t' git Luck, you KILL that Injun. 'N' if you don'tdo 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 lookin his eyes told them that the Indian was doomed at the first sign oftreachery.
"You fellers wanta keep an eye peeled fer them in the grove," Appleheadwarned. "We ain't goin' t' give 'em no chanst t' sneak up 'n' skulp uswhilst we're watchin' Luck 'n' his dang-fool pow-wowin' out there in themiddle."
"Aw, gwan! They wouldn't DAST skelp white folks!" There was a wail inthe 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 yereyes open, now I'm tellin' yuh!" He refilled his rifle magazine and tookup his station beside Lite Avery where he could watch the Frying-panthrough the bushes without exposing himself to a treacherous shot fromthe rim-rock.
At the foot of the sandstone ledge the Indian stood with his bright redblanket wrapped around him watching Luck. On his own side Luck stoodjust clear of the rock huddle and watched the Indian. Presently he ofthe red blanket lifted his hand in the gesture of peace, and starteddeliberately out across the bare little basin. From his own side, Luck,returning again the gesture, went out to meet him. In the center theymet, and eyed each other frankly. Still eyeing Luck, the old Indian putout his hand Indian fashion, and Luck grave it one downward shake andlet go.
"How?" he grunted; and in the Indian custom of preparing for a leisurelypow-wow as he had been taught by the Sioux, he squatted upon his bootheels and reached for his cigarette papers and tobacco.
"How?" replied the Navajo, a flicker of interest in his eyes atthese little Indian touches in Luck's manner, and sat himself downcross-legged on the hot sand. Luck rolled a cigarette and passed the"makings" to the other, who received it gravely and proceeded to helphimself. Luck scratched a match on a stone that lay beside him, lightedthe Indian's cigarette and then his own, took four puffs and blew thesmoke upward, watching it spread and drift away, and made the gesturethat meant "Our pow-wow will be good," as he had seen the Sioux medicinemen do before a council. Afterwards he began placidly to smoke andmeditate.
From his manner you would never have guessed that his life and the livesof the Happy Family hung upon the outcome of this meeting. You would nothave surmised that his stomach was gnawing at his nerves, sending outinsistently the call for food; or that his thirst tormented him; or thatthe combination of hunger, heat, thirst and mental strain had bred ajumping headache that was knotting the veins in his temples. All thesenagging miseries beset him--but he knew the ways of the Indians andhe meant to impress this old man first of all with his plains-Indiantraining; 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'svision blurred with the pain that throbbed behind his eyes. But thefacial discipline of the actor was his to command, and he permitted hisface to give no sign of what he felt or thought.
The Indian leaned slowly, lifted a brown hand, made a studied gestureor two and waited, his eyes fixed unwinkingly upon Luck. It was as ifhe were saying to himself: "We'll see if this white man can speak in thesign-talk of the Indians."
Luck lifted his two hands, drew them slowly apart to say that he hadcome a long way. Then, using only his hands--sometimes his fingersonly--he began to talk; to tell the old Navajo that he and eight otherwhite men were sheriffs and that they were chasing four white men (sincehe had no sign that meant Mexican) who had stolen money; that they hadcome from Albuquerque--and there he began to draw in the sand betweenthem a crude but thoroughly understandable sketch of the trail they hadtaken and the camps they had made, and the distance they believed thefour thieves had travelled ahead of them.
He marked the camp where their horses had been stolen from them andtold how long they had waited there until the horses of their own accordreturned to camp; thirteen horses, he explained to the old Navajo. Hedrew a rough square to indicate the square butte, sketched the fork ofthe trail there and told how four men had turned to the north on a falsetrail, while he and four others had gone around the southern end of thehill. He calmly made plain that at the end of both false trails a traphad been laid, that Indians had fired upon white men and for no justcause. Why was this go? Why had Indians surrounded them back there inthe grove and tried to kill them? Why were Indians shooting at them fromthe ledge of rocks that circled this little basin? They had no quarrelwith the Navajos. They were chasing thieves, to take them to jail.
Folded swelteringly in his red blanket the old Indian sat humped forwarda little, smoking slowly his cigarette and studying the sketch Luck haddrawn 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 hisface betray any emotion at all. Up on the Tim-rock brown faces peereddown steadfastly at the pow-wow. And back among the rocks and bushesthe Happy Family waited restively with eyes turning in all directionsguarding against treachery; and Lite, whose bullets always went straightto the spot where they were aimed, stood and stared fixedly over hisrifle sights at the red-blanketed figure squatted in the sand and kepthis finger crooked upon the trigger. Beside him Applehead fidgeted andgrumbled and called Luck names for being so dang slow, and wondered ifthose two out there meant to sit and chew the rag all day.
The Indian leaned and traced Luck's trail slowly with his finger. Didthe four white men come that way? he asked in sign. And then, had Luckseen them? Was he sure that he was following the four who had stolenmoney in Albuquerque?
Come to think of it, Luck was not sure to the point of being able totake oath that it was so. He traced again where the hoofprints had beendiscov
ered near the stalled automobile, and signed that the six horsesthey believed to have belonged to the four who had taken two horsespacked with food and blankets--and the stolen money.
Then suddenly Luck remembered that, for proof of his story, he had apage of the Evening Herald in his pocket, torn from a copy he had boughton the streets the evening after the robbery. He pulled the folded paperout, spread it before the other and pointed to the article that toldof the robbery. "Call some young man of your tribe who can read," hesigned. "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, Luckbelieved that things would smooth down beautifully. There had beensome misunderstanding, evidently--else the Indiana would never havemanifested all this old-fashioned hostility.
The blanketed one showed himself a true diplomat. "Call one of yourwhite men, that there may be two and two," he gestured. And he added,with the first words he had spoken since they met, "Hablo espanol?"
Well, if he spoke Spanish, thought Luck, why the deuce hadn't he doneit at first? But there is no fathoming the reticence of an Indian--andLuck, by a sudden impulse, hid his own knowledge of the language. Hestood up and turned toward the rocks, cupped his hands around his lipsand called for the Native Son. "And leave your rifle at home," he addedas an afterthought and in the interests of peace.
The Indian turned to the rim-rock, held up the fragment of newspaper andcalled for one whom he called Juan. Presently Juan's Stetson appearedabove the ledge, and Juan himself scrambled hastily down the rift andcame to them, grinning with his lips and showing a row of beautifullyeven teeth, and asking suspicious questions with his black eyes thatshone through narrowed lids.
Miguel, arriving just then from the opposite direction, sized him upwith one heavy-lashed glance and nodded negligently. He had left hisrifle behind him as he had been told, but his six-shooter hung insidethe waistband of his trousers where he could grip it with a singledrop of his hand. The Native Son, lazy as he looked, was not taking anychances.
The old Indian explained in Navajo to the young man who eyed the twowhite men while he listened. Of the blanket-vending, depot-haunting typewas this young man, with a ready smile and a quick eye for a bargain anda smattering of English learned in his youth at a mission, and a largervocabulary of Mexican that lent him fluency of speech when the mood totalk was on him. Half of his hair was cut so that it hung even with hisear-lobes. At the back it was long and looped up in the way a horse'stail is looped in muddy weather, and tied with a grimy red ribbon woundround and round it. He wore a green-and-white roughneck sweaterbroadly striped, and the blue overalls that inevitably follow Americancivilization into the wild places.
"'S hot day," he announced unemotionally, and took the paper which thered-blanketed one held out to him. His air of condescension could nothide the fact that behind his pride at being able to read print he wasunhappily aware also of his limitations in the accomplishment. Along thescare-head Luck had indicated, his dirty forefinger moved slowly whilehe spelled out the words. "A-a-bank rob!" he read triumphantly, andrepeated the statement in Spanish. After that he mumbled a good dealof it, the longer words arresting his finger while he struggled with thesyllables. But he got the sense of it nevertheless, as Luck and Miguelknew by the version he gave in Spanish to the old Indian, with now andthen a Navajo word to help out.
When he came to the place where Ramon Chavez and Luis Rojas were namedas the thieves, he gave a grunt and looked up at Luck and Miguel, readin, their faces that these were the men they sought, and grinned.
"Me, I know them feller," he declared unexpectedly. "Dat day I seen themfeller. They go--"
The old Indian touched him on the shoulder, and Juan turned andrepeated the statement in Spanish. The old man's eyes went to luckunderstandingly, while he asked Juan a question in the Navajo tongue,and afterwards gave a command. He turned his eyes upon the Native Sonand spoke in Spanish. "The men you want did not come this way," he saidgravely. "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 Rojas an' one white feller I'mdon'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 insand. 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 thequestion in Spanish and glanced from one brown face to the other.
The older Indian shifted his moccasined feet in the sand and lookedaway. "Indians," he said in Mexican. "You follow, Indians think youmaybe take them away--put 'm in jail. All friends of them Indians prettymad. They come fight you. I hear, I come to find out what's fightingabout."
Luck gazed at him stupidly for a moment until the full meaning of thestatement seeped through the ache into his brain. He heaved a greatsigh of relief, looked at the Native Son and laughed.
"The joke's on us, I guess," he said. "Go, back and tell that to theboys. I'll be along in a minute."
Juan, grinning broadly at what he considered a very good joke on thenine white men who had traveled all this way for nothing, went back toexplain the mistake to his fellows on the ledge. The old Indian took itupon himself to disperse the Navajos in the grove, and just as suddenlyas the trouble started it was stopped--and the Happy Family, if they hadbeen at all inclined to belittle the danger of their position, weremade to realize it when thirty or more Navajos came flocking in from allquarters. Many of them could--and did--talk English understandably, andmost of them seemed inclined to appreciate the joke. All save those whomLite had "nipped and nicked" in the course of their flight from the rockridge to the Frying-Pan. These were inclined to be peevish overtheir hurts and to nurse them in sullen silence while Luck, having arudimentary knowledge of medicine and surgery, gave them what firstaidtreatment was possible.
Applehead, having plenty of reasons for avoiding publicity, had goneinto retirement in the shade of a clump of brush, with Lite to keep himcompany while he smoked a meditative pipe or two and studied the puzzleof Ramon's probable whereabouts.
"Can't trust a Navvy," he muttered in a discreet undertone to Lite."I've fit 'em b'fore now, 'n' I KNOW. 'N' you kin be dang sure theyain'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 someI'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 seeanybody sneakin' up on me, you GIT him. I cain't watch Navvyies 'n' millthings over in m' haid at the same time."
Lite grinned and wriggled over so that his back was against a rock.He laid his six-shooter Ostentatiously across his lap and got outhis tobacco and papers. "Go ahead and think, Applehead," he consentedplacidly. "I'll guard your scalp-lock."
Speaking literally, Applehead had no scalplock to guard. But he did havea shrewd understanding of the mole-like workings of the criminal mind;and with his own mind free to work on the problem, he presently declaredthat he would bet he could land Ramon Chavez in jail within a week, andsent Lite after Luck.
"I've got it figgered out," he announced when Luck came over to hisretreat. "If Ramon crossed the railroad he was aimin' t' hit out acrossthe mesa to the mountains 'n' beyond. He wouldn't go south, 'cause hecould 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 valleycountry--er I would, if I was him. I know dang well whar I'D hit fer ifI was makin' a gitaway 'n' didn't come off over here--'n' I shore wouldkeep outa Navvy country, now I'm tellin' yuh! No, sir, I'd take outt'other way, through Hell Canon er Tijeras, 'n' I'd make fer the Jemescountry. That thar's plenty wild 'n' rough--'n' come t' think of it, theChavez boys owns quite a big grant, up in there som'ers, 'n' have gotmen in their pay up thar,
runnin' their cattle. Ramon could lay low fera dang long while up thar 'n' be safer'n what he would be out amongststrangers.
"'N' another thing, I'd plan t' have some hosses stached out in one uhthem canons, 'n' I'd mebby use a autymobile t' git to 'em, 'n' send thecar back t' town--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 Jemescountry. I know every foot uh the way, 'n' we kin make it in a coupladays by pushin' the hosses. 'N' I'll bet every dang hoof I own 't weround up that bunch over thar som'ers."
"You lead out, then," Luck told him promptly. "I'm willing to admityou're better qualified to take charge of the outfit than I am. You knowthe country--and you've fit Indians."
"We-ell, now, you're dang right I have! 'N' if some them bucks don't gooff 'n' mind their own business, I'll likely fight a few morel You shoo'em outa camp, Luck, 'n' start 'em about their own dang business. 'N'we'll eat a bite 'n' git on about our own. If we show up any grub whilstthis bunch is hangin' around we'll have t' feed 'em--'n' you know dangwell we ain't got enough skurcely fer the Jemes trip as it is."
"I've been handing out money as it is till I'm about broke," Luckconfessed, "making presents to those fellows that came in with bulletsin their legs and arms. Funny nobody got hit in the body--except onepoor devil that got shot in the shoulder."
"We-ell, now, you kin blame Lite's dang tender heart fer that there,"Applehead accused, pulling at his sunbrowned mustache. "We was allcomin' on the jump, 'n' so was the Injuns; 'n' it was purty long range'n' nobody but lite could hit 'n Injun t' save his soul. 'N' Lite,he wouldn't shoot t' kill--he jes' kep' on nippin' an' nickin', 'n'shootin' a boss now an' then. I wisht I was the expert shot Lite is--I'dshore a got me a few Navvies back there, now I'm tellin' yuh!"
"Bud's got a bullet in his arm," Luck said, "but the bone wasn't hit, sohe'll make out, and one of the pack-horses was shot in the ear. We gotoff mighty lucky, and I'm certainly glad Lite didn't get careless. Costme about fifty dollars to square us as it is. You stay where you are,Applehead, till I get rid of the Indians. The old fellow acts like hefeels he ought to stick along till we're outa here. He's kind of taken anotion to me because I can talk sign, and he seems to want to make surewe don't mix it again with the tribe. Some of them are kinda peeved,all right. You've got no quarrel with this old fellow, have you? He'sa big-league medicine man in the tribe, and his Spanish name is MarianoPablo Montoya. Know him?"
"No I don't, 'n' I don't keer to neither," Applehead retorted crossly."Shoo 'em off, Luck, so's we kin eat. My belly's shore a floppin' aginm' backbone, 'n' I'm tellin' yuh right!"