CHAPTER XIV. ONE PUT OVER ON THE BUNCH
"Sounds to me," volunteered the irrepressible Big Medicine after a heavysilence, "like as if you'd gone to sleep on your hawse, Little One, anddreamed that there tinkle-tinkle stuff. By cripes, I'd like to see thebell-hawse that could walk away from ME 'nless I was asleep an' dreamin'about it. Sounds like--"
"Sounds like Navvy work," Applehead put in, eyeing the surrounding rimof sun-gilded mesa, where little brown birds fluttered in short, swiftflights and chirped with exasperating cheerfulness.
"If it was anybody, it was Ramon Chavez," Luck declared with thepositiveness of his firm conviction. "By the tracks here, we're crowdingup on him. And no man that's guilty of a crime, Applehead, is going toride day after day without wanting to take a look over his shoulderto see if be's followed. He's probably seen us from some of theseridges--yesterday, most likely. And do you think he wouldn't know thisbunch as far as he could see us, even without glasses? The chances arehe has them, though. He'd be a fool if he didn't stake himself to apair."
"Say, by gracious," Andy observed somewhat irrelevantly, his eyes goingover the group, "this would sure make great picture dope, wouldn't it?Why didn't we bring Pete along, darn it? Us all standing around here,plumb helpless because we're afoot--"
"Aw, shut up!" snapped Pink, upon whom the burden of responsibilitylay heavy. "I oughta be hung for laying around the fire here instead ofbeing out there on guard! I oughta--"
"It ain't your fault," Weary championed him warmly. "We all heard thebell--"
"Yes--and damn it,_I_ heard the bell from then on till daylight!" Pink'slips quivered perceptibly with the mortification that burned within him."If I'd been on guard--"
"Well, I calc'late you'd a been laid out now with a knife-cut in yuhsom'ers," Applehead stopped twisting his sunburnt mustache to saybluntly. "'S a dang lucky thing fer you, young man, 't you WASN'T onguard, 'n' the only thing't looks queer to me is that you wasn't pottedlas' night when yuh got out away from here. Musta been only one of 'emstayed behind, an' he had t' keep out in front uh yuh t' tinkle thatdang bell. Figgered on wearin' out yer hoss, I reckon, 'n' didn'tskurcely dare t' take the risk uh killin' you off 'nless they was abunch around t' handle us." His bright blue eyes with their range squintwent from one to another with a certain speculative pride in the glance."'N' they shore want t' bring a crowd along when they tie into this yereoutfit, now I'm tellin' yuh!"
Lite Avery, who had gone prowling down the draw by himself, came backto camp, tilting stiff-leggedly along in his high-heeled boots andbetraying, in every step he took, just how handicapped a cowpuncher iswhen set afoot upon the range and forced to walk where he has alwaysbeen accustomed to ride. He stopped to give Pink's exhausted horse asympathetic pat on the shoulder, and came on, grinning a little with thecomers of his mouth tipped down.
"Here's what's left of the hobbles the buckskin wore," he said, holdingup the cut loops of a figure-eight rope hobble. "Kinda speaks foritself, don't it?"
They crowded around to inspect this plain evidence of stealing.Afterwards they stood hard-eyed and with a flush on their cheek-bones,considering what was the best and wisest way to meet this emergency. Asto hunting afoot for their horses, the chance of success was almosttoo small to be considered at all, Pink's horse was not fit for furthertravel until he had rested. There was one pair of field glasses--andthere were nine irate men to whom inaction was intolerable.
"One thing we can do, if we have to," Luck said at last, with thefighting look in his face which moving-picture people had cause toremember. "We can help ourselves to any horses we run across. Applehead,how's the best way to go about it?"
Applehead, thus pushed into leadership, chewed his mustache and eyed themesa sourly. "Well, seein' they've set us afoot, I calc'late we'rejest about entitled to any dang thing we run across that's ridable," heacceded. "'N' the way I'd do, would be to git on high groun' with themglasses 'n' look fer hosses. 'N' then head fer 'em 'n' round 'em upafoot 'n' rope out what we want. They's enough of us t' mebby git amount apiece, but it shore ain't goin' t' be no snap, now I'm tellin'ye. 'N' if yuh do that," he added, "yuh want t' leave a man er two incamp--'n' they want to keep their dang eyes peeled, lemme tell yuh! Efwe was t' find ourselves afoot an' our grub 'n' outfit stole--"
"We won't give them that chance at us." Luck was searching with his eyesfor the nearest high point that was yet not too far from camp. "I thinkI'll just take Andy up on that pinnacle there, and camp down by thatpile of boulders. The rest of you stay around camp and rest yourselveswhile you've got the chance. In a couple of hours, Applehead, you andLite come up and take our place; then Miguel and Bud, and after thatWeary and Happy. Pink, you go and bed down in the shade somewhere and goto sleep--and quit worrying over last night. Nobody could have doneany better than you did. It was just one put over on the bunch, and youhappened to be the particular goat, that's all.
"Now, if one of us waves his hat over his head, all of you but Happy andBud and Pink come up with your rifles and your ropes, because we'll havesome horses sighted. If we wave from side to side, like this, about evenwith our belts, you boys want to look out for trouble. So one of youkeep an eye on us all the time we're up there. We'll be up outa reachof any trouble ourselves, if I remember that little pinnacle right."He hung the strap that held the leather case of the glasses over oneshoulder, picked up his rifle and his rope and started off, with Andysimilarly equipped coming close behind him.
The mesa, when they reached the pinnacle and looked down over the wideexpanse of it, glimmered like clear, running water with the heat wavesthat rose from the sand. Away to the southward a scattered band of sheepshowed in a mirage that made them look long-legged as camels and halfconvinced them both that they were seeing the lost horses, until thevision changed and shrunk the moving objects to mere dots upon the mesa.
Often before they had watched the fantastic air-pictures of the desertmirage, and they knew well enough that what they saw might be one mileaway or twenty. But unless the atmospheric conditions happened to bejust right, what was pictured in the air could not be depended uponto portray truthfully what was reflected. They sat there and saw theanimals suddenly grow clearly defined and very close, and discovered atlast that they were sheep, and that a man was walking beside the flock;and even while they watched it and wondered if the sheep were reallyas close as they seemed, the vision slowly faded into blank, waverydistance and the mesa lay empty and quivering under the sun.
"Fine chance we've got of locating anything," Andy grumbled, "if it'sgoing to be miragy all day. We could run our fool heads off trying toget up to a bunch that would puff out into nothing. Makes a fellow thinkof the stories they tell about old prospectors going crazy trying tofind mirage water-holes. I'm glad we didn't get hung up at a dry camp,Luck. Yuh realize what that would be like?"
"Oh, I may have some faint idea," Luck drawled whimsically. "Look overthere, Andy over toward Albuquerque. Is that a mirage again, or do yousee something moving?"
Andy, having the glasses, swung them slowly to the southeast. After aminute or two he shook his head and gave the glasses to Luck. "Therewas one square look I got, and I'd been willing to swear it was oursaddle-bunch," he said. "And then they got to wobbling and I couldn'tmake out what they are. They might be field mice, or they might begiraffes--I'm darned if I know which."
Luck focussed the glasses, but whatever the objects had been, they wereno longer to be seen. So the two hours passed and they saw Applehead andLite come slowly up the hill from camp bearing their rifles and theirropes and a canteen of fresh water, as the three things they might findmost use for.
These two settled themselves to watch for horses--their own rangehorses. When they were relieved they reported nothing save a continuedinclination on the part of the atmosphere to be what Andy called miragy.So, the day passed, chafing their spirits worse than any amount ofactive trouble would have done. Pink slept and brooded by turns, stillblaming himself for the misfortune. The others moped, or took
theirturns on the pinnacle to strain their eyes unavailingly into the fourcorners of the earth--or as much as they could in those directions.
With the going of the sun Applehead and Lite, sitting out their secondguard on the pinnacle, discussed seriously the desperate idea of goingin the night to the nearest Navajo ranch and helping themselves to whathorses they could find about the place. The biggest obstacle was theirabsolute ignorance of where the nearest ranch lay. Not, surely, thathalf-day's ride back towards Albuquerque, where they had seen but onepony and that a poor specimen of horseflesh. Another obstacle would bethe dogs, which could be quieted only with bullets.
"We might git hold of something to ride," Applehead stated glumly, "an'then agin the chances is we wouldn't git nothin' more'n a scrap on ourhands. 'N' I'm tellin' yuh right now, Lite, I ain't hankerin' fer nofuss till I git a hoss under me."
"Me either," Lite testified succinctly. "Say, is that something coming,away up that draw the camp's in? Seems to me I saw something pass thatline of lava, about half a mile over."
Applehead stood up and peered into the half darkness. In a couple ofminutes he said: "Ye better git down an' tell the boys t' be on thewatch, Lite. They can't see no hat-wavin' this time uh day. They'ssomethin' movin' up to-wards camp, but what er who they be I can't makeout in the dark. Tell Luck--"
"What's the matter with us both going?" Lite asked, cupping his handsaround his eyes that he might see better. "It's getting too dark to doany good up here--"
"Well, I calc'late mebby yore right," Applehead admitted, and began topick his way down over the rocks. "Ef them's Injuns, the bigger we stackup in camp the better. If it's Ramon 'n' his bunch, I want t' git m'hands on 'im."
He must have turned the matter over pretty thoroughly in his mind,for when the two reached camp he had his ideas fixed and his plans allperfected. He told Luck that somebody was working down the draw in thedark, and that it looked like a Navvy trick; and that they had betterbe ready for them, because they weren't coming just to pass the time ofday--"now I'm tellin' ye!"
The nerves of the Happy Family were raw enough by now to welcomeanything that promised action; even an Indian fight would not be so mucha disaster as a novel way of breaking the monotony. Applehead, with theexperience gathered in the old days when he was a young fellow with afreighting outfit and old Geronimo was terrorizing all this country,sent them back in compact half circle just within the shelter of thetrees and several rods away from their campfire and the waterhole.There, lying crouched behind their saddles with their rifles across theseat-sides and with ammunition belts full of cartridges, they waited forwhatever might be coming in the dark.
"It's horses," Pink exclaimed under his breath, as faint sounds camedown the draw. "Maybe--"
"Horses--and an Injun laying along the back of every one, most likely,"Applehead returned grimly. "An old Navvy trick, that is--don't let'em fool ye, boys! You jest wait, 'n' I'll tell ye 'when t' shoot, erwhether t' shoot at all. They can't fool ME--now I'm tellin' yuh!"
After that they were silent, listening strainedly to the growing soundsof approach. There was the dull, unmistakable click of a hoof strikingagainst a rock, the softer sound of treading on yielding soil. Then ablur of dark objects became visible, moving slowly and steadily towardthe camp.
"Aw, it's just horses," Happy Jack muttered disgustedly.
Applehead stretched a lean leg in his direction and gave Happy Jack akick. "They're cunnin'," he hissed warningly. "Don't yuh be fooled--"
"That's Johnny in the lead," Pink whispered excitedly. "I'd know the wayhe walks--"
"'N' you THOUGHT yuh knowed how he jingled his dang bell," Appleheadretorted unkindly. "Sh-sh-sh--"
Reminded by the taunt of the clever trick that had been played uponthem the night before, the Happy Family stiffened again into strained,waiting silence, their rifles aimed straight at the advancing objects.These, still vague in the first real darkness of early night, movedsteadily in a scattered group behind a leader that was undoubtedlyJohnny of the erstwhile tinkling bell. He circled the campfire justwithout its radius of light, so that they could not tell whether anIndian lay along his back, and beaded straight for the water-hole. Theothers followed him, and not one came into the firelight--a detail whichsharpened the suspicions of the men crouched there in the edge of thebushes, and tingled their nerves with the sense of something sinister inthe very unconcernedness of the animals.
They splashed into the water-hole and drank thirstily and long. Theystood there as though they were luxuriating in the feel of more waterthan they could drink, and one horse blew the moisture from his nostrilswith a sound that made Happy Jack jump.
After a few minutes that seemed an hour to those who waited with fingerscrooked upon gun-triggers, the horse that looked vaguely like Johnnyturned away from the water-hole and sneezed while he appeared to bewondering what to do next. He moved slowly toward the packs that werethrown down just where they had been taken from the horses, and begannosing tentatively about.
The others loitered still at the water-hole, save one--the buckskin, byhis lighter look in the dark--that came over to Johnny. The two horsesnosed the packs. A dull sound of clashing metal came to the ears of theHappy Family.
"Hey! Get outa that grain, doggone your fool hide," Pink called outimpulsively, crawling over his saddle and catching his foot in thestirrup leather so that he came near going headlong.
Applehead yelled something, but Pink had recovered his balance andwas running to save the precious horsefeed from waste, and Johnny fromfoundering. There might have been two Indiana on every horse in sight,but Pink was not thinking of that possibility just then.
Johnny whirled guiltily away from the grain bag, licking his lips andblowing dust from his nostrils. Pink went up to him and slipped a ropearound his neck. "Where's that bell?" he called out in his soft treble."Or do you think we better tie the old son-of-a-gun up and be sure ofhim?"
"Aw," said Happy Jack disgustedly a few minutes later, when the HappyFamily had crawled out of their ambush and were feeling particularlyfoolish. "Nex' time old granny Furrman says Injuns t' this bunch,somebody oughta gag him."
"I notice you waited till he'd gone outa hearing before you said that,"Luck told him drily. "We're going to put out extra guards tonight, justthe same. And I guess you can stand the first shift, Happy, up there onthe ridge--you're so sure of things!"