CHAPTER XVII. APPLEHEAD SHOWS THE STUFF HE IS MADE OF
Lite Avery, turning to look back as they galloped up a long slope sogradual in its rise that it seemed almost level, counted just fourteenIndians spreading out fanwise in pursuit. He turned to Applehead withthe quiet deference in his manner that had won the old man's firmfriendship.
"What's this new move signify, boss?" he asked, tilting his headbackward. "What they spreading out like that for, when they're outa easyrifle range?"
Applehead looked behind him, studied the new formation of their enemy,and scowled in puzzlement. He looked ahead, where he knew the land laypractically level before them, all sand and rabbit weed, with a littlegrass here and there; to the left, where the square butte stood upbold-faced and grim; to the right where a ragged sandstone ledge blockedthe way.
"'S some dang new trap uh theirn," he decided, his voice signifyingdisgust for such methods. "Take an Injun 'n' he don't calc'late he'sfightin' 'nless he's figgurin' on gittin' yuh cornered. Mebby they gotsome more cached ahead som'ers. Keep yer eye peeled, boys, 'n' shoot atany dang thing yuh see that yuh ain't dead sure 's a rabbit weed. Don'tgo bankin' on rocks bein' harmless--'cause every dang one's liable tohave an Injun layin' on his belly behind it. Must be another bunch aheadsom'ers, 'cause I know it's smooth goin' fer five miles yit. After thatthey's a drop down into a rocky kinda pocket that's hard t' git outof except the way yuh go in, account of there bein' one uh them dangrim-rocks runnin' clean 'round it. Some calls it the Devil's Fryin'-pan.No water ner grass ner nothin' else 'ceptin' snakes. 'N' Navvies kindaownin' rattlers as bein' their breed uh cats, they don't kill 'em off,so they's a heap 'n' plenty of 'em in that basin.
"But I ain't aimin' t' git caught down in there, now I'm tellin' yuh! Iaim t' keep along clost t' that there butte, 'n' out on the other sidewhere we kin pick up luck's trail. I shore would do some rarin' aroundif that boy rode off into a mess uh trouble, 'n' I'm tellin' yuhstraight!"
"He's got some good boy at his back," Weary reminded him, loyal to hisFlying U comrade.
"You're dang right he has! I ain't sayin' he ain't, am I? Throw somemore lead back at them skunks behind us, will ye, Lite? 'N' the restof yuh save yore shells fer close-ups!" He grinned a little at theincongruity of a motion-picture phrase in such a situation as this. "'N'don't be so dang skeered uh hurtin' somebody!" he adjured Lite, drawingrein a little so as not to forge ahead of the other. "You'll have tokill off a few anyway 'fore you're through with 'em."
Lite aimed at the man riding in the center of the half-circle, and thebullet he sent that way created excitement of some sort; but whether theIndian was badly hit, or only missed by a narrow margin, the four didnot wait to discover. They had held their horses down to a pace thatmerely kept them well ahead of the Indians; and though the horses weresweating, they were holding their own easily enough--with a reserve fundof speed if their riders needed to call upon it.
Applehead, glancing often behind him, scowled over the puzzle of thatfanlike formation of riders. They would hardly begin so soon to herd himand his men into that evil little rock basin with the sinister name, andthere was no other reason he could think of which would justify thosetactics, unless another party waited ahead of them. He squinted aheaduneasily, but the mesa lay parched and empty under the sky--
And then, peering straight into the glare of the sun, he saw, down theslope which they had climbed without realizing that it would have acrest, it was so low--Applehead saw the answer to the puzzle; saw andgave his funny little grunt of astonishment and dismay. Straight asa chalk line from the sandstone ledge on their right to thestraight-walled butte on their left stretched that boundary line betweenthe untamed wilderness and the tamed--a barbed wire fence; a four-wirefence at that, with stout cedar posts whereon the wire was stretchedtaut and true. From the look of the posts, it was not new--four or fiveyears old, perhaps; not six years, certainly, for Applehead had riddenthis way six years before and there had been not so much as a post-holeto herald the harnessing of the mesa.
Here, then, was the explanation of the fanlike spreading out of the lineof Indians. They knew that the white men would be trapped by the fence,and they were cutting off the retreat--and keeping out of the hottestdanger-zone of the white men's guns. Even while the four were graspingthe full significance of the trap that they had ridden into unaware, theIndians topped the ridge behind them, yip-yip-yipping gleefully theircoyotelike yells of triumph. The sound so stirred the slow wrath of LiteAvery that, without waiting for the word from Applehead he twistedhalf around in his saddle, glanced at the nearest Indian along hisrifle-sights, bent his forefinger with swift deliberation upon thetrigger, and emptied the saddle of one yelling renegade, who made hasteto crawl behind a clump of rabbit weed.
"They howl like a mess uh coyotes," Lite observed in justification ofthe shot, "and I'm getting sick of hearing 'em."
"Mama!" Weary, exclaimed annoyedly, "that darn fence is on an up-slope,so it's going to be next to impossible to jump it! I guess here's wherewe do about an eight-hundred-foot scene of Indian Warfare, or FightingFor Their Lives. How yuh feel, Cadwalloper?"
"Me?" Pink's eyes were purple with sheer, fighting rage. "I feel likecleaning out that bunch back there. They'll have something to howl aboutwhen I get through!"
"Stay back uh me, boys!" Applehead's voice had a masterful sharpnessthat made the three tighten reins involuntarily. "You foller me anddon't crowd up on me, neither. Send back a shot or two if them Injunsgits too ambitious."
The three fell in behind him without cavil or question. He was in chargeof the outfit, and that settled it. Pink, released from irksome inactionby the permission to shoot, turned and fired back at the first Indianhis sights rested upon. He saw a spurt of sand ten jumps in advance ofhis target, and he swore and fired again without waiting to steady hisaim. The sorrel pack-horse, loping along fifty yards or so behind witha rhythmic clump-clump of frying-pan against coffee-pot at every leap hetook, swerved sharply, shook his head as though a bee had stung him,and came on with a few stiff-legged "crow hops" to register his violentobjection to being shot through the ear.
Pink, with an increased respect for the shooting skill of Lite Avery,glanced guiltily at the others to see if they had observed where hissecond bullet hit. But the others were eyeing Applehead uneasily andpaid no attention to Pink or his attempts to hit an Indian on the run.And presently Pink forgot it also while he watched Applehead, who wasapparently determined to commit suicide in a violently original form.
"You fellers keep behind, now---and hold the Injuns back fer a minuteer two," Applehead yelled while he set himself squarely in the saddle,gathered up his reins as though he were about to "top a bronk" andjabbed the spurs with a sudden savageness into Johnny's flanks.
"GIT outa here!" he yelled, and Johnny with an astonished lunge, "got."
Straight toward the fence they raced, Johnny with his ears laid backtight against his skull and his nose pointed straight out before him,with old Applehead leaning forward and yelling to Johnny with a crackedhoarseness that alone betrayed how far youth was behind him.
They thought at first that he meant to jump the fence, and they knew hecould not make it. When they saw that he meant to ride through it, Wearyand Pink groaned involuntarily at the certainty of a fall and sickeningentanglement in the wires. Only Lite, cool as though he were rounding upmilch cows, rode half-turned in the saddle and sent shot after shotback at the line of Navajos, with such swift precision that the Indiansswerved and fell back a little, leaving another pony wallowing in thesand and taking with them one fellow who limped until he had climbed upbehind one who waited for him.
"Go it, Johnny--dang yore measly hide, go to it! We'll show 'm we ain'tso old 'n' tender we cain't turn a trick t'bug their dang eyes out?Bust into it! WE'LL show 'em!--" And Applehead shrilled a raucous range"HOO-EEE-EE!" as Johnny lunged against the taut wires.
It was a long chance he took--a "dang long chance" as Applehead admittedafterward. But, as he had hoped
, it happened that Johnny's stridebrought him with a forward leap against the wires, so that the fullimpact of his eleven-hundred pounds plus the momentum of his speed, plusthe weight of Applehead and the saddle, hit the wires fair and full.They popped like cut wires on a bale of hay--and it was lucky that theywere tight strung so that there was no slack to take some of the forceaway. It was not luck, but plain shrewdness on Applehead's part, thatJohnny came straight on, so that there was no tearing see-saw of thestrands as they broke. Two inch-long cuts on his chest and a deeper,longer one on his foreleg was the price Johnny paid, and that was all.The lower wire he never touched, since it was a leap that landed himagainst the fence. He lurched and recovered himself, and went on at aslower gallop while Applehead beckoned the three to come on.
"I kain't say I'd want to git in the habit uh bustin' fences that way,"he grinned over his shoulder as the three jumped through the gap he hadmade and forged up to him. "But I calc'late if they's another one Johnnyn' me kin make it, mebby."
"Well, I was brought up in a barbed wire country," Pink exploded, "butI'll be darned if I ever saw a stunt like that pulled off before!"
"We-ell, I hed a bronk go hog-wild 'n' pop three wires on a fence onetime," Applehead explained modestly, "'n' he didn't cut hisself a-tall,skurcely. It's all accordin' t' how yuh hit it, I reckon. Anyway, Icalc'lated it was wuth tryin', 'cause we shore woulda had our handsfull if we'd a stopped at that fence, now I'm tellin' yuh! 'N' anotherthing," he added bodefully, "I figgured we'd better be gittin' to LuckIn' his bunch. I calc'late they need us, mebby."
No one made any reply to that statement, but even Lite, who never hadbeen inclined to laugh at him, looked at Applehead with a new respect.The Indians, having scurried back out of range of Lite's uncomfortablyclose shooting, yelled a bedlam of yips and howls and came on again in acloser group than before, shooting as they rode--at the four men first,and then at the hindmost pack-horse that gave a hop over the wireleft across the gap, and came galloping heavily after the others. Theysucceeded in burying a bullet in the packed bedding, but that was all.
Three hundred yards or so in the lead, the four raced down the long,gentle slope. A mile or two, perhaps three, they could run before theirhorses gave out. But then, when they could run no longer, they wouldhave to stop and fight; and the question that harped continually throughtheir minds was: Could they run until they reached Luck and the boyswith him? Could they? They did not even know where Luck was, orwhat particular angle of direction would carry them to him quickest.Applehead and Johnny were pointing the way, keeping a length ahead ofthe others. But even old Applehead was riding, as he would have put it,"by-guess and by-gosh" until they crossed a shallow draw, labored up thehill beyond, and heard, straight away before them, the faint pop-pop ofrifle shots. Old Applehead turned and sent them a blazing blue glanceover his shoulders.
"RIDE, dang ye!" he barked. "They've got Luck cornered in the Devil'sFryin'-pan!"