The Heritage of the Sioux Part 14

"Well, I ain't so darned sure, either," Lite Avery tardily echoed Applehead's vague statement, in the dry way he had of speaking detached sentiments from the mental activities that went on behind his calm, mask-like face and his quiet eyes. "Something feels snaky around here today."

Applehead looked at him with a glimmer of relief in his eyes, but he did not reply to the foreboding directly. "Boys, git yore rifles where you kin use 'em quick," he advised them grimly. "I kin smell shootin' along this dang trail."

Pink's dimples showed languidly for a moment, and he looked a question at Weary. Weary grinned answer and pulled his rifle from the "boot"

where it was slung under his right leg, and jerked the lever forward until a cartridge slid with a click up into the chamber; let the hammer gently down with his thumb and laid the gun across his thighs.

"She's ready for bear," he observed placidly.

"Well, now, you boys show some kinda sense," Applehead told them when Pink had followed Weary's example. "Fellers like Happy and Bud, they sh.o.r.e do show their ign'rance uh this here, dang country, when they up 'n' laff at the idee uh trouble--now I'm tellin' yuh!"

From the ridge which was no more than a high claw of the square b.u.t.te, four Indians in greasy, gray Stetsons with flat crowns nodded with grim satisfaction, and then made baste to point the toes of their moccasins down to where their unkempt ponies stood waiting. They were too far away to, see the shifting of rifles to the laps of the riders, or perhaps they would not have felt quite so satisfied with the steady advance of the four who had taken the right-hand fork of the trail. They could not even tell just which four men made up the party. They did not greatly care, so long as the force of the white men was divided. They galloped away upon urgent business of their own, elated because their ruse had worked out as they had planned and hoped.

Applehead took a restrained pull at the canteen, c.o.c.ked his eyes back at the b.u.t.te they had just pa.s.sed, squinted ahead over the flat waste that shimmered with heat to the very skyline that was notched and gashed crudely with more barren hills, and then, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the top absent-mindedly on the canteen-mouth, leaned and peered long at the hoofprints they were following. Beside him Lite Avery, tall and lean to the point of being skinny, followed his movements with quiet attention and himself took to studying more closely the hoofprints in the sandy soil.

Applehead looked up, gauged the probable direction the trail was taking, and gave a grunt.

"You kin call me a fool," he said with a certain challenge in his tone, "but this yere trail don't look good to me, somehow. These yere tracks, they don't size up the same as they done all the way out here. 'N'

another thing, they ain't aimed t' meet up with the bunch that Luck's trailin'. We're headed straight out away from whar Luck's headed. 'N'

any way yuh look at it, we're headed into country whar there ain't no more water'n what the rich man got in h.e.l.l. What would any uh Ramon's outfit want to come away off in here fur? They ain't nothin' up in here to call 'em."

"These," said Lite suddenly, "are different horse-tracks. They're smaller, for one thing. The bunch we followed out from the red machine rode bigger horses."

"And carried honey on one side and fresh meat on the other; and one horse was blind in the right eye," enlarged Pink banteringly, remembering the story of the Careful Observer in an old schoolreader of his childhood days.

"Yes, how do you make that out, Lite? I never noticed any difference in the tracks."

"The stride is a little shorter today for one thing." Lite looked around and grinned at Pink, as though he too remembered the dromedary loaded with honey and meat. "Ain't it, Applehead?"

"It sh.o.r.e is," Applehead testified, his face bent toward the hot ground.

"Ain't ary one uh the three that travels like they bin a travelin'--'n'

that sh.o.r.e means something, now I'm tellin' yuh!" He straightened and stared worriedly ahead of them again. "Uh course, they might a picked up fresh horses," he admitted. "I calc'late they needed 'em bad enough, if they ain't been grainin' their own on the trip."

"We didn't see any signs of their horses being turned loose anywhere along," Lite pointed out with a calm confidence that he was right.

Still, they followed the footprints even though they were beginning to admit with perfect frankness their uneasiness. They were swinging gradually toward one of those isolated b.u.mps of red rockridges which you will find scattered at random through certain parts of the southwest.

Perhaps they held some faint hope that what lay on the other side of the ridge would be more promising, just as we all find ourselves building air-castles upon what lies just over the horizon which divides present facts from future possibilities. Besides, these flat-faced ledges frequently formed a sharp dividing line between barren land and fertile, and the hoofprints led that way; so it was with a tacit understanding that they would see what lay beyond the ridge that they rode forward.

Suddenly Applehead, eyeing the rocks speculatively, turned his head suddenly to look behind and to either side like one who seeks a way of escape from sudden peril.

"Don't make no quick moves, boys," he said, waving one gloved band nonchalantly toward the flat land from which they were turning, "but foller my lead 'n' angle down into that draw off here. Mebbe it's deep enough to put us outa sight, 'n' mebbe it ain't. But we'll try it."

"What's up? What did yuh see?" Pink and Weary spoke in a duet, urging their horses a little closer.

"You fellers keep back thar 'n' don't act excited!" Applehead eyed them sternly over his shoulder. "I calc'late we're just about t' walk into a trap." He bent--on the side away from the ridge--low over his horse's shoulder and spoke while he appeared to be scanning the ground. "I seen gun-shine up among them rocks, er I'm a goat. 'N' if it's Navvies, you kin bet they got guns as good as ours, and kin shoot mighty nigh as straight as the best of us--except Lite, uh course, that's a expert." He pointed aimlessly at the ground and edged toward the draw.

"Ef they think we're jest follerin' a stray track, they'll likely hold off till we git back in the trail 'n' start comin' on agin," he explained craftily, still pointing at the ground ahead of him and still urging his horse to the draw. "Ef they suspicion 't we're shyin' off from the ridge, they'll draw a fine bead 'n' cut loose. I knowed it,"

he added with a lugubrious complacency. "I told ye all day that I could smell trouble a-comin'; I knowed dang well 't we'd stir up a mess uh fightin' over here. I never come onto this dang res'vation yit, that I didn't have t' kill off a mess uh Navvies before I got offen it agin.

"Now," he said when they reached the edge of the sandy depression that had been gouged deeper by freshets and offered some shelter in case of attack, "you boys jest fool around here on the aidge 'n' foller me down here like you was jest curiouslike over what I'm locatin'. That'll keep them babies up there guessin' till we're all outa sight MEBBY!" He pulled down the corners of his mouth till his mustache-ends dropped a full inch, and lifted himself off his horse with a bored deliberation that was masterly in its convincingness. He stood looking at the ground for a moment and then began to descend leisurely into the draw, leading his horse behind him.

"You go next, Pink," Weary said shortly, and with his horse began edging him closer to the bank until Pink, unless he made some unwise demonstration of unwillingness, was almost forced to ride down the steep little slope.

"Don't look towards the ridge, boys," Applehead warned from below.

"Weary, you come on down here next. Lite kin might' nigh shoot the dang triggers offen their guns 'fore they kin pull, if they go t' work 'n'

start anything."

So Weary, leaving Lite up there grinning sheepishly over the compliment, rode down because he was told to do so by the man in command. "You seem to forget that Lite's got a wife on his hands," he reproved as he went.

"Lite's a-comin' right now," Applehead retorted, peering at the ridge a couple of hundred yards distant. "Git back down the draw 's fur's yuh kin b'fore yuh take out into the open agin. I'll wait a minute 'n'

see--"

"Ping-NG-NG!" a bullet, striking a rock on the edge of the draw fifty feet short of the mark, glanced and went humming over the hot waste.

"Well, now, that shows they got a lookout up high, 't seen me watchin'

that way. But it's hard t' git the range shootin' down, like that,"

Applehead remarked, pulling his horse behind a higher part of the bank.

Close beside him Lite's rifle spoke, its little steelshod message flying straight as a homing honeybee for the spitting flash he had glimpsed up there among the rocks. Whether he did any damage or not, a dozen rifles answered venomously and flicked up tiny spurts of sand in the close neighborhood of the four.

"If they keep on trying," Lite commented drily, "they might make a killing, soon as they learn how to shoot straight."

"'S jest like them dang Injuns!" Applehead grumbled, shooing the three before him down the draw. "Four t' our one--it takes jest about that big a majority 'fore they feel comftable about buildin' up a fight. Lead yore bosses down till we're outa easy shootin' distance, boys, 'n' then we'll head out fer where Luck ought t' be. If they fixed a trap fer us, they've fixed another fer him, chances is, 'n! the sooner us fellers git t'gether the better show we'll all of us have. You kin see, the way they worked it to split the bunch, that they ain't so dang anxious t' tie into us when we're t'gether--'n' that's why we can't git t' Luck a dang bit too soon, now I'm tellin' yuh!"

Weary and Pink were finding things to say, also, but old Applehead went on with his monologue just as though they were listening. Lite showed a disposition to stop and take issue with the shooters who kept up a spiteful firing from the ridge. But Applehead stopped him as he was leveling his rifle.

"If yuh shoot," he pointed out, "they'll know jest where we air and how fast we're gittin' outa here. If yuh don't, unless their lookout kin see us movin' out, they got t' do a heap uh guessin' in the next few minutes. They only got one chancet in three uh guessin' right, 'cause we might be camped in one spot, 'n' then agin we might be crawlin' up closer, fer all they kin tell."

If they were guessing, they must have guessed right; for presently the four heard faint yells from behind them, and Applehead crawled up the bank to where he could look out across the level. What he saw made him slide hastily to the bottom again.

"They've clumb down and straddled their ponies," he announced grimly.

"An' about a dozen is comin' down this way, keepin' under cover all they kin. I calc'late mebby we better crawl our bosses 'n' do some ridin'

ourselves, boys." And he added grimly, "They ain't in good shootin'

distance yit, 'n' they da.s.sent show theirselves neither. We'll keep in this draw long as we kin. They're bound t' come careful till they git us located."

The footing was none the best, but the horses they rode had been running over untracked mesa-land since they were bandy-legged colts. They loped along easily, picking automatically the safest places whereon to set their feet, and leaving their riders free to attend to other important matters which proved their true value as horses that knew their business.

Soon the draw shallowed until they found themselves out in the open, with the square-topped mountain five miles or so ahead and a little to the left; a high, untraversable sandstone ledge to their right, and what looked like plain sailing straight ahead past the mountain.

Applehead twisted his body in the saddle and gave a grunt. "Throw some lead back at them hombres, Lite," he snapped. "And make a killin' if yuh kin. It'll make 'em mad, but it'll hold 'em back fer a spell."

Lite, the crack rifle-shot of Luck's company and the man who had taught Jean Douglas to shoot with such wonderful precision, wheeled his horse short around and pulled him to a stand, lined up his rifle sights and crooked his finger on the trigger. And away back there among the Indians a pony reared, and then pitched forward.

"I sure do bate to shoot down a horse," Lite explained shamefacedly, "but I never did kill a man--"

"We-ell, I calc'late mebby yuh will, 'fore you're let out from this yere meetin'," Applehead prophesied drily. "Now, dang it, RIDE!"

CHAPTER XVI. ANNIE-MANY-PONIES WAITS