The Heritage of the Sioux Part 6

Down the last slope he came thundering. On his back Annie-Many-Ponies lashed him steadily, straining her eyes in the direction which Jean had taken past the camera. She knew that they were watching her--she knew also that the camera crank in Pete Lowry's hands was turning, turning, recording every move of hers, every little changing expression. She swept down upon them so close that Pete grabbed the tripod with one hand, ready to lift it and dodge away from the coming collision. Still leaning, still lashing and straining every nerve in pursuit, she dashed past, pivoted the pinto upon his hind feet, darted back toward the staring group and jumped off while he was yet running.

Now that she had done it; now that she had proven that she also had nerve and much skill in riding, black loneliness settled upon her again.

She came slowly back, and as she came she heard them praise the ride she had made. She heard them saying how frightened they had been when the pinto fell, and she heard Wagalexa Conka call to her that she had made a strong scene for him. She did not answer. She sat down upon a rock, a little apart from them, and looking as remote as the Sandias Mountains, miles away to the north, folded her blanket around her and spoke no word to anyone.

Soon Ramon mounted his horse to return to his camp. He came riding down to her--for his trail lay that way--and as he rode he called to the others a good natured "Hasta luego!" which is the Mexican equivalent of "See you later." He did not seem to notice Annie-Many-Ponies at all as he rode past her. He was gazing off down the arroyo and riding with all his weight on one stirrup and the other foot swinging free, as is the nonchalant way of accustomed riders who would ease their muscles now and then. But as he pa.s.sed the rock where she was sitting he murmured, "Tonight by the rock I wait for you, querida mia." Though she gave no sign that she had heard, the heart of Annie-Many-Ponies gave a throb of gladness that was almost pain.

CHAPTER VII. ADVENTURE COMES SMILING

Luck, in the course of his enthusiastic picture making, reached the point where he must find a bank that was willing to be robbed--in broad daylight and for screen purposes only. If you know anything at all about our financial storehouses, you know that they are sensitive about being robbed, or even having it appear that they are being subjected to so humiliating a procedure. What Luck needed was a bank that was not only willing, but one that faced the sun as well. He was lucky, as usual. The Bernalillo County Bank stands on a corner facing east and south. It is an unpretentious little bank of the older style of architecture, and might well be located in the centre of any small range town and hold the shipping receipts of a cattleman who was growing rich as he grew old.

Luck stopped across the street and looked the bank over, and saw how the sun would shine in at the door and through the wide windows during the greater part of the afternoon, and hoped that the cashier was a human being and would not object to a fake robbery. Not liking suspense, he stepped off the pavement and dodged a jitney, and hurried over to interview the cashier.

You never know what secret ambitions hide behind the impa.s.sive courtesy of the average business man. This cashier, for instance, wore a green eyeshade whenever his hat was not on his, head. His hair was thin and his complexion pasty and his shoulders were too stooped for a man of his age. You never would have suspected, just to look at him through the fancy grating of his window, how he thirsted for that kind of adventure which fiction writers call red-blooded. He had never had an adventure in his life; but at night, after he had gone to bed and adjusted the electric light at his head, and his green eyeshade, and had put two pillows under the back of his neck, he read--you will scarcely believe it, but it is true--he read about the James boys and Kit. Carson and p.a.w.nee Bill, and he could tell you--only he wouldn't mention it, of course--just how many Texans were killed in the Alamo. He loved gun catalogues, and he frequently went out of his way to pa.s.s a store that displayed real, business-looking stock-saddles and quirts and spurs and things. He longed to be down in Mexico in the thick of the sc.r.a.p there, and he knew every prominent Federal leader and every revolutionist that got into the papers; knew them by spelling at least, even if he couldn't p.r.o.nounce the names correctly.

He had come to Albuquerque for his lungs' sake a few years ago, and he still thrilled at the sight of bright-shawled Pueblo Indians padding along the pavements in their moccasins and queer leggings that looked like joints of whitewashed stove-pipe; while to ride in an automobile out to Isleta, which is a terribly realistic Indian village of adobe huts, made the blood beat in his temples and his fingers tremble upon his knees. Even Martinez Town with its squatty houses and narrow streets held for him a peculiar fascination.

You can imagine, maybe, how his weak eyes snapped with excitement under that misleading green shade when Luck Lindsay walked in and smiled at him through the wicket, and explained who he was and what was the favor he had come to ask of the bank. You can, perhaps, imagine how he stood and made little marks on a blotter with his pencil while Luck explained just what he would want; and how he clung to the noncommittal manner which is a cashier's professional shield, while Luck smiled his smile to cover his own feeling of doubt and stated that he merely wanted two Mexicans to enter, presumably overpower the cashier, and depart with a bag or two of gold.

The cashier made a few more pencil marks and said that it might be arranged, if Luck could find it convenient to make the picture just after the bank's closing time. Obviously the cashier could not permit the bank's patrons to be disturbed in any way--but what he really wanted was to have the thrill of the adventure all to himself.

With the two of them anxious to have the pictured robbery take place, of course they arranged it after a polite sparring on the part of the cashier, whose craving for adventure was carefully guarded as a guilty secret.

At three o'clock the next day, then--although Luck would have greatly preferred an earlier hour--the cashier had the bank cleared of patrons and superfluous clerks, and was watching, with his nerves all atingle and the sun shining in upon him through a side window, while Pete Lowry and Bill Holmes fussed outside with the camera, getting ready for the arrival of those realistic bandits, Ramon Chavez and Luis Rojas. On the street corner opposite, the Happy Family foregathered clannishly, waiting until they were called into the street-fight scene which Luck meant to make later.

The cashier's cheeks were quite pink with excitement when finally Ramon and the Rojas villain walked past the window and looked in at him before going on to the door. He was disappointed because they were not masked, and because they did not wear bright sashes with fringe and striped serapes draped across their shoulders, and the hilts of wicked knives showing somewhere. They did not look like bandits at all--thanks to Luck's sure knowledge and fine sense of realism. Still, they answered the purpose, and when they opened the door and came in the cashier got quite a start from the greedy look in their eyes when they saw the gold he had stacked in profusion on the counter before him.

They made the scene twice--the walking past the window and coming in at the door; and the second time Luck swore at them because they stopped too abruptly at the window and lingered too long there, looking in at the cashier and his gold, and exchanging meaning glances before they went to the door.

Later, there was an interior scene with reflectors almost blinding the cashier while he struggled self-consciously and ineffectually with Ramon Chavez. The gold that Ramon sc.r.a.ped from the cashier's keeping into his own was not, of course, the real gold which the bandits had seen through the window. Luck, careful of his responsibilities, had waited while the cashier locked the bank's money in the vault, and had replaced it with bra.s.s coins that looked real--to the camera.

The cashier lived then the biggest moments of his life. He was forced upon his back across a desk that had been carefully cleared of the bank's papers and as carefully strewn with worthless ones which Luck had brought. A realistically uncomfortable gag had been forced into the mouth of the cashier--where it brought twinges from some fresh dental work, by the way--and the bandits had taken everything in sight that they fancied.

Ramon and Luis Rojas had proven themselves artists in this particular line of work, and the cashier, when it was all over and the camera and company were busily at work elsewhere, lived it in his imagination and felt that he was at least tasting the full flavor of red-blooded adventure without having to pay the usual price of bitterness and bodily suffering. He was mistaken, of course--as I am going to explain. What the cashier had taken part in was not the adventure itself but merely a rehearsal and general preparation for the real performance.

This had been on Wednesday, just after three o'clock in the afternoon.

On Sat.u.r.day forenoon the cashier was called upon the phone and asked if a part of that robbery stuff could be retaken that day. The cashier thrilled instantly at the thought of it. Certainly, they could retake as much as they pleased. Lucks voice--or a voice very like Luck's--thanked him and said that they would not need to retake the interior stuff. What he wanted was to get the approach to the bank the entrance and going back to the cashier. That part of the negative was under-timed, said the voice. And would the cashier make a display of gold behind the wicket, so that the camera could register it through the window? The cashier thought that he could. "Just stack it up good and high," directed the voice. "The more the better. And clear the bank--have the clerks out, and every thing as near as possible to what it was the other day. And you take up the same position. The scene ends where Ramon comes back and grabs you."

"And listen! You did so well the other day that I'm going to leave this to you, to see that they get it the same. I can't be there myself--I've got to catch some atmosphere stuff down here in Old Town. I'm just sending my a.s.sistant camera man and the two heavies and my scenic artist for this retake. It won't be much--but be sure you have the bank cleared, old man--because it would ruin the following scenes to have extra people registered in this; see? You did such dandy work in that struggle that I want it to stand. Boy, your work's sure going to stand out on the screen!"

Can you blame the cashier for drinking in every word of that, and for emptying the vault of gold and stacking it up in beautiful, high piles where the sun shone on it through the window--and where it would be within easy reach, by the way!--so that the camera could "register" it?

At ten minutes past twelve he had gotten rid of patrons and clerks, and he had the gold out and his green eyeshade adjusted as becomingly as a green eyeshade may be adjusted. He looked out and saw that the street was practically empty, because of the hour and the heat that was almost intolerable where the sun shone full. He saw a big red machine drive up to the corner and stop, and he saw a man climb out with camera already screwed, to the tripod. He saw the bandits throw away their cigarettes and follow the camera man, and then he hurried back and took up his station beside the stacks of gold, and waited in a twitter of excitement for this unhoped-for encore of last Wednesday's glorious performance.

Through the window he watched the camera being set up, and he watched also, from under his eyeshade, the approach of the two bandits.

From there on a gap occurs in the cashier's memory of that day.

Ramon and Luis went into the bank, and in a few minutes they came out again burdened with bags of specie and pulled the door shut with the spring lock set and the blinds down that proclaimed the bank was closed.

They climbed into the red automobile, the camera and its operator followed, and the machine went away down the street to the post-office, turned and went purring into the Mexican quarter which spreads itself out toward the lower bridge that spans the Rio Grande. This much a dozen persons could tell you. Beyond that no man seemed to know what became of the outfit.

In the bank, the cashier lay back across a desk with a gag in his mouth and his hands and feet tied, and with a welt on the side of his head that swelled and bled sluggishly for a while and then stopped and became an angry purple. Where the gold had been stacked high in the sunshine the marble glistened whitely, with not so much as a five-dollar piece to give it a touch of color. The window blinds were drawn down--the bank was closed. And people pa.s.sed the windows and never guessed that within there lay a sickly young man who had craved adventure and found it, and would presently awake to taste its bitter flavor.

Away off across the mesa, sweltering among the rocks in Bear Canon, Luck Lindsay panted and sweated and cussed the heat and painstakingly directed his scenes, and never dreamed that a likeness of his voice had beguiled the cashier of the Bernalillo County Bank into consenting to be robbed and beaten into oblivion of his betrayal.

And--although some heartless teller of tales might keep you in the dark about this--the red automobile, having dodged hurriedly into a high-boarded enclosure behind a Mexican saloon, emerged presently and went boldly off across the bridge and up through Atrisco to the sand hills which is the beginning of the desert off that way. But another automobile, bigger and more powerful and black, slipped out of this same enclosure upon another street, and turned eastward instead of west. This machine made for the mesa by a somewhat roundabout course, and emerged, by way of a rough trail up a certain draw in the edge of the tableland, to the main road where it turns the corner of the cemetery. From there the driver drove as fast as he dared until he reached the hill that borders Tijeras Arroyo. There being no sign of pursuit to this point, he crossed the Arroyo at a more leisurely pace. Then he went speeding away into the edge of the mountains until they reached one of those deep, deserted dry washes that cut the foothills here and there near Coyote Springs. There his pa.s.sengers left him and disappeared up the dry wash.

Before the wound on the cashier's head had stopped bleeding, the black automobile was returning innocently to town and no man guessed what business had called it out upon the mesa.

CHAPTER VIII. THE SONG OF THE OMAHA

"Me, I theenk yoh not lov' me so moch as a pin," Ramon complained in soft reproach, down in the dry wash where Applehead had looked in vain for baling wire. "Sometimes I show yoh what is like the Spanish lov'.

Like stars, like fire--sometimes I seeng the jota for you that tell how moch I lov' yoh. 'Te quiero, Baturra, te quiero,'" he began humming softly while he looked at her with eyes that shone soft in the starlight. "Sometimes me, I learn yoh dat song--and moch more I learn yoh--"

Annie-Many-Ponies stood before him, straight and slim and with that air of aloofness which so fired Ramon's desire for her. She lifted a hand to check him, and Ramon stopped instantly and waited. So far had her power over him grown.

"All time you tell me you heap love," she said in her crooning soft voice. "Why you not talk of priest to make us marry? You say words for love--you say no word for wife. Why you no say--"

"Esposa!" Ramon's teeth gleamed white as a wolf's in the dusk. "When the padre marry us I maybe teach you many ways to say wife!" He laughed under his breath. "How I calls yoh wife when I not gets one kees, me?

Now I calls yoh la sweetheart--good enough when I no gets so moch as touches hand weeth yoh."

"I go way with you, you gets priest for make us marry?"

Annie-Many-Ponies edged closer so that she might read what was in his face.

"Why yoh no trus' Ramon? Sure, I gets padre! W'at yoh theenk for speak lies, me? Sure, I gets padre, foolish one! Me, I not like for yoh no trus' Ramon. Looks like not moch yoh lov' Ramon."

"I good girl," Annie-Many-Ponies stated simply. "I love my husband when priest says that's right thing to do. You no gets priest, I no go with you. I think mens not much cares for marry all time. Womens not care, they go to h.e.l.l. That's what priest tells. Girls got to care. That's truth." Simple as two-plus-two was the rule of life as Annie-Many-Ponies laid it down in words before him. No fine distinctions between virtue and superwomanhood there, if you please! No slurring of wrong so that it may look like an exalted right. "Womens got to care," said Annie-Many-Ponies with a calm certainty that would brook no argument.

"Sure theeng," Ramon agreed easily. "Yoh theenk I lov' yoh so moch if yoh not good?"

"You gets priest?" Annie-Many-Ponies persisted.

"Sure, I gets padre. You theenk Ramon lies for soch theeng?"

"You swear, then, all same white mans in picture makes oath." There was a new quality of inflexibility under the soft music of her voice. "You lift up hand and says, 'Help me by G.o.d I makes you for-sure my wife!'"

She had pondered long upon this oath, and she spoke it now with an easy certainty that it was absolutely binding, and that no man would dare break it. "You makes that swear now," she urged gently.

"Foolish one! Yoh theenk I mus' swear I do what my hearts she's want?

I tell yoh many times we go on one ranch my brother Tomas says she's be mine. We lives there in fine house weeth mooch flowers, yoh not so moch as lif' one finger for work, querida mia. Yoh theenk I not be trus', me, Ramon what loves yoh?"

"No hurt for swears what I tells," Annie-Many-Ponies stepped back from him a pace, distrust creeping into her voice.

"All right." Ramon moved nearer. "So I make oath, perhaps you make oath also! Me, I theenk yoh perhaps not like for leave Luck Leensay--I theenk perhaps yoh loves heem, yoh so all time watch for ways to please! So I swear, then yoh mus' swear also that yoh come for-sure. That square deal for both--si?"

Annie-Many-Ponies hesitated, a dull ache in her breast when Ramon spoke of Luck. But if her heart was sore at thought of him, it was because he no longer looked upon her with the smile in his eyes. It was because he was not so kind; because he believed that she had secret meetings with Bill Holmes whom she hated. And in spite of the fact that Bill Holmes had left the company the other day and was going away, Wagalexa Conka still looked upon her with cold eyes and listened to the things that Applehead said against her. The heart of Wagalexa Conka, she told herself miserably, was like a stone for her. And so her own heart must be hard. She would swear to Ramon, and she would keep the oath--and Wagalexa Conka would not even miss her or be sorry that she had gone.

"First you make swears like I tells you," she said. "Then I make swears."