The Heritage of the Sioux, B. M. Bower [feel good fiction books TXT] 📗

uneasiness growing as the shadows deepened with the setting of the sun. They had gone too far to hear any whistled signal, but it seemed to him reasonable to suppose that Applehead would return to their starting point, whether he found the trail or not; or at least send a man back. Luck began to think more seriously of Applehead's numerous warnings about the Indians—and yet, there had been no sound of shooting, which is the first sign of trouble in this country. Rifle shots can be heard a long way in this clear air; so Luck presently dismissed that worry and gave his mind to the very real one which assailed them all; which was water for their horses.

The boys were riding along in silence, sitting over to one side with a foot dangling free of its stirrup; except Andy, who had hooked one leg over the saddle-horn and was riding sidewise, smoking a meditative cigarette and staring out between the ears of his horse. They were tired; horses and men, they were tired to the middle of their bones. But they went ahead without making any complaints whatever or rasping oneanother's tempers with ill-chosen remarks; and for that Luck's eyes brightened with appreciation.

Presently, when they had ridden at least a mile down the arroyo, a gray hat-crown came bobbing into sight over a low tongue of rocky ground that cut the channel almost in two. The horses threw up their heads and perked cars forward inquiringly, and in a moment Happy Tack came into view, his gloomy, sunburned face wearing a reluctant grin.

“Well, we got on the trail,” he announced as soon as he was close enough. “And we follered it to water. Applehead says fer you to come on and make camp. Tracks are fresher around that' water-hole'n what they have been, an' Applehead, he's all enthused. I betche we land them fellers t'morrow.”

Out of the arroyo in a place where the scant grassland lapped down over the edge, Happy Jack led the way and the rest followed eagerly. Too often had they made dry camp not to feel jubilant over the prospect even of a brackish water-hole. Even the horses seemed to know and to step out more briskly. Straight across the mesa with its deceptive lights that concealed distance behind a glamor of intimate nearness, they rode into the deepening dusk that had a glow all through it. After a while they dipped into a grassy draw so shallow that they hardly realized the descent until they dismounted at the bottom, where Applehead was already starting a fire and the others were laying out their beds and doing the hundred little things that make for comfort in camp.

A few bushes and a stunted tree or two marked the spring that seeped down and fed a shallow water-hole where the horses drank thirstily. Applehead grinned and pointed to the now familiar hoofprints which they had followed so far.

“I calc'late Ramon done a heap uh millin' around back there in that rocky arroyo,” he observed, “'fore he struck off over here. Er else they was held up fer some reason, 'cause them tracks is fresher a hull lot than what them was that passed the Injun ranch. Musta laid over here las' night, by the looks. But I figgered that we'd best camp whilst we had water, 'n' take up the trail agin at daybreak. Ain't that about the way you see it, Luck?”

“Why, certainly,” Luck assured him with as much heartiness as his utter weariness would permit. “Men and horses, we're about all in. If Ramon was just over the next ridge, I don't know but it would pay to take our rest before we overhaul them.”

“They's grass here, yuh notice,” Applehead pointed out. “I'll put the bell on Johnny, and if Pink'll bobble that buckskin that's allus wantin' to wander off by hisself, I calc'late we kin settle down an' rest our bones quite awhile b'fore anybody needs to go on guard. Them ponies ain't goin' to stray fur off if they don't have to, after the groun' they covered t'day—now I'm tellin' yuh! They'll save their steps.”

There is a superstition about prophesying too boastfully that a certain thing will or will not happen; you will remember that there is also a provision that the rash prophet may avert disaster by knocking wood. Applehead should, if there is any grain of sense in the rite, have knocked wood with his fingers crossed as an extra precaution, against evil fortune.

For after they had eaten and methodically packed away the food, and while they were lying around the cheerful glow of their little campfire, misfortune stole up out of the darkness unaware. They talked desultorily as tired men will, their alertness dulled by the contented tinkle-tinkle of the little bell strapped around the neck of big, bay Johnny, Applehead's companion of many a desert wandering. That brilliant constellation which seems to hang just over one's head in the high altitude of our sagebrush states, held hypnotically the sleepy gaze of Pink, whose duty it was to go on guard when the others turned in for the night. He lay with his locked fingers under his head, staring up at one particularly bright group of stars, and listened to the droning voice of Applehead telling of a trip he had made out into this country five or six years before; and soaking in the peace and the comfort which was all the more precious because he knew that soon he must drag his weary body into the saddle and ride out to stand guard over the horses. Once he half rose, every movement showing his reluctance.

Whereupon Weary, who sprawled next to him, reached out a languid foot and gave him a poke. “Aw, lay down,” he advised. “They're all right out there for another hour. Don't yuh hear the bell?”

They all listened for a minute. The intermittent tinkle of the cheap little sheep bell came plainly to them from farther down the draw as though Johnny was eating contentedly with his mates, thankful for the leisure and the short, sweet grass that was better than hay. Pink lay back with a sigh of relief, and Luck told him to sleep a little if he wanted to, because everything was all right and he would call him if the horses got to straying too far off.

Down the draw—where there were no horses feeding—an Indian in dirty overalls and gingham shirt and moccasins, and with his hair bobbed to his collar, stood up and peered toward the vague figures grouped in the fire-glow. He lifted his hand and moved it slightly, so that the bell he was holding tinkled exactly as it had done when it was strapped around Johnny's neck; Johnny, who was at that moment trailing disgustedly over a ridge half a mile away with his mates, driven by two horsemen who rode very carefully, so as to make no noise.

The figures settled back reassured, and the Indian grinned sourly and tinkled the little bell painstakingly, with the matchless patience of the Indian. It was an hour before he dimly saw Pink get up from the dying coals and mount his horse. Then, still tinkling the bell as a feeding horse would have made it ring, he moved slowly down the draw; slowly, so that Pink did not at first suspect that the bell sounded farther off than before; slowly yet surely, leading Pink farther and farther in the hope of speedily overtaking the horses that he cursed for their wandering.

Pink wondered, after a little, what was the matter with the darned things, wandering off like that by themselves, and with no possible excuse that he could see. For some time he was not uneasy; he expected to overtake them within the next five or ten minutes. They