CHAPTER VIIIHANO
BEARING the water jug for Sid’s pony, Hano descended that sulphur-fumed tunnel up which he had led the white boy not three hours before. It was now late in the afternoon; it would be nightfall before he could find the horse and ride. At the cave entrance one scout was on guard, a young fellow like Hano himself, not yet twenty. He rose respectfully as the chief’s son came by.
“Ai, Hano!” he greeted, for he had heard nothing of the disturbance up in the village. He did not remark on the water jug nor question Hano about it, for such would have been contrary to his whole training. Only squaws asked idle questions.
Hano nodded and went on out. No one saw him from the lava basin brink, for the entire band was gathered in the council lodge for the sheep meat distribution. He climbed up the mountain side,following his original course downward with Sid, and soon disappeared over the ridge.
From there Hano began tracking Sid over on the Pass side. He noted with some surprise that the dog was now gone, but that did not matter much. Hano’s face was set in a brown study of thought. He resembled his father, Honanta, strongly. The face was young and keen, with the high bony cheeks and the hard, thin facial muscles of youth, but it would acquire the same fullness as Honanta’s with growing years. Indianlike, Hano was considering, not his own personal interests but his duty toward his tribe. To aid them he had broken his honor—that honor which required him to await the judgment of the old men even if unbound and free to go. It was repugnant to him to take the step because of Sid’s words, but his duty to the tribe was paramount. The main thing, as he saw it, was to keepallthese white men from ever discovering Red Mesa—The Arms of the Great Mystery. The white boy had spoken of Mexicanos coming. Hano knew them. Occasionally, not often, small parties of them had visited this region. They usually came by the Sonoyta River, following it until it lost itself in the sands to the south of Pinacate. From there theygenerally went to Represa Tank, from which the Camino del Diablo led them safely away from the mountains of Red Mesa. Only once in a great while had the Apache found it necessary to abolish one of these Mexican gentry who had become too inquisitive.
The white boy had told him also of a hound which could track him to Red Mesa. Hano doubted this not at all, for he had often heard in the lodge, of a winter’s night, stories of the far-famed sagacity and the wonderful tracking nose of this dog of the white man’s. He would like to have a dog like that himself for tracking mountain sheep. To capture or to kill him was one of the things that Hano decided to attempt.
Thus far Hano’s plan had reached only the point of determining to watch both parties and to act for the best. If one party of whites killed the other it would be a fine thing, for that would leave this white boy alone in Red Mesa, and he would never be allowed to leave it alive. Hano hoped that he would eventually consent to adoption into the tribe, for he seemed a fine youth and his heart was good, too, or he would not have remembered his pony’s thirst and brought that water jug.
His name, too, was in his favor.Col-vin!How often had Hano heard that name on his father’s lips when the story of that young white officer of long ago had been told! It was a sacred name in the clan. Because of it alone Honanta’s entire attitude toward this white youth had changed, Hano knew, before he himself had been led away to the medicine lodge. This young Colvin, too, had sethimfree and begged him to bring his friends to Red Mesa because the Mexicanos were coming. That was all very well, but Hano decided that he wouldnotdo that, except as a last resort. Better let them all kill each other; then there would be no one but the white youth to deal with.
By this time Hano had climbed down the mountain on Sid’s trail and found the pony. It was after dusk, and the familiar plain of giant cactus and creosote bush, of choyas and mesquites was dark in the shadows cast by the surrounding mountains, but the pony, a piebald, was easily distinguishable, picketed in a trampled ring of galleta grass. He had scented Hano, for an eager whinny came from him and Hano met the pony tugging at his lariat and thrusting out bared teeth and thirsty lips toward him in dumb appeal.
Pinto drank the water in that jug down in one huge suck. Then Hano untethered him, coiled the lariat and rode off, following his tracks back to the main party. Darkness fell as he followed the pony prints to the kill of the mule deer. Two hours of slow trailing under the stars led him to the huge, bare craters where, up the eastern one, the tracks now led.
Hano walked the horse up the steep slopes, listening in the dark constantly for a sign of these other white men. He paused at the crater edge and looked down. A vast mysterious black cistern was that crater well!
Hano halted the pony and listened, for faint voices were coming up to him from below. They were down there! Presently theHoo-ooo!of a hound’s throaty challenge rang out. The dog was below and facing him, Hano knew instinctively from the direction of that sound. He drew back and waited. More voices; words in the white man’s tongue. After a time he heard them climbing out slowly through the other gap. They stood on the opposite brink, one voice talking excitedly, audible in the dead of night even across the crater. Then they rode on.
Hano followed down into the dim cavern, crossedits sandy floor and worked his horse up the opposite gap. There, far to the east, he discerned a flaring watch-fire, over on the Red Tepee, as his tribe called Cerro Colorado. So that was what these white men had become excited about? he exclaimed mentally, as he watched the fire awhile.
“Ugh! The Mexicanos!—Those that the white youth told me of!” decided Hano finally. As he watched, tiny flares began to move down the hill and out northwards on the plain. Hano counted twelve of these lights, moving slowly north apparently, though they were being carried by men on galloping horses. Immediately he divined it. Those lights were torches, carried by the Mexicans to see choyas ahead, and they were moving for Represa Tank!
From there their next ride would be either up the Camino del Diablo or—to his own mountains! And the white boy said they were coming!
What for, Hano did not know, but immediately all his plans underwent a sudden revolution. This must not be! There were twelve of the Mexicanos and only three of these other whites. The whole neighborhood from here to the Pass was filled with pony tracks made by the white boy’s friends. TheMexicans would be easily victorious over only three of them, and then the tracks would lead them to——
His mind made up at once, Hano started the pony at once around the crater in the direction the white men had just gone. To combine with them, to bring them to Red Mesa and have their help in defending his home was his people’s only salvation—just as that white boy, Col-vin—blessed name!—had said.
But to ride on into a strange camp was entirely against Hano’s Indian training. It might end in being shot or some other absurd mistake. The thing to do, now, was to get in touch with this Navaho that the white boy had spoken of. He was an Indian and both tribes spoke the Athapascan tongue. Aided by the sign language they could understand each other. The Navaho was the one to meet first!
Hano halted his pony. He could not be very far behind these whites now. He sent out his voice in the challenge of the big-horn ram, for he knew that the Navaho would understand that unnatural voice in the dead of night as a signal. Then he waited, his eyes alert, ears listening eagerly.
The bellow of a hound far ahead was his first reply. Then silence, profound and unbroken. Aftera short wait a man rose suddenly out of the ground before him. He pointed a rifle full on Hano: “Who are you?” he demanded in Navaho.
“Friend!” replied Hano, giving the peace sign.
The Navaho did not lower his rifle. “That pony? Where did you get him?” he asked sternly.
Hano explained rapidly in Apache, much of which the Navaho understood. He had scarcely time for more when the swift click of hound nails and the angry bellow of Ruler came out of the night. The dog rushed up toward Hano, barking savagely, tugging along Scotty who was holding back with all his strength on the leash. To a dog all strangers are enemies!
“What’s all this, Niltci?” queried Scotty—“Good Lord!”
He stopped astounded and stared up at what was evidently a strange Indian on Sid’s horse.
“Apache!” said Niltci. “Him come from Master Sid. Say all right. Must come quick.”
“Is Sid hurt?” asked Scotty grimly.
“No. Him with Apache. Wants us to come quick,” reiterated the Navaho.
“Well, I’ll be darned! Keep your eye on him, Niltci—it may be some damned ruse. We’ll takehim in to see Big John and see whathesays about it,” decided Scotty.
Walking on each side of Sid’s pinto, with rifles poised and ready for any treachery, they took Hano back to the camp at Papago Tanks. Big John roused out at their coming and threw a heap of brush on the fire.
“Jeemently-ding!—what you got thar!” he called out as the party came in. “An Injun on Sid’s pony!—whar’d ye git him?—Say, fellers, I’m just sufferin’ for the news!”
Scotty told him all Niltci had been able to learn from Hano during their march and then added the tale of their own discovery of the Mexicans.
“Shore’s a fine mess you’ve got yore old uncle inter!” grinned Big John. “Them greasers is on Cerro Colorado, you say? Waal,weleft our tracks on thet li’l hump, too! If it’s that Vasquez, he’s followin’ ’em now—to see whar we went next, sabe? He won’t make fer these here lava diggin’s nohow; he’ll make for Represa! An’ he won’t lose no time over it, either! Then they comes inter the Pass, same’s we done. We’ll meet ’em thar, plumb bright an’ early to-morrow morning. They’ll be ridin’ allnight. Thet fire ye saw on Cerro Colorado was jist a guide for night ridin’.”
Hano nodded in confirmation. He told Niltci now that he had seen lights moving north across the plain before he left the crater rim.
“That settles it!” exclaimed Big John. “We rolls our freight out’n hyar right sudden pronto! An’ it’s goin’ to be a sweet fight, if we don’t git up into the mountains before that bilin’ of greasers comes a-fannin’ and a-foggin’ through the Pass, old-timer!”
Dynamic was that decision of Big John’s! The tent came down in a jiffy; the horses were roped and saddled; Blaze was made comfortable up on Sid’s pony, a bed being built for him of every available blanket piled on the folded tent for a base. With Hano leading off through the dark, the cavalcade started at once back across the lava.
The horses’ shoes clinked on its flinty surface; ghostly desert vegetation and tumbled masses of petrified lava bordered their trail. After several hours of careful riding came the huge cones of the craters, moving by like grim phantoms past them as slowly light began to dawn in the east. Ahead they saw spread out before them the jungled garden ofthe Pass, its green poles of saguarros standing silent sentinels all about in the dawn and the gray mountains hemming it in all around.
“Now, fellers, we cayn’t take them hosses promiscuous up no mountains, an’ I ain’t goin’ to leave old Blazie, nohow!” declared Big John as he halted the train. “This white mustang’s about as easy to hide here as a Saskatchewan swan! Thar’s shore goin’ to be some perishin’ lil’ rodero when them spiggoty gents arrives in our midst! Two of us hev gotto stay with these hosses.”
To hide them somewhere was the first thought of all. Big John’s puckered eyes searched the Pass for cover. Up ahead the mountains closed in to a narrow gap resembling a gunsight, a lone green saguarro upstanding in the center like a front sight in its V-notch. A small, bare rocky hillock to the right of the notch rose opposite a similar low spur terminating the range on their left. But down under the flanks of both of them they marked the high bushy green of mesquite.
“A fellermightlay low in thar hoss an’ all,” declared Big John, sizing it up.
Scotty did not answer. He was scanning the mountain sides which towered above them, mile onmile, shaggy and gray and covered with pale green desert growth to a high skyline above. Somewhere, over beyond that ridge maybe, Sid was in camp with the Apache. Either Hano or Ruler could lead him up there. But a peculiar telepathic influence kept whispering to him that all was not right with Sid, that he needed himnow, was in some sort of danger or trouble. It might have been just his own imagination; it might have been the subtle mental bond between the two chums, but the impulse was there and it led him to decide on climbing up at once.
“You take Niltci and the horses and go to the notch, John. If the Mexicans come in that way you can let them go by and then slip out through the gap and ride around the end of these mountains and join us. Meanwhile this Apache and I will climb up straight over the range to their camp. I have a hunch that it’s over that mountain somewhere. Here’s where we last saw Sid.”
“Looks that way—’scusin’ that the Injun’d knife ye as soon as he got you alone up thar! I ain’t trustin’ no Injun. Crooked as a Mex. gambler’s deck, they be!” swore Big John emphatically.
Hano listened and watched them pointing, uneasily. He wasn’t at all sure about showing thesepeople Red Mesa after all. He had been reasoning over it silently as their party had ridden along. He had a new plan, now, and it was this: Here were four good horses. A number of Mexicanos, a dozen at least, were coming here after these white men. Well, then, would it not be the best service he could do for his tribe to induce them to lead the Mexicanos on a wild race out into the Tule Desert along the fearful Camino del Diablo, there to lose them all somewhere in the desert? He might die of thirst himself in the attempt. That was nothing; the peace and safety of his tribe was everything—any scheme to lead them all away from Red Mesa! These white men certainly could never survive that desert!
He now grunted eagerly and began to speak earnestly to Niltci in mixed sign language and Apache. He pointed to the notch and made the sign of four horsemen with his fingers straddled over his left hand. He pointed to Blaze and made signs of concealing him in some dense cover. Then he pointed to the notch again and gave a pantomime of their party galloping through it with other horsemen in pursuit.
“I got ye, son!” grinned Big John. “We-all give’em a desert race, hey? A-1 idee!” he chuckled. “Scotty, if I know human natur, that pisen spig, that Vasquez”—Big John spat it out like a curse—“ain’t told them guerrillas nothin’ about no mine. Stolen church property’s what they think they’re after. They’ll be considerable peeved, an’ will begin shootin’ soon’s they sight us. Now if this Vasquez starts gittin’ careless with his hardware—an’ I git one good poke at him with the old meat gun—Sho!—there won’t be nobody knownothin’about that mine but us, see? Another thing: when he climbs Cerro Colorado and don’t see no Red Mesa, what does he do? Thinks he’s disremembered what he read on that Dago tablet, sabe? He’ll think I’m Sid, sabe, an’ he’ll chase us clar to Yuma, aimin’ to get hold of it again. We don’t want him ’round hyar, that’s sure! I’m strong fer the Apache’s racin’ scheme. Hyar’s one big chance to lose him good, savvy?”
“How about Sid?” objected Scotty.
“Oh, he’s all right! Thick as thieves with these Apaches, I’ll bet. He talks their lingo, you know.”
Still the feeling remained persistent in Scotty’s mind that all was not right with Sid. Wherewerethese Apaches, anyhow; and why had Hano not taken them to their encampment at once?
“I’ve got it!” he exclaimed at length. “You leave Ruler with me. Go on with Niltci and the Apache and try your race stunt. Meanwhile I’ll slip away, put Ruler on Sid’s track, and so find out where he’s gone myself.”
“Not so good, son! Not so good!” approved Big John whismically. “You sorter hang back, then, an’ git away when you kin. Try along the base of them mountains. I think Sid rode off that way when he left us. You leave them greasers to us! They won’t bother you none! C’mon, fellers, le’s get movin’. We ain’t gotallthe time there is!”
Through Niltci he signified assent to Hano’s plan. They started across the sands for the notch which now lay in plain daylight before them glowing with the colors of the rising sun. Gradually the three ahead urged their ponies to a gallop, twisting and turning through the patches of choyas and spiny barrel cactus.
Scotty fell behind, Ruler on his leash loping along beside him. As dense groves of mesquite barred their path he let himself get separated from the others and worked over toward the mountain base,keeping cover constantly between him and the party ahead.
In five minutes Scotty was completely lost to them. After a time he came upon lone pony tracks in the sand. Beside them had trotted Blaze’s footprints. Here was where Sid had gone toward the mountain. Sheep hunting, no doubt, Scotty conjectured, for he knew that Sid liked to hunt alone. Nearer and nearer came the abrupt flanks of the mountains. Steep and rugged, rising in towering masses, the rocky flanks rolled up high above Scotty. Somewhere up there Sid had climbed, he was sure.
Presently he came upon a game trail, winding along in the sand around the rocky outcroppings. Sheep tracks! Scotty rode on hurriedly now, the hunting ardor rising within him. Presently he came to a little patch of galleta grass, trampled down in a ring around a picket pin, where a pony had fed. The story was plain to Scotty. Sid’s pinto had been tethered here and had broken away after a time, probably because of thirst.
No; the Apache hadtakenhim away, for here were his moccasin prints! Here were Blaze’s, too, coming from the mountains. It became more and more a puzzle to Scotty. What had really happenedto Sid? It looked more than ever like treachery—foul play—to Scotty. Somewhere up on the mountain Sid had encountered the Apaches perhaps. He had been held by them, since he had not returned. But Hano had been here and had taken his horse. What did it all mean?
For a time Scotty hesitated, thinking seriously of riding after Big John to bring him and Niltci here to get their judgment on this discovery. Then he saw the firm heel print of Sid’s hunting boot leading up the mountain side. The ardent impatience of youth at once overwhelmed him. Follow, and at once, he must!
He put Ruler’s moist nose to the print: “Sssuey, Ruler!—Go get Sid!—Sid!” he hissed in the dog’s ear.
Ruler whined eagerly. Then, snuffing the trail, he climbed on upward, his bony rat tail swinging in circles as occasional yelps of discovery came from him. Scotty climbed after and was soon high in the rocks on the mountain flank, with the green plain of the Pass spread out far and wide below him.
Meanwhile Big John and the two Indians had ridden on swiftly. The Pass narrowed and in tenminutes more they were at the base of the two low hills guarding the gap. Hano looked around him inquiringly.
“Where is the white boy?” he asked Niltci, anxiously.
“Oh, he’s back thar a-piece—he’s a slow rider,” laughed Big John reassuringly. Hano regarded them suspiciously a moment as Niltci translated. Then he shrugged his shoulders, his keen eyes searching the groves of mesquite and palo verde for signs of the laggard. A bed was made for Blaze under the shelter of a dense bunch of creosotes and he was tied there with a pan of water handy. Then the horses were tethered in hiding behind that growth of mesquite under the rock base which they had noted from down the Pass. Niltci and Big John unlimbered their rifles and climbed to a vantage point on the low rocky spur jutting out to the east of the main range.
They were not many minutes too soon! Over the waste of sand dunes to the north a small white cavalcade was toiling slowly along toward them. The guerrillas, about a dozen of them, they noted, were riding two by two. They were clad in white, with huge white sombreros on head and the shiningbands of cartridge belts crossing their chests at a slant. Over their backs jutted up the slender muzzles of Mausers. Dandy black boots heavily spurred in silver gleamed through the dust along the flanks of their horses. At the head of the column alongside the leader rode a man clad in a striped serapé, and at sight of him Big John’s eyes began to smoulder.
He pointed him out to Niltci. “Thar’s that Vasquez, the pisen, ornery, li’l horned toad that’s makin’ all the trouble, Niltci!” he growled. “The mine ain’t wuth shootin’ nobody fer, though. We’ll hev to throw an all-fired scare into him with a leetle fancy shootin’, sabe?”
Niltci grunted understanding and they both watched the cavalcade approaching. As they entered the Pass below, Hano’s wild eyes glared up at them. Now was the time for his great sacrifice! In just a little while longer these Mexicans would be through the gap and nearing those mountains whose secret he felt bound to protect. They must never be allowed to remain here, to trace out those tell-tale tracks! He looked up at Big John for the signal to dash down to the ponies and begin that race that could only end in the arid wastes of the Camino delDiablo. Once out there, they could shoot him with those long-range rifles if they were able. But die of thirst they all surely would! As for himself, he trusted in his desert knowledge to survive until it would be safe to return to Red Mesa.
But, alas for the best laid plans of mice and men! Nature has a grim way of playing tricks that upset our best schemes—cruel tricks, sometimes. For, hardly had the Mexican riders gotten well through the gap with yells of delight as they followed the trail into that beautiful desert garden, when, from up on the high mountain flanks behind Big John’s position, came a sudden rolling of stones bounding down the hill. The Mexicans all halted and looked up, shouting to each other eagerly. Big John looked around inquiringly, and Hano gazed with an expression of anguish in his black eyes. Up there ranged a band of mountain sheep! A large band, seventeen in all, if any one had stopped to count them. Rams, ewes and young ones, they were all clattering along the summit of the ridge, outlined clearly against the sky and headed for the fastnesses of the higher slopes.
At sight of them eager cries came from all the Mexicans. They began to dismount hurriedly.Rifles were unslung, cartridges hastily torn from the bandoliers. Then a wild race began up that mountain after those doomed sheep.
Hano gave a grunt of dismay. That chase could only lead to one thing—the immediate discovery of Red Mesa, the hiding place of his tribe that lay beyond those ridges!