Set Afoot

: The Heritage Of The Sioux

The tracks of the six horses led down into a rock-bottomed arroyo so

deep in most places that all view of the surrounding mesa was shut off

completely, save where the ragged tops of a distant line of hills pushed

up into the dazzling blue of the sky. The heat, down here among the

rocks, was all but unbearable; and when they discovered that no tracks

led out of the arroyo on the farther side, the Happy Family dismounted

and walked to save their horses while they divided into two parties and

hunted up and down the arroyo for the best trail.



It was just such vexatious delays as this which had kept them always a

day's ride or more behind their quarry, and Luck's hand trembled with

nervous irritability when he turned back and banded Applehead one of

those small, shrill police whistles whose sound carries so far, and

which are much used by motion-picture producers for the long-distance

direction of scenes.



"I happened to have a couple in my pocket," he explained hurriedly. "You

know the signals, don't you? One long, two short will mean you've picked

up the trail. Three or more short, quick ones is an emergency call, for

all hands to come running."



"Well, they's one thing you want to keep in mind, Luck," Applehead urged

from his superior trail craft. "They might be sharp enough to ride in

here a ways and come out the same side they rode in at. Yuh want to hunt

both sides as yuh go up."



"Sure," said Luck, and hurried away up the arroyo with Pink, Big

Medicine, Andy and the Native Son at his heels, leading the two

pack-horses that belonged to their party. In the opposite direction went

Applehead and the others, their eyes upon the ground watching for the

faintest sign of hoofprints.



That blazing ball of torment, the sun, slid farther and farther down to

the skyline, tempering its heat with the cool promise of dusk. Away up

the arroyo, Luck stopped for breath after a sharp climb up through a

narrow gash in the sheer wall of what was now a small canon, and saw

that to search any farther in that direction would be useless. Across

the arroyo--that had narrowed and deepened until it was a canon--Andy

Green was mopping his face with his handkerchief and studying a bold

hump of jumbled bowlders and ledges, evidently considering whether it

was worth while toiling up to the top. A little below him, the Native

Son was flinging rocks at a rattlesnake with the vicious precision of

frank abhorrence. Down in the canon bottom Big Medicine and Pink were

holding the horses on the shady side of the gorge, and the smoke of

their cigarettes floated lazily upward with the jumbled monotone of

their voices.



Andy, glancing across at Luck, waved his hand and sat down on a

rock that was shaded by a high bowlder; reached mechanically for his

"makings" and with his feet far apart and his elbows on his thighs,

wearily rolled a cigarette.



"How about it, boss?" he asked, scarcely raising his voice above the

ordinary conversational tone, though a hard fifteen-minutes' climb up

and down separated the two; "they never came up the arroyo, if you ask

ME. My side don't show a hoof track from where we left the boys down

below."



"Mine either," Luck replied, by the power of suggestion seating himself

and reaching for his own tobacco and papers. "We might as well work back

down and connect with Applehead. Wish there was some sign of water in

this darn gulch. By the time we get down where we started from, it'll be

sundown." He glanced down at Bud and Pink. "Hey! You can start back any,

time," he called. "Nothing up this way."



"Here's the grandfather of all rattlers," Miguel called across to Luck,

and held up by the tail a great snake that had not ceased its muscular

writhings. "Twelve rattles and a button. Have I got time to skin him? He

tried to bite me on the leg--but I beard him and got outa reach."



"We've got to be moving," Luck answered. "It's a long ways back where

we started from, and we've got to locate water, if we can." He rose with

the deliberateness that indicated tired muscles, and started back; and

to himself he muttered exasperatedly: "A good three hours all shot to

pieces--and not a mile gained on that bunch!"



The Native Son, calmly pinching the rattles of the snake he had not time

to skin, climbed down into the Canon and took his horse by the bridle

reins. Behind him Andy Green came scrambling; but Luck, still faintly

hoping for a clue, kept to the upper rim of the arroyo, scanning every

bit of soft ground where it seemed possible for a horse to climb up from

below. He had always recognized the native cunning of Ramon, but he had

never dreamed him as cunning as this latest ruse would seem to prove

him.



As for Bill Holmes, Luck dismissed him with a shrug of contempt. Bill

Holmes had been stranded in Albuquerque when the cold weather was coming

on; he had been hungry and shelterless and ill-clad--one of those bits

of flotsam which drift into our towns and stand dejectedly upon our

street-corners when they do not prowl down alleys to the back doors of

our restaurants in the hope of being permitted to wash the soiled dishes

of more fortunate men for the food which diners have left beside their

plates. Luck had fed Bill Holmes, and he had given him work to do and

the best food and shelter he could afford; and for thanks, Bill had--as

Luck believed--made sly, dishonest love to Annie-Many-Ponies, for whose

physical and moral welfare Luck would be held responsible. Bill had

deliberately chosen to steal rather than work for honest wages, and had

preferred the unstable friendship of Ramon Chavez to the cleaner life

in Luck's company. He did not credit Bill Holmes with anything stronger

than a weak-souled treachery. Ramon, he told himself while he made his

way down the arroyo side, was at least working out a clever scheme of

his own, and it rested with Luck and his posse to see that Ramon was

cheated of success.



So deeply was he engrossed that before he realized it he was down where

they had left Applehead's party. There was no sign of them anywhere, so

Luck went down and mounted his horse and led the way down the arroyo.



Already the heat was lessening and the land was taking on those

translucent opal tints which make of New Mexico a land of enchantment.

The far hills enveloped themselves in a faint, purplish haze through

which they seemed to blush unwittingly. The mesa, no longer showing

itself an and waste of heat and untracked wilderness, lay soft under a

thin veil of many ethereal tints. Away off to the northeast they heard

the thin, vague clamor of a band of sheep and the staccato barking of a

dog.



Luck rode for some distance, his 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 would stop to

feed, surely, or to look back and listen--in a strange country like this

it was against horse-nature that they should wander far away at night

unless they were thirsty and on the scent of water. These horses had

drunk their fill at the little pool below the spring. They should

be feeding now, or they should lie down and sleep, or stand up and

sleep--anything but travel like this, deliberately away from camp.



Pink tried loping, but the ground was too treacherous and his horse too

leg-weary to handle its feet properly in the dark. It stumbled several

times, so he pulled down again to a fast walk. For a few minutes he

did not hear the bell at all, and when he did it was not where he had

expected to hear it, but away off to one side. So he had gained nothing

save in anger and uneasiness.



There was no use going back to camp and rousing the boys, for he was now

a mile or so away; and they would be afoot, since their custom was to

keep but one horse saddled. When he went in to call the next guard he

would be expected to bring that man's horse back with him, and would

turn his own loose before he went to sleep. Certainly there was nothing

to be gained by rousing the camp.



He did not suspect the trick being played upon him, though he did wonder

if someone was leading the horses away. Still, in that case whoever

did it would surely have sense enough to muffle the bell. Besides, it

sounded exactly like a horse feeding and moving away at random--which,

to those familiar with the sound, can never be mistaken for the tinkle

of an animal traveling steadily to some definite point.



It was an extremely puzzled young man who rode and rode that night in

pursuit of that evasive, nagging, altogether maddening tinkle. Always

just over the next little rise he would hear it, or down in the next

little draw; never close enough for him to discover the trick; never far

enough away for him to give up the chase. The stars he had been watching

in camp swam through the purple immensity above him and slid behind

the skyline. Other stars as brilliant appeared and began their slow,

swimming journey. Pink rode, and stopped to listen, and rode on again

until it seemed to him that he must be dreaming some terribly realistic

nightmare.



He was sitting on his horse on a lava-crusted ridge, straining bloodshot

eyes into the mesa that stretched dimly before him, when dawn came

streaking the sky with blood orange and purple and crimson. The stars

were quenched in that flood of light; and Pink, looking now with clearer

vision, saw that there was no living thing in sight save a coyote

trotting home from his night's hunting. He turned short around and,

getting his bearings from his memory of certain stars and from the sun

that was peering at him from the top of a bare peak, and from that sense

of direction which becomes second nature to a man who had lived long on

the range, started for camp with his ill news.