We'll make noon camp there, and maybe we can dig up a little information.
Ramon must have stopped there for water, and we'll find out just how far we are behind."The ranch, when they finally neared it, proved to be a huddle of low, octagon-shaped huts (called hogans) made of short cedar logs and plastered over with adobe, with a hole in the center of the lid-like roof to let the smoke out and a little light in; and dogs, that ran out and barked and yelped and trailed into mourning rumbles and then barked again; and half-naked papooses that scurried like rabbits for shelter when they rode up; and two dingy, shapeless squaws that disappeared within a hogan and peered out at one side of the blanket door.
Luck started to dismount and make some attempt at a polite request for water, and for information as well, but Applehead objected and finally had his way.
If the squaws could speak English, he argued, they would lie unless they refused to talk at all. As to the water, if there was any around the place the bunch could find it and help themselves. "These yer Navvies ain't yore Buffalo- Bill Sioux)" he pointed out to Luck. "Yuh can't treat 'em the same.
The best we kin look fer is to be left alone--an' I'm tellin' ye straight."Luck gave the squalid huts a long stare and turned away toward the corral and a low shed that served as a stable. A rusty old mower and a toothless rake and a rickety buckboard stood baking in the sun, and a few stunted hens fluttered away from their approach. In the corral a mangy pony blinked in dejected slumber; and all the while, the three dogs followed them and barked and yapped and growled, until Pink turned in the saddle with the plain intention of stopping the clamor with a bullet or two.
"Ye better let 'em alone!" Applehead warned sharply, and Pink put up his gun unfired and took down his rope.
"The darned things are getting on my nerves!" he complained, and wheeled suddenly in pursuit of the meanest-looking dog of the three. "I can stand a decent dog barking at me, but so help me Josephine, I draw the line at Injun curs!"The dog ran yelping toward the hogans with Pink hard at its heels swinging his loop menacingly. When the dog, with a last hysterical yelp, suddenly flattened its body and wriggled under a corner of the shed, Pink turned and rode after the others, who had passed the corral and were heading for the upper and of a small patch of green stuff that looked like a half-hearted attempt at a vegetable garden. As he passed the shed an Indian in dirty overalls and gingham shirt craned his neck around the doorway and watched him malevolently;but Pink, sighting the green patch and remembering their dire need of water, was kicking his horse into a trot and never once thought to cast an eye over his shoulder.
In that arid land, where was green vegetation you may be sure there was water also. And presently the nine were distributed along a rod or two of irrigating ditch, thankfully watching the swallows of water go sliding hurriedly down the outstretched gullets of their horses that leaned forward with half-bent, trembling knees, fetlock deep in the wet sand of the ditch-banks.
"Drink, you sons-uh-guns, drink!" Weary exclaimed jubilantly. "you've sure got it coming--and mama, how I do hate to see a good horse suffering for a feed or water, or shelter from a storm!"They pulled them away before they were satisfied, and led them back to where green grass was growing. There they pulled the saddles off and let the poor brutes feed while they unpacked food for themselves.
"It'll pay in the long run," said Luck, "to give them an hour here. I'll pay the Injuns for what grass they eat. Ramon must have stopped here yesterday.
I'm going up and see if I can't pry a little information loose from those squaws and papooses. Come on, Applehead--you can talk a little Navvy; you come and tell 'em what I want."Applehead hesitated, and with a very good reason. He might, for all he knew, be trespassing upon the allotment of a friend or relative of some of the Indians he had been compelled to "get" in the course of his duties as sheriff.
And at any rate they all knew him--or at least knew of him.
"Aw, gwan, Applehead," Happy Jack urged facetiously, sure that Applehead had tried to scare him with tales of Indians whose pastoral pursuits proclaimed aloud their purity of souls. "Gwan! You ain't afraid of a couple of squaws, are yuh? Go on and talk to the ladies. Mebby yuh might win a wife if yuh just had a little nerve!"Applehead turned and glowered. But Luck was already walking slowly toward the hogans and looking back frequently, so Applehead contented himself by saying, "You wait till this yere trip's over, 'fore ye git so dang funny in yore remarks, young man!" and stalked after Luck, hitching his six-shooter forward as he went.
At the shed, the Indian who had peered after Pink stood in the doorway and stared unwinkingly as they came up. Applehead glanced at him sharply from under his sorrel eyebrows and grunted. He knew him by sight well enough, and he took it for granted that the recognition was mutual. But he gave no sign of remembrance. Instead, he asked how much the Indian wanted for the grass the horses would eat in an hour.
The Indian looked at the two impassively and did not say anything at all; so Applehead flipped him a dollar.
"Now, what time did them fellows pass here yesterday?" Applehead asked, in the half Indian, half Mexican jargon which nearly all New Mexico Indians speak.
The Indian looked at the dollar and moved his head of bobbed hair vaguely from left to right.