"'S hot day," he announced unemotionally, and took the paper which the red-blanketed one held out to him. His air of condescension could not hide the fact that behind his pride at being able to read print he was unhappily aware also of his limitations in the accomplishment. Along the scare-head Luck had indicated, his dirty forefinger moved slowly while he spelled out the words.
"A-a-bank rob!" he read triumphantly, and repeated the statement in Spanish.
After that he mumbled. a good deal of it, the longer words arresting his finger while he struggled with the syllables. But he got the sense of it nevertheless, as Luck and Miguel knew by the version he gave in Spanish to the old Indian, with now and then a Navajo word to help out.
When he came to the place where Ramon Chavez and Luis Rojas were named as the thieves, he gavea grunt and looked up at Luck and Miguel, read in, their faces that these were the men they sought, and grinned.
"Me, I know them feller," he declared unexpectedly. "Dat day I seen them feller. They go--"The old Indian touched him on the shoulder, and Juan turned and repeated the statement in Spanish. The old man's eyes went to luck understandingly, while he asked Juan a question in the Navajo tongue, and afterwards gave a command.
He turned his eyes upon the Native Son and spoke in Spanish. "The men you want did not come this way," he said gravely. "Juan will tell.""Yes, I know dat Ramon Chavez. I seen him ,dat day. I'm start for home, an' Iseen Ramon Chavez an' dat Luis Rojas an' one white feller I'm don't know dat feller. They don't got red car. They got big, black car. They come outa corral--scare my horse. They go 'cross railroad. I go 'cross rio. One red car pass me. I go along, bimeby I pass red car in sand. Ramon Chavez, he don't go in dat car. I don't know them feller. Ramon Chavez he go 'cross railroad in big black car.""Then who was it we've been trailing out this way?" Luck asked the question in Spanish and glanced from one brown face to the other.
The older Indian shifted his moccasined feet in the sand and looked away.
"Indians," he said in Mexican. "You follow, Indians think you maybe take them away--put 'm in jail. All friends of them Indians pretty mad. They come fight you. I hear, I come to find out what's fighting about."Luck gazed at him stupidly for a moment until. the full meaning of the statement seeped through. the ache into his brain. He heaved a great sigh of relief, looked at the Native Son and laughed.
"The joke's on us, I guess," he said. "Go, back and tell that to the boys.
I'll be along in a minute."
Juan, grinning broadly at what he considered a very good joke on the nine white men who had traveled all this way for nothing, went back to explain the mistake to his fellows on the ledge. The old Indian took it upon himself to disperse the Navajos in the grove, and just as suddenly as the trouble started it was stopped--and the Happy Family, if they had been at all inclined to belittle the danger of their position, were made to realize it when thirty or more Navajos came flocking in from all quarters. Many of them could--and did--talk English understandably, and most of them seemed inclined to appreciate the joke. All save those whom Lite had "nipped and nicked" in the course of their flight from the rock ridge to the Frying-Pan. These were inclined to be peevish over their hurts and to nurse them in sullen silence while Luck, having a rudimentary knowledge of medicine and surgery, gave them what firstaid treatment was possible.
Applehead, having plenty of reasons for avoiding publicity, had gone into retirement in the shade of a clump of brush, with Lite to keep him company while he smoked a meditative pipe or two and studied the puzzle of Ramon's probable whereabouts.