Читать книгу The Sandy Steele Mystery MEGAPACK®: 6 Young Adult Novels (Complete Series) - Roger Barlow - Страница 12

CHAPTER SEVEN

Back of Beyond

After a hurried lunch that ended with flabby apple pie, as Sandy had discovered most lunches usually did in the Southwest, the five men climbed into Quail’s pickup truck. (The Chief insisted that the jeep couldn’t possibly travel the trails they would have to follow.) Then they set out for the wild Dot Klish Canyon area, to the northwest of Chinle, where the Navajo thought Chief Pony-tooth and his wife were “squatting,” as he put it.

Ralph chose to sit on a box in the bed of the truck because, as he said frankly, “If I’m in the cab with the Chief, we’ll quarrel.”

Sandy joined the driller on another box that was scantily padded with a piece of blanket. Soon both of them were hanging onto the truck body for dear life as they bumped and blundered over a road that made previous ones they had traveled seem like superhighways.

Sometimes their way led through tall thickets of mesquite and briars that threatened to tear the clothes off their backs. Then they would ford a stream so deep that water splashed over them. The machine, though still fairly new, groaned and knocked like a Model T at the torture it was undergoing.

“This territory is what Australians call ‘back of beyond,’” Ralph shouted at one point as he dodged low-hanging tree branches. “We need a covered wagon.”

At another, when they all had to get out and push the machine from a gully into which it had slid, he made sarcastic remarks about the driving abilities of all unprintable Navajos.

Once he wiped the streaming perspiration from his face and neck, pointed to a mass of black clouds in the west and muttered, “Thunderstorm weather. A good day to lie under a tree and take siesta.” Mostly, though, the Ute gritted his teeth and kept silent as the pickup fought its lonely way across the fringes of the Painted Desert.

It was mid-afternoon and the sticky heat was stifling when they reached the great box canyon where the Hopis were supposed to be living.

“I don’t like the feel of this place,” Quail said as he stopped the truck on a high bank that overlooked the trout stream pouring out of a narrow cleft between two buttes. “Look at those thunder clouds piling up. I should not wish to lose my car in there.”

“We don’t matter, of course,” Ralph grunted. “How far is it to Ponytooth’s place?”

“About half a mile, I think,” the Navajo answered.

“Then let’s leave your precious hunk of junk out here and walk in.” Ralph set off down a faint trail at a fast lope that the others found hard to match.

Around a sharp bend in the canyon they came at last to a heap of sandstone ruins. The little group of circular pueblos looked as old as the surrounding hills. Most of the walls had crumbled or been knocked apart in some strange manner. Only one had a roof of pine or cottonwood beams, light poles and bunch grass. In front of it a tiny old woman sat smoking a long pipe.

Her face, brown as chocolate, was a mass of wrinkles. But her black eyes, which peered out of the folds of a heavy wool blanket, or manta, were sharp with intelligence.

She made no answer to their questions in English and Navajo. When Ralph spoke to her in the basic Shoshonean language, however, she pursed her lips and pointed up the canyon with them.

“Ponytooth is probably up there hunting somewhere,” Chief Quail said. “We’d better find him before it gets too dark.”

Half a mile farther up the stream they found the old Chief. He was stalking a jack rabbit with, of all things, a bow and arrows. Slanting rays of sunshine that broke through the gathering clouds showed that he was dressed in the ancient Hopi costume. It consisted of a woolen poncho, or blanket, with a hole cut in the center, through which he had thrust his white head, baggy trousers slit up to the knees on the sides, deerskin leggings wrapped round and round his spindly shanks, and beautifully woven sandals. Only his belt, which was mounted with large silver discs, showed that he was a person of importance.

“I didn’t know that clothing like that existed any more, except in museums,” Ralph said softly.

The Hopi shot the jack rabbit through the heart, retrieved his arrow, and came toward them, carrying the animal by its long ears. When Hall went forward, with outstretched hand, the Hopi showed no surprise whatever.

“No spikum English mush,” he said gravely in return to the oilman’s greeting.

Chief Quail tried him in Navajo—and got a cold stare in return.

“I think I can make him understand what we want, if it’s O.K with you, John,” said the driller.

At a nod from Hall he spoke at great length in Shoshone clicks and gutturals.

Chief Ponytooth listened, at first politely, then with a growing frown. At last he held up a hand and replied with a torrent of words. As he spoke, thunder rolled in the far distance.

“He says,” Ralph translated, “that he is an old man. Soon his body will be placed in a crevice in the rocks, and his spirit will go northward to join those of his ancestors at a place called Sipapu. Meanwhile, however, he has been ordered by the Hopi Council to live here in the ruins of Awatobi, a pueblo or village that was destroyed by the Spaniards hundreds of years ago because the tribe had killed all of their Christian missionaries.

“Although he knows that the Navajos claim this territory as part of their reservation, he declares that it is part of Tusayan, an ancient province belonging to the Hopi and their cousins, the Moqui. So long as he stays here, he believes, neither Navajos nor palefaces will dare to steal this land.”

“Tell him we don’t want his confounded desert,” Hall said impatiently. “Tell him we won’t kill a single jack rabbit or harm a piece of sagebrush. Try to make him understand that all we want to do is to remove oil from far beneath the ground. In exchange we will give his people money so they may build schools and hospitals.”

When this was translated, Ponytooth straightened his bent back and glared at them defiantly. His face, under its broad white hairband, took on a haughty grandeur. Then he spoke again, waving his skinny arms and beating his breast for emphasis.

And the thunder rolled nearer with every sentence he uttered.

“He says”—Ralph shrugged—“that neither the Navajos nor the palefaces have ever given his people anything. They have always taken things away—cattle, wheat, the spirits of young warriors. They are his enemies until the end of the world. He is weak and old now, but you can only take this land by killing him.”

A spatter of cold rain emphasized the Chief’s meaning.

“We had better leave this place,” Quail said as he gripped Hall’s arm. “It must be raining hard farther up the canyon.”

“Not yet,” Hall snapped. “Ralph, tell the Chief that we understand how he feels and that we will go, if he wishes. But warn him that if he does not accept the fair offer we wish to make him, other men may come and take this land from him, as they took other things from his ancestors. Try to make him understand that we are his friends.”

The Chief understood the last English word.

“Frens!” he screamed. “Frens! Frens! Frens!”

In the rapidly gathering darkness the canyon walls echoed with his shouts. “Paleface, Navajo, never frens to Hopi!”

Chief Ponytooth, last of the Pony Clan, burst into wild whoops of sarcastic laughter. At the same moment, thunder rolled deafeningly above their heads, lightning danced about the canyon walls like angry spirits, and the rain began coming down in bucketfuls.

“Out!” yelled Chief Quail. In his excitement he forgot his careful grammar. “Water come. We die!”

He spoke too late. A roaring sound had begun far up the canyon. Before they could move, it grew deafening. At the same time a five-foot wall of yellow water swept down upon them like an express train.

After that, things happened too fast to be described. As he ran madly toward the canyon wall with the idea of climbing out of reach of the flash flood, Sandy slipped on a bank of wet clay and fell headlong. Ralph grabbed him by the collar and barely managed to drag him to safety.

Hall let out a wild yell as the dry sandbank on which he had been standing a moment before absorbed water like a sponge, turned to quicksand, and began to suck at his legs. Just before the wall of water struck, Donovan snatched up a long branch and held it out. Hall grasped it and, in turn, was pulled to comparative safety.

By this time the little trout stream had turned into a raging torrent. A great pine tree in its bed, roots torn loose by the tremendous sudden push of the water wall, came crashing down. A branch caught Ponytooth across the thighs and dragged him from sight beneath the flood.

Chief Quail, who was nearest to the Hopi, acted instinctively. He plunged into the frothing, rock-filled water and fought it with all the power of his massive shoulders. A moment later he was tumbling downstream with the old man held tightly in his arms.

While the others watched spellbound in the gathering darkness, the Navajo fought the cloudburst. Fifty yards downstream, he managed to hook a leg around a rock that still held firm. His face purple with effort, he finally succeeded in pulling his apparently lifeless burden to the top of a dry ledge.

Almost as quickly as it had come, the flood subsided. Dripping, cold and shaken, the little party headed back toward the pueblo ruins. Chief Quail walked ahead, carrying the Hopi in his arms.

An hour later Donovan rose from examining the Chief and looked across a campfire at the rest of them with a worried frown. The geologist had found Ponytooth’s only apparent injury—a broken leg—and had set it with expert fingers. But the old man failed to return to full consciousness thereafter. He threw his arms about and shouted wildly. His cheeks burned with sudden fever. When his little brown wife crept to his side, he ordered her away in a frenzy.

“I can’t understand it,” said Donovan. “So far as I can tell, he has no internal injuries. But the life is running out of him like water out of a sack. I’m afraid he may be dying.”

“He is dying,” Ralph spoke up softly. “I’ve been listening to his ravings. He thinks he has offended the water spirits by even talking to palefaces and a Navajo and a Ute about the tribe’s sacred boundary line. He thinks he must die to make his peace with the spirits. And so, he will die before the night is out.”

“Hosteen Quail,” said Hall, “Navajo chiefs are medicine men as well, aren’t they? Can’t you paint a sand picture or something, and cure Pony-tooth of his delusion?”

“No,” the Chief answered sadly. “Navajo magic works only for Navajos.”

“Let me try,” Ralph said suddenly. He gripped the Hopi’s shoulder to get his dazed attention, and spoke to him for a long time in Shoshonean.

The old man shook his head back and forth in disagreement, but he stopped picking at the moth-eaten buffalo robe which Donovan had thrown over him.

“I told him that the water spirits were not angry,” the Ute said at last. “He said I lied. I told him we are all his friends. He said to prove it. So I told him I would prove it by singing him well.” Ralph stood up slowly and paced around the fire three times in a counterclockwise direction. “My father was a medicine man,” he went on. “As a boy I watched him sing people well, but I never was allowed to try it, of course… Well, here goes… Wish me luck, Hosteen Quail.”

He leaned his head back against the ruined pueblo wall for a moment, as though gathering strength from the ancient building. Then he began to sing in his rich baritone.

At first the chant went slowly, slowly, like the beat of buffalo hoofs on the open prairie. Then, as Sandy held his breath to listen, the rhythm became faster. The words meant nothing to the boy, but somehow they painted pictures in his mind: A wild charge of naked Indian horsemen, dying in a hopeless effort to capture a fort from which white rifle smoke wreathed. The thundering rapids of some great northern river. Chirping of tree toads in the spring. A love song on some distant mesa. A bird call. The silence of a summer night…

“There!” Ralph whispered at last, his broad face dripping sweat.

He reached under Ponytooth’s robe and fumbled there for several moments. Almost, he seemed to be withdrawing some object from the old man’s body—something red and wet—like a fingernail!

The Hopi gave a long sigh. “Frens,” he murmured as he sank into peaceful slumber.

“He’ll be all right now,” said the Ute, “providing we take him to the hospital at Lukachukai quick to get that compound fracture fixed.”

He stumbled out into the darkness, which now was spangled with stars.

Her eyes round with faith and wonder, the little brown woman followed him. She was carrying a pot of steaming coffee.

* * * *

The less said about that awful midnight drive to Lukachukai, the better. Hall got them there somehow, while Chief Quail and Ralph held Pony tooth in their arms during the entire journey to protect his leg.

Then they had to go all the way back to Chinle for the jeep, but not before Chief Quail had made a detour to toss a piece of yellow carnotite ore on the wishing pile which stood near the entrance to Canyon de Chelly.

“It’s not that I like Hopis any better than I do Utes,” he said shamefacedly. “It’s just that I want Ponytooth’s leg to get well quick so we can settle the boundary dispute.”

“Well, here, I’ll chuck something on your silly pile, too.” Ralph twisted a ring off his finger and tossed it onto the big mound of stones. “Me Boy Scout. Always do good turn.” But he turned away so the others couldn’t see his face.

They got a few hours’ sleep at Thunderbird, but a much-relayed telegram dragged them out of bed before sunup. It was from Jack Boyd, the diesel engine man at the well, and it read:

SHE’S ACTING UP STOP HAVE HER STUFFED FULL OF MUD STOP HURRY

More dead than alive, they pulled onto Hall’s property to find that things had calmed down. Drilling was proceeding as usual, in fact, and Boyd was covered with embarrassment.

As Ralph and Sandy stood outside the bunk trailer, almost too tired to go in and take their clothes off, the driller said lazily, “See that big mountain there to the north? What does it remind you of?”

Sandy blinked the sleep out of his eyes and stared. The mountain in question had a big round cliff at one end, a long high ridge in its center, two branching ridges farther along, and sharply pointed cliffs at its other end.

“Why,” he said at last, “it looks like a man lying on his back.”

“Good boy. That’s what it is.” Ralph grinned. “That mountain is called the Sleeping Ute. It’s supposed to be a great warrior who will awake some day, to unite all the Indians… And do you know what?”

“What?” Sandy yawned mightily.

“I thought I saw his big toe wiggle just a minute ago.”