Читать книгу Folded Hills - Stewart Edward White - Страница 17

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About midwinter one of the vaqueros came pounding in to report a raid by the Tulare Indians. The greater part of two manadas had been driven off. Andy immediately rode to investigate. The tracks were already over a day old. The Indians had craftily selected the place and the moment; in all probability they had been hanging around in the hills for some days. They had come afoot; and were after horses only. They had little use for cattle and none at all for trouble, if they could possibly avoid it.

Andy returned to the ranch house, collected his men, took down the Boone gun, and started at once in pursuit. He alone was calm in a great and clamorous excitement. He grinned cheerfully at Carmel, too elated and eager even to notice her fears. For the moment he was like a boy let out of school.

Through the hills and the low mountains the trail was plain enough to follow; for the several hundred horses had been held together in a compact band. The pursuers could push on at top speed of their mounts. But Panchito shook his head.

“It is always thus, señor,” he told Andy, as they raced along. “I have been on many like pursuits. As soon as we reach the Valley, you shall see. These indios are clever. The trail will be lost.”

Until they had emerged from the hills Andy rode carelessly, with only sufficient attention to keep to the trail. These were Tulare Indians, and they would get out of the coast ranges as fast as possible, without lingering even to scout their back trails for pursuit. But when the little party had reached the Valley, Andy slowed its pace. He rode twenty yards ahead of the vaqueros spying keenly for every indication, no matter now small, stowing each away in the corner of his mind for later synthesis. Every half-mile or so he halted his companions and circled wide to right and left of the trail. He was enjoying himself zestfully. This old familiar matching of his wits against the peoples of the wilds was to his lungs like a cold breeze from the mountains. It brought back to him the fierce old times. Especially did he breathe again the spirit of a long past day when he and Fitzpatrick—good old Bad Hand!—and the others followed the Shoshone horse thieves and stole past the village at night to the restless herd, and leaped almost blindly in the dark, and stampeded away, the horses bareback and uncontrolled, through the very lodges. He remembered the lad he was then, and the stickiness in his mouth. But that was deadly earnest, when a slip meant a life. Somehow now Andy could not rid himself of a feeling of play-acting. This was a soft and gentle land. These were a debased and primitive savage. They had little in common with the proud fierce warriors of the plains. But he knew better than ever to hold any antagonist too lightly. He was carefully approaching an estimate of the intelligence of those with whom he had to deal.

Andy could not have told you, much less himself, the steps of his processes; and he would not have known what you were talking about if you named them to him as psychological. The thing had become instinctive to him: so instinctive that for some time it never occurred to him that Panchito, and the other vaqueros, had no idea of what he was about or why he did certain things. Any mountain man would have understood, and no word spoken. For the moment Andy was reliving the mountain man’s life.

So, while he was keenly reading the signs of the trail, and determining by his wide circles to right and left that as yet no scouts had been detached to spy the back track, his mind was busy trying to form an estimate of the marauders’ intelligence and craft. Andy knew Indians, none better; and how, in general, Indians would act. But he could not predict in detail how these particular Indians would act until he had to some extent got himself into their skulls. And after he had done that he must reverse the process and try to get the Indians’ point of view on their pursuers, and what the savages probably thought the white man would do. Had he to deal with Blackfoot or Crow or Shoshone his course of action would have been clear to him. These were a strange people.

They had not thrown out flankers or scouts. Andy had not expected this in the hills. They would want to get out of the hills as rapidly and directly as possible. But out here in the open country, with a long ride ahead to the Sierra, it seemed elementary common sense. Did these people lack that common sense? Or were they contemptuous of their pursuers?

That was Andy’s unrecognized psychological problem which underlay all the keen zestfulness of his observation. The thing, to now, was too open and shut. He knew perfectly, before Panchito had told him, that shortly the stolen horses would be divided and divided, again and again, until the herd, as a herd, had been melted and scattered to the four winds. That was routine strategy. But sooner or later they must come together again. How promptly? Where? With what intervening precautions?

He stopped his horse and interrogated Panchito. Had that been thought of? Had the pursuing parties of the past tried the expedient of tracking one of the little bands, no matter how small, in the thought it might lead them to the rendezvous?

“But surely, señor,” replied Panchito in rather an injured tone. “One would have to be a fool not to have thought of that. But you shall see, señor. After a time the tracks will vanish; as though the caballos had taken wings and flown. No man living can follow beyond the river they call the Joaquin. There is nothing to follow. Nada! Nada!” He caught the skeptical gleam in Andy’s eye and became earnest in defense. “The señor knows that I am not unskillful in following the tracks of animals. But I speak not of myself. Old Cochuco—he is an Indian of the missions, señor, and an honest man. I think, señor, he can follow the track of a lizard on the bare rock or a humming bird in the air. But he cannot follow los indios beyond the Joaquin. Never but once,” Panchito corrected himself.

Andy nodded. These Indians, then, could blind a trail after all. Andy doubted whether they could do so against his own eye and training. He had been a Blackfoot himself. He knew how they did it; and therefore what to look for. But that was unimportant. He had one more bit to fit into his psychological mosaic. Belatedly Panchito’s last remark came to him.

“Never but once?” he repeated it. “And then? Did you come up with them?”

“We rode hard and came up with them, señor, but——”

“Nay,” Andy stopped him, “I shall tell you. The horses had all been killed and the Indians had gone.”

“Why, how know you that, señor!” cried Panchito, astounded.

Andy did not reply. He was again happily in pursuit of the inner trail, like a hound on the slot. Here was another bit to the mosaic. It was evident to him that when the Indians began to blind the trail, they also began to watch the back track for pursuit. If they discovered that, in spite of their precautions, they were still followed, they most certainly turned aside, luring their pursuers from the agreed meeting place. If, again, they found they could not shake them off, it was a simple matter to kill the horses, and then eventually, by devious ways through the brush-clad foothills, to rejoin their people in enjoyment of the bulk of the spoils. Andy’s spirits rose. These foemen were like to prove worthy of his metal after all. And, tentatively, he was beginning to think with their minds.

He rode forward again, now at a walk. Panchito and his men followed, but without enthusiasm.

A short distance from a shallow stream bed in which grew several magnificent specimens of sycamores, the álamos pintados of the Spanish, Andy drew rein with an exclamation of pleasure. In the dry and stony wash his quick eye had noted indications that had escaped even Panchito. With a gesture he halted the men and alone rode aside to investigate. A stone had been freshly overturned. That might mean nothing, of course—a deer or an elk, perhaps. But there was no question that the stone had been recently displaced. Only after an ever widening search of a half-hour did Andy discover what he sought, and knew positively that two horses had turned aside. It was unlikely that these were strays; for surely the riders would have turned them back, but Andy spent five minutes more eliminating that possibility. He followed the tracks until they led over difficulties that an unguided wandering animal would have avoided. He continued until, after a wide circle, their definite turn eastward proved them not to have been made by scouts sent out to watch the back tracks. Then he returned.

“We shall find the horses,” he told Panchito. Then he grinned, relaxing for the moment from the intense concentration in which until now he had held himself. “Your Indians are not such fools,” he said. “But they do not know mountain men; only californios,”—then instantly repented. “Your people have not had time to learn these things.” He explained a little. “Two men have ridden away alone. Perhaps the chief and another. Perhaps only messengers. At any rate alone. We shall follow them. It will not occur to them that they may be followed, for they will think that we will surely follow the horses.”

Panchito caught the idea with a sudden enthusiasm in almost ludicrous contrast to his previous glum endurance.