Читать книгу Folded Hills - Stewart Edward White - Страница 18

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“Viva!” he cried; then as an afterthought, “But they will see us, señor! On these wide plains——”

“We shall camp tonight here, at the álamos,” said Andy, “and perhaps half the day tomorrow. By that time they will have reached where they are going. There is no rain; their trail will not grow old.”

They bivouacked without fire under the spreading álamo pintado, hobbling the horses to graze until dark, munching their emergency rations of jerked meat and panoche—ground corn and sugar. The vaqueros sat apart, respecting the obvious withdrawal of Andy’s mood. They had plucked up some interest, and more curiosity, in this expedition; though, when it came to Andy’s hypothesis, they were not so certain.

But Andy was certain. He knew Indians. He dismissed all further theorizing from his mind and basked happily in contentment. His first, long-continued revulsion, succeeding the murder of Joe Kelly and the massacre of his Indian friends at Pierre’s Hole, had been soothed, finally healed. He could contemplate the old life without recoil. This little campaign warmed his heart with the wine of old times. To be sure, it was only an approximation. A number of elements were lacking. By no stretch of the imagination could Andy imagine himself in any danger: in this soft and lovely climate, in this soft and lovely land was—could be—no hardship as Andy knew hardship. Certain faculties must therefore remain unemployed. But to follow, and to come up unobserved, and to recover against what must undoubtedly prove to be great odds of numbers, that would call for something of mountain-man skill. Thank the saints these Indians were proving not to be as dumb as at first they had appeared. Andy anticipated the morrow with relish; as one anticipates contest in any game one enjoys and plays well.

And that, perhaps, was just the difference. This was a game. One welcomes, sometimes sets up, artificial difficulties in a game. One does not do so when it is a matter of life.

Nevertheless it proved to be a good game, not easy, and moderately exciting. The two lone riders went straight enough and carelessly enough, but at times their pursuers were baffled for a space. Eventually, however, they always managed to pick up the trail again. The changes of soil or terrain did not bother them much, though at times the going would have been blind to any but these trained trackers. Their chief difficulties were caused by the overlying spoor of game and especially of wild horses. In that day game swarmed in the plains of the great Valley, as it does on the veldt of Tanganyika today. Sometimes the trail was lost completely. Then one of the vaqueros stood landmark at the last clearly recognized sign, while the others rode slowly in ever widening circles until unmistakably they cut it again. By this time each and every one of them was as familiar with the individual hoofprints of those two horses as they were with one another’s face.

Progress was necessarily slow. The Indians ahead of them had traveled without pause, evidently with the intention of crossing the Valley in a single day. This suited Andy. The plains were flat, and there was no concealing cover. He wanted them to get as soon as possible into the foothills.

If he had not been so wholly intent, he must have enjoyed the excursion for its own sake. North and south the plains spread wide and flat to the horizon’s fall. Their surface was brown with the high grasses that rippled in the wind like the waves of the sea. In all directions were the herds of game animals; elk, antelope like shimmering ghosts, deer near the occasional bottomlands of the sloughs, even once in a while a bear or so lumbering about, lost in the deliberate somnolence of bears. Wild horses, at once inquisitive and shy, paralleled them, raced across ahead of them, wheeled to snort and stamp at them. The latter were rather a nuisance in their persistent curiosity, for their movements might indicate disturbance to an alert watcher. But then they were equally obstreperous in the presence of the bears; and Andy was satisfied that the men he followed felt quite secure, for their spoor continued undeviating and unhurried. A wind from the distant cool sea drove the dancing heat waves down the breadth of the valley. The sky was a deep and polished blue. The grasses were full of birds.

Behind them the Coast Range dropped steadily lower, lost the definition of its folds and cañons, blued with distance. Ahead they began to make out the Sierra. At first a half-guessed haze belting the azure of the sky; then a suggestion as of piled clouds on the horizon; at length, as though reluctantly, they were dropping their veils of remoteness to stand forth in their still and distant beauty. And below them the thin dark lines of the foothills began to rouse themselves to visibility.

Andy watched their slow defining with appraising eye. When he began to make out the details of their foldings he turned abruptly south, abandoning the trail they had been so painfully following. He straightened in his saddle and began to look about him in enjoyment of the pleasant day. He had the appearance of a man relaxed from concentration. He laughed at Panchito’s dismay and poked a little fun at him before he condescended to explain.

“No wonder you californios catch no Indians!” said he. “What have I heard you say so many times? ‘He that would enter a low door must stoop.’ Well, to catch Indians you must enter a very low door.”

“I do not understand, señor,” submitted Panchito.

“Why,” said Andy, “unless these Indians are very complete fools—and they do not appear to be quite that, though I think any of my old people in the mountain country would call them so—when they get to the hills someone will watch from a hilltop, and if we were to follow the trail so would we surely be seen, for the plains are flat and there is no cover, and one can see a grasshopper moving. These men have ridden straight as the flight of a crow, so it seems to me they will so continue and thus will enter the broken country where yonder dark line marks a cañon.”

“And?” urged Panchito, as Andy showed no disposition to go on.

“We will not oblige them,” said Andy.

“What shall we do, señor?”

“We will go south, and then we will go east, and so we will enter the hills, and then we will go north under their cover, and then we shall get behind these robbers, and so after a time, if we are careful and lucky, we shall come upon them or their tracks.”

“The señor is sabio!” exclaimed Panchito in unaffected admiration.

“Not very,” said Andy, laughing good-naturedly. “It is truly very simple.”

“Would that Don Ramón were here,” cried the vaquero, “for this he would enjoy!”

The Californians followed Andy now with kindled enthusiasm. They too were beginning to enjoy the game as its possibilities developed.