Читать книгу Folded Hills - Stewart Edward White - Страница 20

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Below them the cañon-like valley widened to an oval flat through which flowed a stream. On the hither bank a fire burned. Around the fire, close-gathered, milled perhaps a score of Indians. Others sat apart gnawing at bones and chunks of meat. Still others were stretched out here and there, asleep or torpid with gorging. The two men lay side by side taking in every detail, but each according to his interest and knowledge.

“There are no women: they are not yet home,” said Andy.

“The horses are up the cañon, señor,” said Panchito. “I see where they have been driven.”

“They imagine they have not been pursued,” continued the American. “They have been here already since yesterday at least. See, there are the ashes of another fire and the bones of another feast.”

“True, señor. Diablo, to think they care nothing for a good horse but to eat him! What now, señor?”

Andy considered. Except for an old smooth-bore pistol, which Panchito carried, his own rifle was the only long-range offensive weapon. The vaqueros carried merely light lances and their reatas and knives. The white men were nine against fully four times that number of savages. The latter were armed with short strong bows and stone-tipped arrows. The sensible thing was to wait until after dark and then to drive away the stolen horses by a sudden swift rush. That would certainly have been the procedure in like situation east of the Rockies. But, unexpectedly, Panchito objected.

“These bárbaros must be taught a lesson, señor,” he interposed firmly, “so that all the Valley shall know it is not well to steal from Fol-ded Heels.”

“What do you suggest, Panchito?” asked Andy, interested.

“Why, señor, it is very simple. We shall ride yonder until we are behind the horses. Then we shall drive them very fast down the Valley right over these indios. If we do so secretly enough and quickly enough, perhaps we may kill some of them before they get away into the hills.”

Andy considered.

“If you and the others had only cueros against the arrows,” he half assented at last.

Panchito brushed this aside.

“The señor does not know these bárbaros,” he said contemptuously, “They will not fight. You shall see; they will run like quail. Until they reach the brush they will not shoot their arrows.”

His black eyes were glittering with eagerness, watching Andy’s face. Andy gave way. According to all his training in such matters it was a fool thing to do. He was in an exalted boy mood for doing fool things.

“But this is what we shall do,” he rapidly outlined to Panchito. “I shall remain here where I can watch. Bring my horse as near to me as you can without his being seen. Do you and your men ride above the horses. Do not start until you hear a shot. Then drive the horses as fast as you can. As soon as I shoot I shall charge straight down the hill to join you as you come past.”

They departed to execute this order. Andy relaxed in the hot sunlight, waiting for sufficient time to elapse. The sun made him sleepy. He yawned. The excitement and interest of the game were about over. In the stalking, not in the kill, is the true ardor of the chase. Panchito was correct: there would be no fight worth the name.

He blew through the nipple of the Boone rifle, for it had not been fired since the start of the expedition, casting his eye appraisingly at the distance and seeking among the sprawling savages his target. Andy was relying on the effect of his shot so to astonish and demoralize the Indians as to permit a safe passage for the stampeded horses and the vaqueros. The savages were acquainted with the Californians and their methods and might conceivably put up some resistance to them; but they had no experience with American riflemen. Andy did not want any of his men hurt, even by accident, if he could avoid it. Besides, as Panchito had said, it would be wise to teach them a lesson. At length he made out the chief by his characteristic headdress. Experimentally he leveled the long rifle, testing his estimate of the range by the apparent size of the bead on the man’s chest. It was going to be pretty shooting at that distance. He loaded the piece, gauging the powder with meticulous exactitude, selecting from the several chargers that hung to his horn belt the one appropriate to the range.^[A] Next he wriggled about under cover until he found a place, sufficiently concealed, where he could sit comfortably. Here he sat down and kicked places for his heels and, resting his elbows inside his bent knees, again leveled the long rifle and squinted over the sights. Satisfied, he glanced at the shadows and settled himself to wait a few minutes more. By these things one qualified to judge would have known him for what he was, an expert rifleman, for your real expert, on business bent, never shoots offhand when he can sit down to it, and much prefers a dead rest when he can get it. After a little, judging the time had come he cocked and capped the piece and once more took his position.

[A] Some readers of this story in a magazine have objected that Andy would not have waited until now to load his rifle. As a matter of fact such was the habit of experienced old-timers, who varied the powder charge according to the range.

The shot was indeed a pretty one. Its problems engrossed all his technical interest. It was downhill; a moderately stiff breeze was sucking from the plains up the cañon; the heat of the sun rose from the earth in shimmering waves. All Andy’s faculties were concentrated on these different elements of the problem. The palm of his left hand was flat beneath the wooden forearm of the long barrel, the elbow inside of and steadied by the left knee; the butt of the rifle was high on the round muscle of his shoulder; his right elbow he braced against the inside of his right knee. Thus the extended rifle was held in the support of two isosceles triangles braced one against the other. But Andy knew—though he had long since ceased thinking of it—that it must there rest lightly and easily, without tension from knee or shoulder or hand, for the smallest undue pressure by the smallest of the muscles concerned would be sufficient to destroy the nice coördination of accuracy. One muscle alone, of all his body, must function, that of the trigger finger. So at the moment when the point of the front sight swept to its mark, Andy’s whole body sank to complete relaxation. This necessary physical passivity, Andy had found, must always be deliberately attained. This, in his ’prentice days, had been the most difficult thing of all to acquire. The human mind can take in and direct only about so many things at a time. Did he find the muscles of his knees contracting and so turn his attention to loosening them, at once he discovered his left hand tightening its clasp, or his right hand contracting so that his trigger finger was bound. But after a time, being of an analytical habit, he had happened upon a discovery. At first Joe Crane, whose skills and mental processes were mainly subliminal, hooted at him; but after he had examined himself in action his derision was changed to admiration.

“Doggone if you ain’t right, Andy!” he cried. “And I been doin’ it all the time and never knowed it!”

Joe had taken great joy in spreading the gospel. He would stand for a time watching the despairful inaccuracies of some tenderfoot, and then would spit sidewise and remark:

“Yo’ stand good enough, pardner, and yore hand is stiddy, but when she goes off she jerks.”

“I know it,” the greenhorn would confess, “but somehow I kain’t seem to help it.”

“Next time,” Joe then would observe with an air of owlish wisdom, “when yo’ go to pull trigger, yo’ sag yore belly.”

That was Andy’s discovery: that the muscle of the abdomen was a master muscle that must tighten first before any other part of the body can become tense; so that if it is relaxed, all others must be relaxed.

Long habitude had by now sunk all other elements of marksmanship below the necessity of Andy’s conscious direction. Even his alignment of the sights had become instinctive, “grooved” as the golf players say. But this one thing he always accomplished by a single mental impulse. It was the one thing he thought to do.

These things all flooded into his spirit as his cheek cuddled the velvety warm wood of the rifle’s stock, like friends returning from afar, the old joys in the exercise of familiar skill. The sights aligned themselves on the breast of the unsuspecting Indian chief, settled to meticulous nicety on the exact spot of paint that was to be the mark for the ball. Andy’s concentration was centered on that one little spot. He was too experienced a hand to “shoot at the whole thing.” For the moment he had no other thought in mind than sheer marksmanship. He relaxed his abdominal muscles, and his forefinger pressed back softly and smoothly against the trigger.

And at the last instant, seemingly without reason and certainly without his reasoned volition, he swung the sights to the left. The rifle cracked. The Indian whirled to the impact of the bullet, fell, was up again, dashed for the brush, his right arm dangling. Andy leaped to his saddle and set his horse at full speed down the steep slope. He reloaded in full career; but he neither measured the powder nor patched the ball. The charge he poured in direct from the horn, stopping the flow with his thumb. The bullet he spat into the barrel from his mouth. He did not bother with the ramrod, but struck the butt of the piece smartly atop the saddle horn to drop the missile home where the saliva would hold it well enough for the needs of close-range battle. Andy thenceforward carried the rifle muzzle up until he should use it. He could anticipate no fine accuracy from this rough-and-ready method; but in a mêlée fine accuracy is not important.

He reached the bottom of the hill just as the manada swept into view urged on by the whirling reatas of the vaqueros. Andy drew back, lest he head the horses; then, as they passed, joined his men in the rear. Had not the Indians, to a man, taken to the brush, they must have been trampled or brushed aside. Andy had not really appreciated until this moment what an overpowering weapon is such a band of half-wild horses driven through a confined space by native Californians. The vaqueros had a faculty, when they chose, of setting horses wild, partly by their activity with the reata, but principally by weird and peculiar half-cries. Andy rather regretted his shot: this overwhelming rush might have taught a better lesson had it burst upon the Indians unaware.

He reined back, with Panchito, as they overpassed the site of the feast, to spy about him curiously. There was not much to see. Evidently three horses had been killed and eaten. Of loot or trophy there seemed nothing, save a few of the short bows trampled and broken by the horses. But Andy’s eye caught a gleam of white behind a protecting boulder; and he stooped from his saddle to pick up the feather headdress that had fallen from the head of the wounded chief. At the same moment Panchito’s keen eyes detected blood on the stones.

“They carried him away, señor?” he asked.

Andy shook his head.

“I hit him here,” said he, placing his hand on his shoulder.

“You did not wish to kill him?” Panchito’s mind was incapable of entertaining the idea that Andy could not hit anything he wished, anywhere, at any distance.

“No,” replied Andy.

Panchito considered this a moment; then nodded with satisfaction.

“Why, yes,” he agreed, “it is better so: that way they will be more afraid, for they shall see him always with his shoulder broken. The señor is sabio; as always.”

For an instant Andy accepted this explanation with a certain comfort; but he was basically too honest. That had not been his reason. He did not know his reason. Deep down he wondered a little uneasily whether he was getting soft.

“It would be well if we rode on, señor,” suggested Panchito. “These ones have not gone far. They know we cannot follow, and they are there in the chaparral; and it might be that some will pluck up courage and creep near enough to shoot at us the arrow.”

Andy nodded. He leveled the long rifle to discharge it; for it was necessary to empty the piece of its makeshift battle-loading.

At the last moment his eye fell on a vulture perched obscenely half spread in the top of a digger pine part way up the hill. Without thinking he swerved the muzzle in its general direction and pulled trigger. The bird struggled for a moment to retain its hold, then flopped down with a beating of broad wings.

Andy laughed aloud. The result of the shot was pure fluke. The range was far beyond accuracy for the careless, unpatched loading of the rifle; and he had not even troubled to raise the rifle to his shoulder, let alone align the sights. The half-dozen or so of possible errors had compensated one against another. Every rifleman can remember in his own experience such accidents. But to Panchito this was only another demonstration to be expected of his master’s skill. A low wail or keening of astonishment or dismay arose from the bushes.

“That also is a lesson those ones will remember!” the vaquero exclaimed with satisfaction.

And indeed never again was Folded Hills raided.