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Updated: May 28, 2025
"All right, dang ye, don't talk if ye don't feel like it," Applehead commented in wasted sarcasm, and looked at Luck for some hint of what was wanted next. Luck seemed uncertain, so Applehead turned toward the ditch, and the food his empty stomach craved. "No use tryin' to make 'em talk if they ain't in the notion," he told Luck impatiently.
Lite showed a disposition to stop and take issue with the shooters who kept up a spiteful firing from the ridge. But Applehead stopped him as he was leveling his rifle. "If yuh shoot," he pointed out, "they'll know jest where we air and how fast we're gittin' outa here. If yuh don't, unless their lookout kin see us movin' out, they got t' do a heap uh guessin' in the next few minutes.
Riding together since they were on a plain trail and there was nothing to be gained by separating they climbed to the higher mesa, crossed the ridge of the three barren hills that none of them but Applehead had ever passed, and went on and on and on as the hoofprints led them, straight toward the reservation.
And then discouragement would seize him, and he would wonder how he was going to get hold of money enough to take him to El Paso and the Convention. And how, in the name of destitution, was he going to pay for that stock of "positive" when it came? Applehead was dead willing to help him, that went without saying; but Applehead was broke.
And as for Applehead, the money burned his soul deep with remorse; so deep that he went around with an abject eagerness to serve Luck that touched that young man as a rare example of a bone-deep loyalty that knows no deceit. Which proves once more how fortunate it is that we cannot always see too deeply into the thoughts and motives of our friends.
He lay with his locked fingers under his head, staring up at one particularly bright group of stars, and listened to the droning voice of Applehead telling of a trip he had made out into this country five or six years before; and soaking in the peace and the comfort which was all the more precious because he knew that soon he must drag his weary body into the saddle and ride out to stand guard over the horses.
Applehead, it would seem from his speech upon the subject, would be a much surprised ex-sheriff now a deputy if they were not all captured and scalped, if not worse, the minute their feet touched the forbidden soil of these demons in human form, the Navajo Indians.
Indeed, Applehead had been calling Luck uncomplimentary names for cleaning the place of everything a man might need in a hurry, and he was ashamed of himself. "Can't find a foot of danged wire on the danged place!" Applehead kicked a large, tangled bunch of weeds under the very nose of the horse which jumped sidewise.
That last load of horse-feed had cleaned his pockets, as he had cheerfully informed Luck over three weeks before. Applehead was not, and never would be by his own efforts, more than comfortably secure from having to get out and work for wages. He had cattle, but he let them run the range in season and out, and it was only in good years that he had fair beef to ship.
Annie-Many-Ponies was Indian to the middle of her bone. Lite Avery, turning to look back as they galloped up a long slope so gradual in its rise that it seemed almost level, counted just fourteen Indians spreading out fanwise in pursuit. He turned to Applehead with the quiet deference in his manner that had won the old man's firm friendship.
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