“KILL HIM, THE THIEF!”
Late evening of the day on which he had left, Winnemucca saw Johnny
encamped on the North Fork for the night. Early the following
morning he breakfasted on trout and flap-jacks and essayed going
over the hills in an airline to the Reservation.
The creek was soon left behind. On the high rimrocks and hills above
it there was no trail, and the boy spent tedious hours in picking
out his way. At high noon he began dropping into the valley.
He had no plan of procedure, so quite naturally he first made for
the Agency. The Agent was not there; but he found Bill Ames, the
post trader, at home. Bill had seen no strangers in the last week or
two. Maybe Thunder Bird had. Indians never talked much. Johnny could
ask him. The old chief and his sons were killing rabbits down below.
Down below Johnny went.
“How, chief?” he greeted the old man, a creature of unassailable
dignity even in his rags. “You catch ’em rabbits, eh?”
“Nah! Boy catch ’em. Me too old.”
There was a note of resignation in the old chief’s answer quite
beyond what the words themselves convey. Men said that Thunder Bird
remembered the Forty-Niners and the Donner party. It might have been
even as they said, for there was a look in the chief’s eyes as old
as the beginning of time.
Johnny spread his blanket and beckoned to the aged Indian to be
seated. This formality accomplished, the boy opened a tin of tobacco
and poured its contents on to the blanket. With his fingers he
divided it. Not in equal portions. Oh, no! As he originally poured
the piles they were approximately even, but without glancing up the
boy kept on transferring small pinches of the tobacco from his own
to the chief’s portion until Thunder Bird’s share was four times
Johnny’s.
Then he produced cigarette papers, and from his share rolled
cigarettes for the old man. To attempt to describe the expression on
Thunder Bird’s face as he watched Johnny would be wasted effort. The
chief’s hair was white, his face gaunt, shriveled; his jaws
toothless; if such a combination can mirror the innocence of
childhood it was achieved in the old Piute.
In back of him, at a respectable distance, Thunder Bird’s squaw sat,
expressionless, watching the dumb show.
“_Hé_,” the old man grunted at last. “Mebbe you come look for mine
this time.”
“No look for mine, Thunder Bird. Look for stranger—white man. You
see him on Reservation last two moons?”
The Indian did not answer for several minutes. Then:
“No see um stranger.”
“Rode a stallion, big horse—a roan,” Johnny persisted.
“Spanish horse, eh?”
“That’s it—Spanish.”
“Mebbe I see um.” A pause, and then a shrug of the shoulders. “No
can tell. Too old. Why you want um? Steal horse?”
Johnny tried hard to conceal his impatience.
“No steal ’em horse,” he answered. Johnny spread his fingers, palms
up. “Him friend—_un ladrón le ha muerto_!”
“Ah, nah—dead?”
For an instant the old chief’s eyes seemed to lose their guile.
Johnny’s pulse quickened at what he thought was a note of concern in
Thunder Bird’s voice.
“Dead,” he repeated. “Maybe you see him, Thunder Bird?”
“Mebbe so boy see um,” the chief countered. “You come tomorrow, eh?”
Johnny knew it would be useless to urge haste. Tomorrow he would
have his answer and not sooner. It would be an answer worth waiting
for. If Thunder Bird had known Traynor and had had a hand in his
death, then he would deny everything tomorrow. If Traynor had been
his friend, the Indian would speak out. If neither of these
suppositions were true, it followed that Thunder Bird’s runners
would comb the Reservation. If Traynor had set foot in Elk Valley
the Piute chief would know by morning.
Johnny went back to the store to eat supper with the trader and to
spend the evening in his company. Just before he reached the post he
came face to face with Charlie Paul, Kent’s teamster.
The Indian had come to the Reservation from the ranch, a distance of
sixty miles, in less than four hours. A fair bit of riding when one
considers the country over which he traveled. The effort left the
man calm, unhurried. He had stolen away and surmised that he came on
an urgent errand, but no trace of excitement was on his face.
* * * * *
Molly had appeared soon after Gallup’s departure, and upon asking
for her pony, had been told that she was not to leave the house.
Angry words followed, and Molly, defying the old man, had set off at
a brisk walk for the hills.
Kent called to Madeiras to follow her and keep her in sight until
she came home. The command to the Basque was enough to dissuade the
girl. She preferred being locked in her room to being spied upon by
Madeiras. Later she became aware of the Basque’s presence on the
porch outside her window. Kent worked in his office, door open.
Molly saw that she was a prisoner. And why a prisoner unless she was
to be forced to marry Gallup?
This very day Molly had denied that she loved Johnny, but it was of
him that she thought now. If any one could save her, he could. If
she could get word to him, he’d come.
It was the old man’s habit to fall asleep after dinner. The girl
waited and listened for the sound of his asthmatic snoring. She had
penned a note to Johnny. When she felt sure that the way to the rear
of the house was open to her she crept out and found Charlie Paul.
Her instructions to him were brief and without any definite
destination. Johnny was somewhere on the Reservation. Charlie Paul
would know how to find him.
Ten minutes later the Piute had streaked away from the Diamond-Bar.
In the eyes of the law he had stolen the horse which he rode; his
job was gone, and he was on the side of danger—all of this just to
repay the girl for the respect she had always shown him. Pretty good
stuff, that, for an Indian.
“Hello, you, Charlie Paul!” Johnny called.
Charlie Paul smiled. “How?” he grunted. “Me find you.”
“Find me? How come?”
Charlie grinned as he handed Molly’s letter to Johnny. He was an
Indian, but he knew a thing or two.
Johnny lost his happy-go-lucky air as he read the following brief
note:
“Johnny:
“I am a prisoner here at the ranch. Aaron Gallup came
today. Father insists that I marry him. The man is
coming back tomorrow with a minister.
“Madeiras is here, too, the traitor! If Charlie Paul
finds you I know you will come.
“Molly.”
“Good boy, you, Charlie Paul,” Johnny said warmly, laying a hand
upon the Indian’s arm. “You savvy what’s up?”
“Pretty well me savvy.”
“Plenty fight comin’,” Johnny told him. “Shots, kill maybe—all
right, you?”
“All right, me,” Charlie said simply.
“You got rifle?” the boy asked anxiously.
“Me got um. On North Fork.”
“Hide out, eh? Buried?”
“_Hé_,” Charlie laughed mockingly. “I find um.”
Indeed, Charlie Paul was no fool. White men were not taking away his
gun. He had it where he could reach it when needed.
“We go now?” the Indian asked.
“No, Charlie. Horse too tired. Picket the ponies. We eat and sleep.
Moonup we go. Save horses, keep him fresh. Breakfast time we come by
ranch. Ride like hell then. You savvy?”
“Me savvy.”
For the time being Johnny gave up any thought of old Thunder Bird or
Crosbie Traynor. He cursed aloud whenever he thought of Molly
married to Gallup. Well, it would never come to pass. Not if he had
to kill the man.
After sundown they rode to the trader’s store and bought supplies
enough to last them a week. Before twilight was over they were out
of Elk Valley and heading for the North Fork. Sunup found them
hovering close to the ranch. Rose Creek, a branch of the North Fork,
flowed past the house. As usual with desert creeks, its course was
marked by a screening of willows and buckthorn. In this cover Johnny
left Charlie Paul with their ponies and a led one which the Indian
had obtained from the old chief.
“A minute or two after the breakfast bells rings,” the boy told the
Indian, “I’m goin’ to crawl up to the house. You stay here. You keep
me in range. Some man may stop me. If I raise my hand—like this—you
shoot. Right?”
“_Bueno_,” Charlie answered. “Like that”—he imitated Johnny’s
signal—“and I shoot.”
In a few minutes the Chinese cook rang his gong and the men began
trooping from the bunkhouse for their morning meal. Johnny waited no
longer. On his hands and knees he began crawling through the
sagebrush.
Fifteen minutes later he had reached the front porch, the floor of
which was a good foot above the ground. Noiselessly he crept beneath
it. From this shelter he stuck out a long willow gad and began
tapping on the window of Molly’s room.
The girl had been awake most of the night, and it did not take long
for this repeated tapping to draw her attention.
“Johnny!” she gasped as she caught sight of the boy’s face
protruding from the space below the porch.
“Get dressed quickly!” he ordered. “Don’t take over ten minutes.”
And, turtle-like, Johnny drew in his head and left Molly to jump
into her clothes. She whistled to him softly when she was ready.
“Come through the window,” he bade her. A second later she stood on
the porch beside him.
“Charlie’s in the willows with horses,” he said tersely. “You streak
it now. I’ll stop them if they catch sight of you.”
Just a clasp of the hands and she was gone. She had covered more
than half of the distance to the creek before Johnny started to
follow her. He had not taken twenty steps when the front door flew
open and Kent dashed out, gun in hand.
“You freeze where you are or I’ll blow your head off!” the old man
roared.
Johnny tarried not, but sped away as Kent’s gun barked again and
again. Johnny turned and fired over his shoulder as he ran. Molly
was at the creek. A second or two ought to see her mounted. Dropping
to his knees, Johnny emptied his pistol at the house.
The firing had brought twenty men to the old man’s side. Johnny
could hear him yelling:
“He’s stealin’ my girl! Kill him! Kill him! The thief!”
The bullets began kicking up the dust at Johnny’s feet. He had to
run for it now.
“Let’s ride!” he cried as he made the trees. “They’re goin’ for
their horses. We won’t have five minutes’ start on ’em.”
The drumming of their ponies’ hoofs upon the hard-packed road told
Kent that they had got away.
“Where are we heading for?” Molly cried as they raced along.
“God knows!” Johnny called to her. “Idaho, maybe. To the North Fork
first, and then that old stage trail to Boise. I figured we could
slip away and cross the line on the run. Can’t do it now! There’s an
old mine tunnel near the trail where it drops down the Tuscaroras.
We’ll hole up there till night. Got food and water there.”
Molly was crying, even though she rode at a breakneck pace.
“Don’t—don’t let them take me back,” she begged.
“They won’t!” Johnny cried grimly. “You’ll never marry Aaron Gallup!
I’ll see to that.”