“Drink, you sons-uh-guns, drink!” Weary exclaimed jubilantly, “you've sure got it coming--and mama, how I do hate to see a good horse suffering for a feed or water, or shelter from a storm!”
They pulled them away before they were satisfied, and led them back to where green grass was growing. There they pulled the saddles off and let the poor brutes feed while they unpacked food for themselves.
“It'll pay in the long run,” said Luck, “to give them an hour here. I'll pay the Injuns for what grass they eat. Ramon must have stopped here yesterday. I'm going up and see if I can't pry a little information loose from those squaws and papooses. Come on, Applehead--you can talk a little Navvy; you come and tell 'em what I want.”
Applehead hesitated, and with a very good reason. He might, for all he knew, be trespassing upon the allotment of a friend or relative of some of the Indians he had been compelled to “get” in the course of his duties as sheriff. And at any rate they all knew him--or at least knew of him.
“Aw, gwan, Applehead,” Happy Jack urged facetiously, sure that Applehead had tried to scare him with tales of Indians whose pastoral pursuits proclaimed aloud their purity of souls. “Gwan! You ain't afraid of a couple of squaws, are yuh? Go on and talk to the ladies. Mebby yuh might win a wife if yuh just had a little nerve!”
Applehead turned and glowered. But Luck was already walking slowly toward the hogans and looking back frequently, so Applehead contented himself by saying, “You wait till this yere trip's over, 'fore ye git so dang funny in yore remarks, young man!” and stalked after Luck, hitching his six-shooter forward as he went.
At the shed, the Indian who had peered after Pink stood in the doorway and stared unwinkingly as they came up. Applehead glanced at him sharply from under his sorrel eyebrows and grunted. He knew him by sight well enough, and he took it for granted that the recognition was mutual. But he gave no sign of remembrance. Instead, he asked how much the Indian wanted for the grass the horses would eat in an hour.
The Indian looked at the two impassively and did not say anything at all; so Applehead flipped him a dollar.
“Now, what time did them fellows pass here yesterday?” Applehead asked, in the half Indian, half Mexican jargon which nearly all New Mexico Indians speak.