“'S hot day,” he announced unemotionally, and took the paper which the
red-blanketed one held out to him. His air of condescension could not
hide the fact that behind his pride at being able to read print he was
unhappily aware also of his limitations in the accomplishment. Along the
scare-head Luck had indicated, his dirty forefinger moved slowly while
he spelled out the words. “A-a-bank rob!” he read triumphantly, and
repeated the statement in Spanish. After that he mumbled a good deal
of it, the longer words arresting his finger while he struggled with the
syllables. But he got the sense of it nevertheless, as Luck and Miguel
knew by the version he gave in Spanish to the old Indian, with now and
then a Navajo word to help out.
When he came to the place where Ramon Chavez and Luis Rojas were named
as the thieves, he gave a grunt and looked up at Luck and Miguel, read
in, their faces that these were the men they sought, and grinned.
“Me, I know them feller,” he declared unexpectedly. “Dat day I seen them
feller. They go--”
The old Indian touched him on the shoulder, and Juan turned and
repeated the statement in Spanish. The old man's eyes went to luck
understandingly, while he asked Juan a question in the Navajo tongue,
and afterwards gave a command. He turned his eyes upon the Native Son
and spoke in Spanish. “The men you want did not come this way,” he said
gravely. “Juan will tell.”
“Yes, I know dat Ramon Chavez. I seen him dat day. I'm start for home,
an' I seen Ramon Chavez an' dat Luis Rojas an' one white feller I'm
don't know dat feller. They don't got red car. They got big, black car.
They come outa corral--scare my horse. They go 'cross railroad. I go
'cross rio. One red car pass me. I go along, bimeby I pass red car in
sand. Ramon Chavez, he don't go in dat car. I don't know them feller.
Ramon Chavez he go 'cross railroad in big black car.”
“Then who was it we've been trailing out this way?” Luck asked the
question in Spanish and glanced from one brown face to the other.
The older Indian shifted his moccasined feet in the sand and looked
away. “Indians,” he said in Mexican. “You follow, Indians think you
maybe take them away--put 'm in jail. All friends of them Indians pretty
mad. They come fight you. I hear, I come to find out what's fighting
about.”
Luck gazed at him stupidly for a moment until the full meaning of the
statement seeped through the ache into his brain. He heaved a great
sigh of relief, looked at the Native Son and laughed.
“The joke's on us, I guess,” he said. “Go, back and tell that to the
boys. I'll be along in a minute.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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