From the outside in to where they were entrenched was just a trifle easier. The Indiana in the grove were all absorbed in watching the edge of the Frying-pan and had their backs to the open, never thinking that white men would be coming that way; for had not the other party been decoyed around the farther end of the big butte, and did not several miles and a barbed-wire fence lie between?
So when Applehead and his three, coming in from the north, approached the grove, they did it under cover of a draw that hid them from sight. From the shots that were fired, Applehead guessed the truth; that Luck's bunch had sensed danger before they had actually ridden into the Frying-pan itself, and that the Navajos were trying to drive them out of the rocks, and were not making much of a success of it.
“Now,” Applehead instructed the three when they were as close as they could get to the grove without being seen, “I calc'late about the best thing we kin do, boys, is t' spur up our hosses and ride in amongst 'em shooting and a-hollerin'. Mebby we kin jest natcherlay stampede 'em—but we've sure got t' git through In' git under cover mighty dang suddent, er they'll come to theirselves an' wipe us clean off'n the map—if they's enough of 'em. These here that's comin' along after us, they'll help t' swell the party, oncet they git here. I calc'late they figger 't we're runnin' head-on into a mess uh trouble, 'n' they don't want t' colleck any stray bullets—'n' that's why they've dropped back in the last half mile er so. Haze them pack bosses up this way, Pink, so'st they won't git caught up 'fore they git t' what the rest air. Best use yore six-guns fer this, boys—that'll leave ye one hand t' guide yore bosses with, and they're handier all around in close—work. Air ye ready? Then come on—foller me 'n' come a-whoopin'!”
A-whooping they came, up out of the draw and in among the trees as though they had a regiment behind them. Certain crouching figures jumped, sent startled glances behind them and ran like partridges for cover farther on. Only one or two paused to send a shot at these charging fiends who seemed bent on riding them down and who yelled like devils turned loose from the pit. And before they had found safe covert on the farther fringes of the grove and were ready to meet the onslaught, the clamor had ceased and the white men had joined those others among the rocks.
So now there were nine men cornered here on the edge of the Frying-pan, with no water for their horses and not much hope of getting out of there.
“Darn you, Applehead, why didn't you keep out of this mess?” Luck demanded with his mouth drawn down viciously at the corners and his eyes warm with affection and gratitude. “What possessed your fool heart to ride into this trap?”
“We-ell, dang it, we had t' ride som'ers, didn't we?” Applehead, safe behind a bowlder, pulled off his greasy, gray Stetson and polished his bald head disconcertedly. “Had a bunch uh Navvies hangin' t' our heels like tumbleweed—'n' we been doin' some RIDIN', now, I'm a tellin' ye! 'F Lite, here, hadn't kep' droppin' one now an' then fur the rest t' devour, I calc'late we'd bin et up, a mile er two back!”
Lite looked up from shoving more cartridges into his rifle-magazine. “If we hadn't had a real, simon-pure go-getter to boss the job,” he drawled, “I reckon all the shooting I did wouldn't have cut any ice. Ain't that right, boys?”
Pink, resting his rifle in a niche of the boulder and moving it here and there trying to fix his sights on a certain green sweater back in the woods that he had glimpsed a minute before, nodded assent. “You're durn tootin' it's right!” he testified.
Weary looked shining-eyed at Applehead's purple face. “Sure, that's right!” he emphasized. “And I don't care how much of a trap you call this, it isn't a patching to the one Applehead busted us out of. He's what I call a Real One, boys.”