NELSON OYAPING: TEWA CHIEF OF POLICE
Half an hour later we saw them, a large party of Indians in the central flat. Some of them were mounted, but for the most part they had turned their ponies loose to graze and were grouped in a throng on foot. It would be there among them, probably haranguing, that I should find old Billa Chezzi, alias Crooked Fingers, with a black silk handkerchief swathed about his head, the perfect picture of a desert bandit. Old, wrinkled, and yellow-toothed, with bleary eyes that narrowed when he became sullen, Billa Chezzi was not the pleasantest of the Navajo chiefs.
“When we get there,” I said to the stockman, “look around for that Hopi boy. If you see a Hopi boy, and you have an opportunity, put him in the car; and then you stay with him.”
“What then?” he asked.
“Well, if they want him that badly, compel them to climb into the car and take him out of it.”
“Do you want me to bean one of those fellows, if they try that?”
“No—that wouldn’t help any. Simply compel them to take him away from you by force. I’m afraid you will not have the chance. Keep your gun on the seat, but don’t use it.” [[317]]
“You mean—just let them see that it’s present?”
“Exactly. But don’t make the mistake of pointing it at any one of them, even if he does clamber in.”