“Ai, Hano!” he greeted, for he had heard nothing of the disturbance up in the village. He did not remark on the water jug nor question Hano about it, for such would have been contrary to his whole training. Only squaws asked idle questions.
Hano nodded and went on out. No one saw him from the lava basin brink, for the entire band was gathered in the council lodge for the sheep meat distribution. He climbed up the mountain side, following his original course downward with Sid, and soon disappeared over the ridge.
From there Hano began tracking Sid over on the Pass side. He noted with some surprise that the dog was now gone, but that did not matter much. Hano’s face was set in a brown study of thought. He resembled his father, Honanta, strongly. The face was young and keen, with the high bony cheeks and the hard, thin facial muscles of youth, but it would acquire the same fullness as Honanta’s with growing years. Indianlike, Hano was considering, not his own personal interests but his duty toward his tribe. To aid them he had broken his honor—that honor which required him to await the judgment of the old men even if unbound and free to go. It was repugnant to him to take the step because of Sid’s words, but his duty to the tribe was paramount. The main thing, as he saw it, was to keep all these white men from ever discovering Red Mesa—The Arms of the Great Mystery. The white boy had spoken of Mexicanos coming. Hano knew them. Occasionally, not often, small parties of them had visited this region. They usually came by the Sonoyta River, following it until it lost itself in the sands to the south of Pinacate. From there they generally went to Represa Tank, from which the Camino del Diablo led them safely away from the mountains of Red Mesa. Only once in a great while had the Apache found it necessary to abolish one of these Mexican gentry who had become too inquisitive.
The white boy had told him also of a hound which could track him to Red Mesa. Hano doubted this not at all, for he had often heard in the lodge, of a winter’s night, stories of the far-famed sagacity and the wonderful tracking nose of this dog of the white man’s. He would like to have a dog like that himself for tracking mountain sheep. To capture or to kill him was one of the things that Hano decided to attempt.
Thus far Hano’s plan had reached only the point of determining to watch both parties and to act for the best. If one party of whites killed the other it would be a fine thing, for that would leave this white boy alone in Red Mesa, and he would never be allowed to leave it alive. Hano hoped that he would eventually consent to adoption into the tribe, for he seemed a fine youth and his heart was good, too, or he would not have remembered his pony’s thirst and brought that water jug.
His name, too, was in his favor. Col-vin! How often had Hano heard that name on his father’s lips when the story of that young white officer of long ago had been told! It was a sacred name in the clan. Because of it alone Honanta’s entire attitude toward this white youth had changed, Hano knew, before he himself had been led away to the medicine lodge. This young Colvin, too, had set him free and begged him to bring his friends to Red Mesa because the Mexicanos were coming. That was all very well, but Hano decided that he would not do that, except as a last resort. Better let them all kill each other; then there would be no one but the white youth to deal with.
By this time Hano had climbed down the mountain on Sid’s trail and found the pony. It was after dusk, and the familiar plain of giant cactus and creosote bush, of choyas and mesquites was dark in the shadows cast by the surrounding mountains, but the pony, a piebald, was easily distinguishable, picketed in a trampled ring of galleta grass. He had scented Hano, for an eager whinny came from him and Hano met the pony tugging at his lariat and thrusting out bared teeth and thirsty lips toward him in dumb appeal.
Pinto drank the water in that jug down in one huge suck. Then Hano untethered him, coiled the lariat and rode off, following his tracks back to the main party. Darkness fell as he followed the pony prints to the kill of the mule deer. Two hours of slow trailing under the stars led him to the huge, bare craters where, up the eastern one, the tracks now led.
Hano walked the horse up the steep slopes, listening in the dark constantly for a sign of these other white men. He paused at the crater edge and looked down. A vast mysterious black cistern was that crater well!
Hano halted the pony and listened, for faint voices were coming up to him from below. They were down there! Presently the Hoo-ooo! of a hound’s throaty challenge rang out. The dog was below and facing him, Hano knew instinctively from the direction of that sound. He drew back and waited. More voices; words in the white man’s tongue. After a time he heard them climbing out slowly through the other gap. They stood on the opposite brink, one voice talking excitedly, audible in the dead of night even across the crater. Then they rode on.