"I don't believe he's hurt very bad," Frank declared. "I've felt all over his body, and don't seem to find any signs of broken bones."

"Listen to him gasp right now, as if the breath had been knocked out of him," remarked Bob. "He's going to speak, Frank, sure he is. I wonder can we understand what he says. Moqui wasn't included in my education at the Military Inst.i.tution at Frankfort."

The Indian was indeed trying to get enough air in his lungs to enable him to say something.

CHAPTER IX

"TALK ABOUT LUCK!"

"No hurt Havasupai!" was what he managed to say, hoa.r.s.ely.

"We're not going to hurt you, old man," remarked Frank; for he had seen that the Indian was no stripling. "What we want to know is, how you came to get so close to the heels of my horse as to be kicked? Tell us that, Havasupai, if you please."

There was no answer, although twice the exhausted red man opened his lips as if to speak.

"That knocks the props out from under him, Frank," remarked Bob; "because he was bent on getting away with one or both mounts."

"How about that, Havasupai; weren't you thinking of stealing a horse, when that animal just keeled you over so neatly?" Frank demanded.

The Indian was sitting up now. His head was hanging low on his chest.

Perhaps it was shame that caused this: or it might have been a desire to keep his face hidden from the searching eyes of the white boys.

Then, as though realizing the utter folly of denying what must appear so evident, he nodded his head slowly.

"It is true, white boy," he muttered, in fair English. "Havasupai meant to take a horse. He had looked upon the man who beckons, and he was afraid, because he had trouble at his village. He believed every man's hand was against him. And so he would flee to the desert where the white man's big medicine would not find him. There he might die with the poison snakes and the whooping birds."

Bob was of course puzzled by some of the things the Indian said.

"What does he mean, Frank?" he asked.

"I take it the warrior has been in some sort of fuss at his village,"

the other replied. "Perhaps he even struck his chief in anger, and that made an offense punishable with death. These Moqui Indians are a queer lot, anyhow, I've heard. Then he must have skipped out, and by accident seeing our friend, Sheriff Stanwix, known to him as the 'man who beckons,' he just imagined they were looking for him."

"And that locoed him so much that he just couldn't stand it any longer,"

Bob said. "Discovering our camp he got the notion in his head that a horse might take him out of the danger zone. So he was in the act of jumping on one of our mounts when your clever little beast took a hand, or rather a hoof, in the matter. But do you know what he means by whooping birds?"

"Well, I can give a guess," replied Frank. "That must mean the little owl that lives with the prairie dogs in their holes, along with the poison snake, otherwise the rattler."

"Looks like we've just got our hands full to-night, Frank!"

"You're right, Bob. First we feed two hungry sheriffs, and pick up quite a little news about the bad men they're looking for. Next, along comes this Moqui, Havasupai he says his name is, and he gets in a bad fix by trying to run off our horses; and feeling sorry for the old chap we lug him to our tent, and look him over, ready to even bind up his wounds, if he has any."

"Getting to be a habit, isn't it, Frank?"

"Seems like it," returned the taller boy, as he once more turned toward the seated Indian. "Here, can you tell us where my horse kicked you?"

"It matters not much. Havasupai get what he needs because he try to steal horse from good white boys," came the humble reply.

"One thing sure," remarked Frank aside to his chum, "he's been in touch with the whites a heap, or he wouldn't know how to talk as he does. But then, that isn't so queer. You know that these Moquis pick up a lot of good coin from the travelers who come and go at the Grand Canyon."

"Why, yes," Bob went on to say, "I've always heard that one of the sights of this wonderland was the snake dance of the Moquis. I read an account of it in a magazine once. It said that hundreds of people gathered from many quarters to be on hand and see it, because it occurs only once a year. Some of them were big guns in science, too."

"They're getting more and more interested in these Indians of the Southwest," Frank continued; "and trying all the time to find out just where they fit in the long-ago past. That's what made old Uncle Felix, who had already made a name for himself, give up his happy home, and hide all these months down here. He wants to learn the long-buried secrets of the past history of the Zunis, the Moquis, and other tribes that might have sprung from the old cliff builders."

"But what can we do with this fellow, Frank?"

"Oh! well, nothing much, I reckon," the other answered, carelessly. "He must have been plum locoed at seeing the sheriff, and hardly knew what he was doing when he set out to grab Buckskin. We'll just have to let him sleep here till morning, and then give him a bite of breakfast."

"Just as you say, Frank; you ought to know what's best," Bob hastened to declare. "Now I wonder what'll be the next thing on the programme? I hope we don't have the two men the sheriff is hunting, drop in to make us a call."

"Little danger of that now," Frank remarked rea.s.suringly. "By this time they're well on their way to Flagstaff. Here, Havasupai, as you call yourself; we don't mean to do you any harm, even if you did play us a mean trick when you tried to steal a mount. Understand?"

The old Indian looked up at Frank through his ma.s.ses of coa.r.s.e black hair, just beginning to be streaked with gray.

"Not do any harm," he repeated, as though hardly able to grasp the meaning of the words Frank spoke; then his brown face lighted up with a grim smile. "White boys good; Havasupai glad him not take horse. Bad Indian! But not always that way; him carry speaking paper tell how make good," and he thumped his breast as he said this.

Again did Bob's eyes seek the face of his chum in a questioning manner.

Frank, having been raised amid such scenes, could more readily understand what the Moqui meant when he referred to certain things which Bob had never heard mentioned before.

"He means that he's got a letter of recommendation along with him, written by some tourist, I reckon. Perhaps this old fellow may have found a chance to do some one a good turn. He may have run across a greenhorn wandering on the desert; saved a fellow who had been stabbed by the fangs of a viper from the Gila; or helped him to camp when he broke a leg in climbing around the Grand Canyon."

"Oh! I see what you mean, Frank; that this party wrote out a recommendation to all concerned, stating that in his opinion Havasupai was a fine fellow, and worth trusting. But then that was before he got into this trouble at this village. If he's a fugitive from justice at the hands of his own tribe, such a paper isn't worth much, I guess."

"No more it isn't," agreed Frank.

"But all the same he means to stick us with it," chuckled Bob; "for you can see he's got his hand in his shirt right now, as if searching for something so valuable that he won't even carry it in his ditty bag."

"That's right, Bob."

"And now he's got in touch with that old letter," grunted Bob. "I suppose we'll just have to read it to please him."

"You can if you care to," remarked Frank. "As for me, I'm that sleepy I only want a chance to crawl back into the tent, and take up my interrupted nap where it broke off."

"But good gracious! do you really mean it?" exclaimed the puzzled Bob.

"Why not?" demanded his chum.

"And leave him loose here, with the horses close by?" Bob went on, aghast.

At that Frank laughed a little.

"Well," he said, drily; "so far as the horses are concerned, I reckon our old friend Havasupai will go a long way on foot before he ever tries to steal a promising looking pony again. As long as he lives he'll remember how it feels to get a pair of hoofs fairly planted against his back. So long, Bob. Tell the old fraud he can lie down anywhere he pleases, and share our breakfast in the morning."

"That's the way you rub it in, Frank; returning evil with good," the Kentucky boy remarked. "But since you want me to take him in hand, I'll be the victim, and read his letter of recommendation, though I can already guess what it will say."