ct, would be a
much surprised ex-sheriff--now a deputy--if they were not all captured
and scalped, if not worse, the minute their feet touched the forbidden
soil of these demons in human form, the Navajo Indians.

"If they were not too busy weaving blankets for Fred Harvey," Luck
qualified with his soft Texan drawl and the smile that went with it.
"You talk as if these boys were tourists."

"Yes," added Andy Green maliciously, "here comes a war-party now, boys.
Duck behind a rock, Applehead, they're liable to charge yuh fer them
blankets!"

The Happy Family laughed uproariously, to the evident bewilderment of
the two Indians who, swathed in blankets and with their hair knotted and
tied with a green ribbon and a yellow, drove leisurely toward the group
in an old wagon that had a bright new seat and was drawn by a weazened
span of mangy-looking bay ponies. In the back of the wagon sat a young
squaw and two papooses, and beside them were stacked three or four
of the gay, handwoven rugs for which the white people will pay many
dollars.

"Buenas dias," said the driver of the wagon, who was an oldish Indian
with a true picture-postal face. And: "Hello," said the other, who was
young and wore a bright blue coat, such as young Mexicans affect.

"Hello, folks," cried the Happy Family genially, and lifted their
hats to the good-looking young squaw in the wagon-bed, who tittered in
bashful appreciation of the attention.

"Mama! They sure are wild and warlike," Weary commented drily as he
turned to stare after the wagon.

"Us little deputies had better run home," Pink added with mock alarm.

"By cripes, I know now what went with Applehead's hair!" bawled Big
Medicine. "Chances is, it's weaved into that red blanket the old buck is
wearin'--Haw-haw-haw!"

"Laff, dang ye, laff!" Applehead cried furiously. "But do your laffing
where I can't hear ye, fer I'm tellin' ye right now I've had enough of
yore dang foolishness. And the next feller that makes a crack is goin'
to wisht he hadn't now I'm tellin' ye!"

This was not so much an ultimatum as a declaration of war--and the Happy
Family suddenly found themselves all out of the notion of laughing at
anything at all.

CHAPTER XII. THE WILD-GOOSE CHASE

Because they had no human means of knowing anything about the black
automobile that bad whirled across the mesa to the southeast and left
its mysterious passengers in one of the arroyos that leads into the
Sandias Mountai