Chapter 20

The next morning, I was expecting to find a resumption of the battle. However, the neighborhood was strangely quiet. I scanned our entire perimeter with my binoculars, but could not see a single Navajo. Where the hell did they go? For that mater, where were Joe and Running Fox?

Alice was cooking breakfast when the prodigals came in. As soon as I saw them, I knew something serious had gone wrong. Joe was slumped over his saddle and was in the saddle more by Running Fox's efforts than his own. Alice saw them at the same time I did, and called to Elizabeth and Ace to take over fixing breakfast.

We rushed to Joe and Running Fox bursting out with questions so fast that none of them got answered. Finally, Running Fox held up his hand for us to shut up. We did, and Running Fox told us the story. They had just reached a good place for Joe to use his long range shooting skills when the accident happened. Joe was the first to dismount, and he turned to Running Fox to make some comment. In doing so, he stepped forward and put his boot down on the back of a small Sidewinder (a variety of desert rattlesnake). The snake took exception to this and immediately bit Joe above the top of his boot. Joe jumped, and the snake escaped, not that it made any difference since the damage had already been done.

Joe fell to the ground and Running Fox jumped to his aid. Every Indian knows how to treat a snake bite, so Running Fox went right to work. Of course, this was in the days before antivenom, so Running Fox put a tourniquet on Joe's leg and sucked the venom out of the puncture wounds. Running Fox was not able to get out all of the venom, but he did get enough to save Joe's life.

Unfortunately, it was impossible to bring Joe in last night because of the Navajos in the way, so they camped out until this morning. As soon as he saw that the Navajos had vacated the premises, Running Fox brought Joe in. Running Fox was sure that all Joe needed was about a week of rest—by then he should have recovered completely. We put Joe to bed in his wagon, and Alice sent Elizabeth to keep an eye on her brother.

Alice returned to cooking breakfast, and we ate. After breakfast, Running Fox and I talked about what could have caused the Navajos to leave without further fighting. When I told him what I had done the night before, Running Fox broke into laughter and said that I was the one who had chased them off. To simplify the explanation, the Navajo have a deity that is much like a snake, and it sometimes gets very irritated with the Indians. The Navajo probably equated the spike hole with a hole left by a giant snake fang, and they ran away to escape the snake spirit. Running Fox admitted that his idea was but a guess, and it might not be the real reason. I thought that it made a logical story, so I sure didn't argue with him. In any case, the Navajos were gone, and Abe wanted to move on, so Running Fox rode out alone to scout for us.

For the next couple of days, Running Fox found no sign of hostile Indians, so we had two days of comfortable traveling. However, on the third day, Running Fox came back early from his scouting with a report of Yaquis in the neighborhood. Twice he saw where Yaquis had crossed the road. He thought that it was the same group in both cases, but he couldn't be certain. He had counted eight warriors in each group, so that was why he was not sure of whether it was one or two bands threatening us. Whatever the case, we had to be prepared for trouble.

Abe decided to continue moving since eight Yaquis, or even 16 of them, were not enough to cause us great harm unless we got very careless. We were not likely to do that, now that we had been warned, so our best option was to keep moving. Running Fox agreed with Abe, so that ended the discussion.

We kept moving until we were met by rifle shots. Instead of a box formation, Abe had us pull into two parallel lines of wagons spaced about 6-8 feet apart. We moved between the wagons and under them and prepared to fight. The shooting at us was rather desultory, almost as if the Indians had no heart for the attack. The shooting continued for a couple of hours and then stopped. After an hour of quiet, Running Fox went out to see what could have happened.

In less than an hour, Running Fox was back to report that the Indians had given up on us and left. He was not sure why, but they had just left as if they were bored with the whole exercise. We all shook our heads in wonder, but we resumed our march toward Yuma with the happy thought that nobody had been hurt.

Joe was back in circulation after the enforced seven days of inactivity, and he was busting to get back to scouting. We were almost to Yuma by then, so he and Running Fox left, back in their old routine. They returned at noon with the report that the road to Yuma was open, and we should get there before dark. That was good news that everybody welcomed.

We pulled into Yuma and set up our camp. We had time before supper, so Abe and I went around to tell our various customers that we had arrived and would start making deliveries the next morning. We were received with the usual hand shakes and back slapping, but we both could see that there was some difference in the usual greeting.

It took talking to the fourth man before we could get a definitive answer as to what was wrong. It was the railroad! They had been building steadily out from Yuma headed toward Tucson, and had promised to be hauling freight by the middle of the next summer. In other words, we were going to lose our customers as soon as the railroad was in business. It was a blow to our pocketbooks, but we could not blame the shop owners. The railroad could move the freight in three days that it took us three months to move. Our prices were pretty much the same, so the merchants simply could not afford to stay with us.