thousands were better than millions. The ground was still covered with them, and Mouse still mashed them when he walked, but at least Newt could see a little distance, though what he saw wasn’t very cheering. He was totally alone with fifty or sixty cattle. He had no idea where the main herd might be, or where anything might be. Dozens of grasshoppers still clung to his shirt and to Mouse’s mane, and he could hear them stirring in the grass, eating what little of it was left. Most of it had been chewed off to the roots.
He gave Mouse his head, hoping he would have some notion of where the wagon might be, but Mouse seemed as lost as he was. The cattle were walking listlessly, worn out from their run. A few of them tried to stop and graze, but there was nothing left to graze on except grasshoppers.
There was a rise a mile or two to the north, and Newt rode over to it. To his vast relief, he saw several riders coming and waved his hat to make sure they saw him. The hoppers had nibbled on his clothes, and he felt lucky not to be naked.
He went back to get the cattle, and when he glanced again at the boys, they looked funny. They didn’t have hats. A second later he realized why: they were Indians, all of them. Newt felt so scared he went weak. He hated life on the plains. One minute it was pretty, then a cloud of grasshoppers came, and now Indians. The worst of it was that he was alone. It was always happening, and he felt convinced it was Mouse’s fault. Somehow he could never stay with the rest of the boys when there was a run. He had to wander off by himself. This time the results were serious, for the five Indians were only fifty yards away. He felt he ought to pull his gun, but he knew he couldn’t shoot well enough to kill five of them—anyhow, the Captain hadn’t shot when the old chief with the milky eye had asked for a beef. Maybe they were friendly.
Indeed, that proved the case, although they were rather smelly and a little too familiar to suit Newt. They smelled like the lard Bolivar had used on his hair. They crowded right around him, several of them talking to him in words he couldn’t understand. All of them were armed with old rifles. The rifles looked in bad repair, but they would have sufficed to kill him if that had been what the Indians wanted to do. Newt was sure they would want the cattle, for they were as skinny as the first bunch of Indians.
He began to try and work out in his mind how many he could let them have without risking dishonor. If they wanted them all, of course, he would just have to fight and be killed, for he could never face the Captain if he had been responsible for the loss of fifty head. But if they could be bought off with two or three, that was different.
Sure enough, a little, short Indian began to point at the cattle. He jabbered a lot, and Newt assumed he was saying he wanted them all.
“No sabe,” he said, thinking maybe some of the Indians knew Mexican. But the little short Indian just kept jabbering and pointing west. Newt didn’t know what to make of that. Meanwhile the others crowded around, not being mean exactly, but being familiar, fingering his hat and his rope and his quirt, and generally making it difficult for him to think clearly. One even lifted his pistol out of its holster, and Newt’s heart nearly stopped. He expected to be shot with his own gun and felt foolish for allowing it to be taken so easily. But the Indians merely passed it around for comment and then stuck it back in the holster. Newt smiled at them, relieved. If they would give him his gun back, they couldn’t mean to harm him.
But he shook his head when they pointed at the cattle. He thought they wanted to take the cattle and go west. When he shook his head, it caused a big laugh. The Indians seemed to think everything he did was pretty comical. They jabbered and pointed to the west, laughing, and then, to his dismay, three of them began to whoop at the cattle and got them started west. It