There was laughter and applause and not a soul offered to leave. In the darkness Hartman was heard to laugh in return and shortly the first film appeared again. Fields of corn shimmered in the wind. Cows grazed in quiet meadows. The audience stared again, breathlessly. Suddenly from without was heard a long-drawn cry. It was like the lingering shriek of a coyote. Few in the hall had heard the call before, yet no one mistook it for anything but human.
"An Apache yell!" exclaimed an excited voice.
There was a sudden overturning of benches and Pen and Jim were forced out into the street with the crowd.
An arc light glowed in front of the hall. Under this the crowd swayed for a moment, uncertain whither to move. Jim held Pen"s arm and looked about quickly.
"I don"t know where you will be safest, Pen. I wish I"d heeded the itching of my thumb and taken you home an hour ago."
"Jim," said Pen, "I certainly like your parties. They are full of surprises."
"You are a good little sport," said Jim, "but that doesn"t make me less worried about you. Hang onto my arm now like a little burr."
He began to work his way through the crowd. "I don"t want to attract their attention," he said. "They will follow me like sheep."
"Was it an Apache cry, Jim?" asked Pen.
"Yes! Old Suma-theek, with a bunch of his Indians has been riding the upper mesa for me tonight. Just to watch Mexico City. I told him to keep things quiet, so there must have been some imperative reason for the cry. I"ll take you to the upper camp and get my horse."
Jim breathed a sigh of relief as they cleared the crowd and could quicken their pace. But they were scarcely out of the range of the arc light when a dark group ran hurriedly down from the mesa back of the town. It was old Suma-theek with four of his Indians. They held, tightly bound with belts and bandanas, two disheveled little hombres.
"Take "em to jail, Boss?" panted Suma-theek. "I find "em trying get back to lower town!"
"No! No! Back up into the mountains. I"ll get horses to you and you must take them to Cabillo. Lord, I forgot to warn you!"
Suma-theek turned quickly but not quickly enough. A man ran up to the little group then plunged back toward the hall.
"A rope!" he yelled. "Bring a rope. They"ve got the two hombres."
Men seemed to spring up out of the ground.
"Run, Pen, toward the upper camp!" cried Jim.
"I won"t!" exclaimed Pen. "They won"t shoot while a woman is standing here."
She plunged away from Jim and caught Suma-theek"s arm. The old Indian smiled and shoved her behind him. Jim turned and stood shoulder to shoulder with the Apache chief. "Now work back until we"re against the power house with the hombres back of us," he said.
By the time the crowd was ma.s.sed, yelling and gesticulating on three sides of it, the little group was backed up against the concrete wall of the little substation.
Jim waved his arm. "Go home, boys; go home! You can"t do any lynching while the Apaches are here!"
"Give us the hombres, Boss!" shouted a threatening voice, "or we"ll have to be rough on you."
"Send the lady home," called someone else. "This is no job for a lady to see."
"Boss," said Suma-theek in Jim"s ear, "you send your squaw out. She go up mountain back of town, find Apache there, tell all Apaches bring guns, come here, help take hombres to jail."
Jim looked at Pen and his face whitened. But Pen"s nostrils dilated and her eyes sparkled. Pen was Irish.
"I"ll go," said Pen. "Where is Henderson?"
"He ought to be back," said Jim. "Try to find him after you get the Apaches. Send anybody down you can reach." Then he shouted to the crowd, "Let the lady out!"
Jim and Suma-theek stood well above most of the mob. Jim was unarmed and the crowd knew it. But even had any man there been inclined to prevent Pen"s exit he would rather have done so under a c.o.c.ked gun than under the look in Jim"s white face as he watched Pen"s progress through the crowd. The men gave back respectfully. As soon as she was free of the crowd, Pen broke into a run. She darted back behind the line of tents up onto the mountainside.
There for an instant she paused and looked back. The five Indians were as motionless as the crouching black heaps they guarded. They held their guns in the hollow of their arms, while Jim, with raised arm, was speaking. Pen sobbed in her excitement. If Uncle Denny could see his boy!
She turned and ran up the trail like a little rabbit. It seemed to her that she never would reach the top. The camp sounds were faint and far before she reached the upper mesa and saw dimly a figure on a horse. It was an Indian who covered her with a gun as she panted up to him.
"Suma-theek and the Big Boss say for you to call in all the other Indians and come help them at the little power house. The whites are trying to lynch the hombres."
The Indian peered down into her face and grunted as he recognized her.
Then he suddenly stood in his stirrups and raised the fearful cry that had emptied the moving picture hall.
"Ke-theek! Ke-theek! Ke-theek! (To me! To me! To me!)"
Pen stood by the pony"s head, trembling yet exultant. This, then, she thought was the life men knew. No wonder Jim loved his job!
Up on the mesa top, the night wind rushed against the encircling stars.
The Indian chuckled.
"Mexicans, they no bother whites tonight. They know Apache call, it heap devil."
The sound of hoofs began to beat in about the waiting two. "You go,"
said the Indian. "Back along upper trail, it safe."
Pen started on a run toward the upper camp.
The surging crowd round Jim and the Indians heard the wild cry from the mesa top and the shouts and threats were stilled as if by magic. There was a moment of restless silence. That cry was a primordial thing, as well understood by every man in the mob as if he had heard it always. It was the cry of the hunted and the hunter. It was the night cry of forests. It was war with naked hands, death under lonely skies.
Jim called: "Some one is bound to get killed if you boys don"t clear out. I"m not armed but a number of you are and the Indians are. If there are any of my Makon boys here, I want them to come over here and help me."
"Coming, Boss!" called a voice. "Only a few of the best of us here."
"You"ll stay where you are," roared a big Irishman.
"Rush "em, boys! Rush "em! They don"t dare to shoot!"
Old Suma-theek absent-mindedly sighted his gun in the direction of the last remark.
"Get a ladder! Get on top of the station. Altogether, boys!"
Fighting through the mob, half a dozen men suddenly ranged themselves with the Indians.
"Come into us!" one of them shrieked. "I ain"t had a fight since I killed six Irishmen on the Makon and ate "em for breakfast."
There was a swaying, a sudden closing of the crowd, when down from the mesa rushed old Suma-theek"s bucks. They swept the mob aside like flying sand and closed about the little group against the wall. They were a very splendid picture in the arc light, these forty young bucks with their flying hair and plunging ponies. The moment must have been one of unmixed joy to them as the whites gave back, leaving them the street width.
Jack Henderson rushed up in Jim"s automobile just as the street cleared.