Roused to resistance in behalf of their fellows, they straightway forsook
their looms, where they wove rugs for tourists, and the silver which they
fashioned into odd bracelets and rings; and the flocks of sheep whose wool
they used in the rugs and they went upon a quiet, crafty warpath against these
persistent white men.
They stole their horses and started them well on the trail back to
Albuquerque--since it is just as well to keep within the white men's law, if
it may be done without suffering any great incon venience. They would have
preferred to keep the horses, but they decided to start them home and let them
go. You could not call that stealing, and no one need go to jail for it. They
failed to realize that these horses might be so thoroughly broken to camp ways
that they would prefer the camp of the Happy Family to a long trail that held
only a memory of discomfort; they did not know that every night these horses
were given grain by the camp-fire, and that they would remember it when
feeding time came again. So the horses, led by wise old Johnny, swung in a
large circle when their Indian drivers left them, and went back to their men.
Then the Navajos, finding that simple maneuver a failure--and too late to
prevent its failing without risk of being discovered and forced into an open
fight -got together and tried something else; something more
characteristically Indian and therefore more actively hostile.
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