Suspense. And the producer of CBS Radio's outstanding theater of thrills, the master
of mystery and adventure, William N. Robeson.
Among the American Indian tribes, none clings more tenaciously to the old ways than the
Navajo. Herding their sheep across the vast upland plateau of northern Arizona and New
Mexico, they live today much as they have for hundreds of years. And perhaps this is
for the best, for the white man's world has never been too gentle with the Navajo. Our
story is about such a one, a Navajo whom the white man taught to kill and then punished
because he could not forget his lesson. Listen, listen then as Joseph Cotton stars in Red
Cloud Mesa.
Red Cloud Mesa, starring Mr. Joseph Cotton. A tale well calculated to keep you in suspense.
Red Cloud Mesa, a great stone fist thrusting into the thin air above the flat plateau.
There is none higher between Cayente and Ship Rock, so high the clouds catch on it sometimes.
Red clouds if the sun is rising or setting. Red Cloud Mesa. Below the mesa where the wheel
tracks snake across the reservation from Gallup is the Red Cloud Trading Post. I'm the trader.
One white man amongst thousands of Indians. Lonely? Sometimes, but I like it. I think
of the Navajos as my people. They think of me as their friend. That's the way it's always
been with us. I was born here. I grew up here. Today, I nearly died here. I've been expecting
you, Fourth Arms.
You're my prisoner, Captain.
Is that the same gun you killed the guard with?
You're my... How'd you know?
The radio's full of it. How you shot your way out of the psychiatric ward of the Veterans
Hospital High...
Of everything you hear on the radio and read in the newspapers?
Most everything.
You believed them before you believed a man who served under you or a man that was in
your outfit in France?
In this case, yes.
For an Indian, a padded cell is no place to die.
It's no place for anyone to die.
Then you won't turn me in, Captain?
Can't do anything else unless you leave.
I've got no place to leave, too, Captain. That's why I come here. I counted on you to help
me. You always have.
Have I?
Yeah. Yeah, in the bows that time. But you know, when my platoon was cut off for six days,
you got through with help just in time. I couldn't have lasted a minute longer.
I got through a day too late.
You crazy! Look, Captain, I'm here. I'm alive. You got through just in time.
Then maybe two days too late. I'm sorry.
What you sorry for? I'm alive?
Yes, alive. He was alive when I got through to him that day in the bow. The only one left
alive. He was giving orders to a platoon of dead men and carrying the orders out himself.
It must have been like that for his forefathers who defended this final mesa here against
the white man a hundred years ago. Like them, he did not know how to say surrender. He did
not notice that his mind had deserted the action and left his body all alone defending
the position.
Give me that gun.
You gonna hide me?
I don't know yet. Give me the gun and unlock the door.
No, I won't let them take me.
That's for the corporal. You're back in my outfit now. I take all the responsibility
and I give all the orders. Give me your gun.
Yes, sir.
Thank you. Now open the door.
Yes, Captain.
Have you heard the news, Mr. Bowman?
What news, Rabbit Stockings?
That psycho from Window Rock broke out. He killed a man, ditched his car in the Chihuly.
They figure he's headed this way.
I heard.
We'd better be ready.
We are ready. Rabbit Stockings, I want you to meet one of us.
One of us?
One of us. I want you to meet Rabbit Stockings.
Yachtay one of us.
Yachtay, Rabbit Stockings.
If he is headed this way, Mr. Bowman, I could begin to put my knowledge into motion.
Rabbit Stockings is referring to the correspondence course he is taking to learn to be an FBI man.
I am also taking a course in bodybuilding, pedicure, and diesel engines.
Why?
Because I don't want to be a dumb Indian all my life. I want to have a white man's diploma
in something.
I think you're crazy.
Would you care to look at my latest men wanted bulletin?
No.
Listen, truck is coming. Not a diesel, a gasoline driven truck, I can tell by the sound.
Looks like old man McGurry's pickup.
Captain.
Maybe you'd better let Rabbit Stockings show you his FBI lesson, one of us.
Yes, sir.
Well, come then, because you are Mr. Bowman's friend, I will show you the secret place where
I hide my white man's knowledge from the dumb Indians.
I still think you're crazy.
Go out the right way.
Yes, sir.
Was old man McGurry's pickup all right, but it carried a passenger.
A passenger I was expecting.
State Trooper Arturo Trejo.
When is this, George?
Hi, Arturo.
What's new?
Oh, I got an Indian trouble.
Give me a pack of cigarettes and a candy bar.
There you are.
Now, where are you hiding the Indian?
That's why I pay my taxes to pay you to find out where they hide.
New Mexico don't collect enough taxes for that.
We need your help.
Don't ask me any questions, Arturo.
Just don't ask me any questions.
Okay, George, just don't make me look bad, that's all.
I got to take a look around.
I got to make a report.
Don't forget, I got a citizen outside.
Old man McGurry.
I got to go through the motions.
I'll send Yellow Salt for someone to show you around.
What can Yellow Salt do it?
You don't understand these people, Arturo.
Yellow Salt is an elder.
So he squats in the trading post porch all day while his wife herds the sheep?
It is the privilege of an elder.
I wish I knew their secret.
Maybe I could get an honest day's work out of my wife.
I'll be right back.
Yate, Yellow Salt.
Yate, son.
The ending of the day finds you well, Yellow Salt.
Well enough, but I have been asking myself a question.
What is the question, brother?
Perhaps I can help find an answer.
It is this, Sansi.
What is the cop doing here?
Oh, he's perfectly safe.
He's got to make a report.
We don't want to make him look bad.
Sansi, this presents another question.
What is it he doesn't want to look bad about?
That psycho boy, Four Thumbs.
He escaped and killed a man.
The cop has orders to look for him.
They want to put him back in a padded cell.
Well then really, Sansi, what can I do not to help?
Why, really not to help.
You'll find me a boy named one of us who is with rabbit stockings so he can show this
officer around so this officer can make out a report and not look so bad that they will
send someone else who is thinking in terms of heroic actions or worse, someone who is
sincere.
As you say, then I will do my very best not to help since this officer is not sincere.
You know where rabbit stockings hides his white man's lessons.
Everybody knows in that little cave where the petrified tree rolled off the edge of
Black Canyon.
Everybody knows?
Even so, only rabbit stockings does not know that everybody knows so he still has his secret.
My thanks go with you, brother.
It is an honor to be able not to help the police.
Someone will be here to show you around a few minutes, Archero.
Oh, thanks, George.
I just don't want to look, you know, I just don't want to look bad.
You won't.
I always get a feeling these Indians of yours don't trust me.
They don't trust sincere people.
Are you sincere, Archero?
Uh-huh.
I don't get you.
The Navajos feel that their nation has been cheated out of almost everything they ever
owned by sincere people.
You know they have a point there.
Looks like you don't trust them.
What do you mean?
Oh, come, you got this, uh, this carbine leaning against the showcase.
Watch out, it's loaded.
Why?
I don't know, really.
I lived with that gun from Red Beach to the Rhine.
It sort of became a part of me.
I feel better having it around.
You feel better, George?
Or more sincere?
In the back room of the trading post, Benyatse the silversmith was singing as he hammered
away at a turquoise-studded gateau.
Then a couple of women wandered into the store carrying their babies strapped on cradle boards.
Silently they squatted, never taking their eyes from Archero Trejillo, the uniformed
symbol of white man's authority.
A little later, old man Tornface slipped in without a word, his toothless mouth twisted
into a permanent grin by the long-ago kick of a forgotten pony.
Then a couple of dirty-faced kids with scraggly, uncombed hair.
They sat there, all of them, wordless.
Make me nervous, George.
Tell them to get out.
They belong here, Archero.
You don't.
You're making me look bad in front of them, George.
Why do you care just so you don't look bad in front of the white man in gallop?
Oh, all right, George, all right.
He turned his back on his silent audience, stamped out his cigarette, and began to build
a pyramid with the candy bars I'd given him for his wife.
There was no sound now, it was silent inside the storeroom, silent as death.
Outside silence too, save for the Albuquerque plain far off and closer, a fly buzzing on
the screen door.
The pyramid was finished, all but the capstone.
Archero carefully raised to the final candy.
Do you want me, Sancy?
Oh, hey, what's the big idea?
You made me wreck it.
You crazy.
What did you say?
I said you're crazy.
Want to make something of it?
Oh, we're just having some fun.
Archero, this is one of us.
He'll show you around.
Oh, but don't bother.
I guess I've been here long enough to make out a report.
Old man McGurry is getting impatient.
Anything you say, Archero.
Don't forget what you promised, George.
I won't, Archero.
What did you promise, Sancy?
You double-crossed me?
No, no, one of us.
I promised him that you would not get caught by somebody else in his territory and that
you would always be a good soldier and not cause any more trouble so that you would not
die in a padded cell.
Why did you send for me to show him around?
If you showed him around, then he could not find you hiding, could he?
No, Captain.
You will go back now to Rabbit Stocking's cave.
You will stay there until it is safe for you to take a Hogan.
Yes, Captain.
Hey, George, I forgot to...
Hey, crazy Indian, put down that gun.
Put down!
Cease fire!
George, I only came back for the candy.
Boo!
Wartham stood at attention, eyes straight ahead.
State Trooper Trujillo lay in the doorway, one boot holding the screen ajar, lay very
still.
The buzzing fly eagerly circled the trickle of blood that oozed across the floor.
The chant began, the chant of the enemy wave, the chant which would protect the people from
the ghost of this foreigner.
I think you and I had better go up on the Mesa Corporal.
Yes, Captain, but...
Yes?
Beg pardon, sir, but I thought I was to go back to the cave.
A new situation has developed since then.
It is necessary to change the orders.
Yes, sir.
Forward, halt.
The low scud stretched away to the limitless yellow horizon as we started up the narrow
trail along the face of the Mesa.
We climbed silently, steadily, 10, 15 minutes, upward across the sheer face of the cliff,
four thumbs holding the proper combat patrol distance, 10 yards behind.
Steadily, up, always up, toward the gathering clouds, now orange with the dying sun.
Captain?
Yes, Corporal?
I've chewed up the carbine.
I've forgotten, forgotten completely.
I turned slowly, erect, trying to look like a C.O. in my cowhide jacket and Levi's.
Yes, he still had the gun.
A Section 8 Psycho, who was also a combat infantryman, still had the gun and still held
his prescribed position, 10 yards behind me.
Well, I should hope so, Corporal.
A man isn't much good on patrol without a gun.
Yes, sir.
The trail was narrow now as it approached the switchback, 600 feet up the sheer cliff
wall from the desert floor and above.
The clouds were thicker in the Mesa's fist, all orange, now deep orange.
Captain?
Yes, Corporal?
Ever hear of an officer being shot in the back by one of his own men?
Oh, you hear stories like that from time to time, back of the lines, up front.
Well, I suppose it depends on what kind of a leader a man is.
Yes, Captain.
We were clambering over boulders now, the great rocks that poor Thornton's ancestors
had rolled down from the Mesa top, thinking to keep the white men away forever.
They almost did.
But defending this final fort, the top of this dry Mesa, 200 feet above us, in the clouds,
they ran out of water.
No one quit.
They were still up there.
And then we were at the switchback, and a moment later we were in the cloud, a red cloud
now, where the misty blood of the day's death surrounded us cold damp, the ghost stuff of
the ancient warriors whose bones still lay above us.
Take fire, Corporal.
Yes, sir.
I stopped and leaned back against the cliff wall.
The trail was only a foot wide here, out beyond and below the red mist.
I waited and only knew it was coming by the sound of his footfalls until it, once he materialized
beside me, he leaned back too, careful to keep the carbine on his right side, the side
away from me.
I heard plentiful stories like that overseas, Captain.
Oh, I dare say it's happened more than once.
Any leader takes a chance.
That's one of the risks of leadership.
In combat, when a man's head races with blood, when it's kill or be killed, sure, it could
happen, but...
But what, sir?
When a soldier comes back out of the lines, when a soldier is back in the rear area and
safe, and begins to kill his own outfit, and there's nothing anyone can do to help him.
Help?
That's what I said.
No longer any help for him.
And it's up to that soldier himself, if he isn't crazy, to figure out a way of saving
the outfit he's destroyed.
If... if he isn't crazy...
Yes, sir.
We're cut off completely up here, Corporal.
You can do anything you want with the rest of the outfit.
You've got the gun.
Yes, Captain.
That's the first time I never saw your carbine leaning against the counter, Soncy.
And you never will again, rabbit sockings.
I would expect a dumb Indian to bury a man's weapon with him, but not a white man.
That was a valuable gun.
My people believe a man is more valuable.
And we respect your ancient customs.
Thank you.
And thank your people.
Must have been quite a climb, carrying his body all the way to the top of the mesa.
That's where he belonged?
Up there with the other warriors.
Those old people.
Cut off up there without water.
They must have gone crazy before they died.
Probably.
But they stuck it out when they could have quit.
Yes, they did.
And he was their son.
Suspense.
In which Mr. Joseph Cotton starred in William and Robeson's production of Red Cloud Mesa,
adapted by Mr. Robeson from a story by William Eastlake.
Supporting Joseph Cotton in tonight's story were Jane Novello, Vic Perrin, Lawrence Dobkin,
and Howard McNear.
Listen.
Listen again next week when we return with Mr. Dennis Day starring in Like Man Somebody
Dig Me, another tale well calculated to keep you in suspense.
Thank you.