LOVE WORDS FOR ANNIE
should Bill Holmes keep Ramon posted? Surely not about a silver bridle!
Shunka Chistala was whining in her little tent when she came into the camp. She heard Bill Holmes stumble over the end of the chuck-wagon tongue and mutter the customary profanity with which the average man meets an incident of that kind. She whispered a fierce command to the little black dog and stood very still for a minute, listening. She did not hear anything further, either from Bill Holmes or the dog, and finally reassured by the silence, she crept into her tent and tied the flaps together on the inside, and lay down in her blankets with the little black dog contentedly curled at her feet with his nose between his front paws.
CHAPTER V
FOB THE GOOD OF THE COMPANY
ALL through, breakfast Applehead seemed to have something weighty on his mind. He kept pulling at his streaked, reddish-gray mustache when his fingers should have been wholly occupied with his food, and he stared abstractedly at the ground after he had finished his first cup of coffee and before he took his second. Once Bill Holmes caught him glaring with an intensity which circumstances in no wise justified — and it was Bill Holmes who first shifted his gaze in vague uneasiness when he tried to stare Apple-head down. Annie-Many-Ponies did not glance at him at all, so far as one could discover; yet she was the first to sense trouble in the air, and withdrew herself from the company and sat apart, wrapped closely in her crimson shawl that matched well the crimson bows on her two shiny braids.
Luck, keenly alive to the moods of his people, 70
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looked at her inquiringly. " Come on up by the fire, Annie/' he commanded gently. " What you sitting away off there for ? Come and eat — I want you to work today."
Annie-Many-Ponies did not reply, but she rose obediently and came forward in the silent way she had, stepping lightly, straight and slim and darkly beautiful. Applehead glanced at her sourly, and her lashes drooped to hide the venom in her eyes as she passed him to stand before Luck.
" I not hungry," she told Luck tranquilly, yet with a hardness in her voice which did not escape him, who knew her so well. " I go put on makeup."
" Wear that striped blanket you used last Saturday when we worked up there in Tijeras Canon. Same young squaw makeup you wore then, Annie." He eyed her sharply as she turned away to her own tent, and he observed that when she passed Applehead she took two steps to one side, widening the distance between them. He watched her until she lifted her tent flap, stooped and disappeared within. Then he looked at Applehead.
" What's wrong between you two ?" he asked 71
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the old man quizzically. " Her dog been licking your cat again, or what ? "
" You're danged right he ain't! " Applehead testified boastfully. " Compadre's got that there dawg's goat, now I'm tellin' yuh! He don't take nothin' off him ner her neither."
" What you been doing to her, then ? " Luck set his empty plate on the ground beside him and began feeling for the makings of a cigarette. " Way she side-stepped you, I know there must be something"
" Well, now, I ain't done a danged thing to that there squaw! She ain't got any call to go around givin' me the bad eye." He looked at the breakfasting company and then again at Luck, and gave an almost imperceptible backward jerk of his head as he got awkwardly to his feet and strolled away toward the milling horses in the remuda.
So when Luck had lighted his fresh-rolled cigarette he followed Applehead unobtrusively. " Well, what's on your mind ? " he wanted to know when he came up with him.
" Well, now, I don't want you to think I'm but-T2
THE GOOD OF THE COMPANY
tin' in on your affairs, Luck," Applehead began after a minute, " but seein' as you ast me what's wrong, I'm goin' to tell yuh straight out. We got la couple of danged fine women in this here bunch, and I shore do hate to see things goin' on around here that'd shame 'em if they was to find it out. And fur's I can see they will find it out, sooner or later. Murder ain't the only kinda wickedness that's hard to cover up. I know you feel about as I do on some subjects; you never did like dirt around you, no better'n —"
" Get to the point, man. What's wrong ? " So Applehead, turning a darker shade of red than was his usual hue, cleared his throat and blurted out what he had to say. He had heard Shunka Chistala whinnying at midnight in the tent of Annie-Many-Ponies, and had gone outside to see what was the matter. He didn't know, he explained, but what his cat Compadre was somehow involved. He had stood in the shadow of his tent for a few minutes, and had seen Bill Holmes sneak into camp, coming from up the arroyo somewhere.
For some reason he waited a little longer, and 73
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he had seen a woman's shadow move stealthily up to the front of Annie's tent, and had seen Annie slip inside and had heard her whisper a command of some sort to the dog, which had immediately hushed its whining. He hated to be telling tales on anybody, but he knew how keenly Luck felt his responsibility toward the Indian girl, and he thought he ought to know. This night-prowling, he declared, had shore got to be stopped, or he'd be danged if he didn't run 'em both outa camp himself.
" Bill Holmes might have been out of camp," Luck said calmly, " but you sure must be mistaken about Annie. She's straight."
" You think she is," Applehead corrected him. " But you don't know a danged thing about it. A girl that's behavin' herself don't go chasin' all over the mesa alone, the way she's been doin' all spring. I never said nothin' 'cause it wa'n't none of my put-in. But that Injun had a heap of business off away from the ranch whilst you was in Los Angeles, Luck. Sneaked off every day, just about — and 'd be gone fer hours at a time. You kin ast any of the boys, if yuh don't want to take my
THE GOOD OF THE COMPANY
word. Or you kin ast Mis' Green; she kin tell ye, if she's a mind to."
" Did Bill Holmes go with her ? " Luck's eyes were growing hard and gray.
" As to that I won't say, fer I don't know — and I'm tellin' yuh what I seen myself. Bill Holmes done a lot uh walkin' in to town, fur as that goes; and he didn't always git back the same day neither. He never went off with Annie, and he never came back with her, fur as I ever seen. But," he added grimly, " they didn't come back together las' night, neither. They come about three or four minutes apart."
Luck thought a minute, scowling off across the arroyo. Not even to Applehead, bound to him by closer ties than anyone there, did he ever reveal his thoughts completely.
"All right —I'll attend to them," he said finally. " Don't say anything to the bunch; these things aren't helped by talk. Get into your old cowman costume and use that big gray you rode in that drive we made the other day. I'm going to pick up the action where we left off when it turned cloudy. Tomorrow or next day I want to move
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the outfit back to the ranch. There's quite a lot of town stuff I want to get for this picture."
Applehead looked at him uncertainly, tempted to impress further upon him the importance of safeguarding the morals of his company. But he knew Luck pretty well — having lived with him for months at a time when Luck was younger and even more peppery than now. So he wisely condensed his reply to a nod, and went back to the breakfast fire polishing his bald head with the flat of his palm. He met Annie-Many-Ponies coming to ask Luck which of the two pairs of beaded moccasins she carried in her hands he would like to have her wear. She did not look at Applehead at all as she passed, but he nevertheless became keenly aware of her animosity and turned half around to glare after her resentfully. You'd think, he told himself aggrievedly, that he was the one that had been acting up! Let her go to Luck — she'd danged soon be made to know her place in camp.