" 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
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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
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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.
Annie-Many-Ponies went confidently on her way, carrying the two pairs of beaded moccasins in her hands. Her face was more inscrutable than ever. She was pondering deeply the problem of
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Bill Holmes' business with Ramon, and she was half tempted to tell Wagalexa Conka of that secret intimacy which must carry on its converse under cover of night. She did not trust Bill Holmes. Why must he keep Bamon posted? She glanced ahead to where Luck stood thinking deeply about something, and her eyes softened in a shy sympathy with his trouble. Wagalexa Conka worked hard and thought much and worried more than was good for him. Bill Holmes, she decided fiercely, should not add to those worries. She would warn Eamon when next she talked with him. She would tell Eamon that he must not be friends with Bill Holmes; in the meantime, she would watch.
Ten feet from Luck she stopped short, sensing trouble in the hardness that was in his eyes. She stood there and waited in meek subjection.
" Annie, come here! " Luck's voice was no less stern because it was lowered so that a couple of the boys fussing with the horses inside the rope corral could not overhear what he had to say.
Annie-Many-Ponies, pulling one of the shiny black braids into the correct position over her
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shoulder and breast, stepped soft-footedly up te him and stopped. She did not ask him what he wanted. She waited until it was his pleasure to speak.
"Annie, I want you to keep away from Bill Holmes." Luck was not one to mince his words when he had occasion to speak of disagreeable things. " It isn't right for you to let him make love to you on the sly. You know that. You know you must not leave camp with him after dark. You make me ashamed of you when you do those things. You keep away from Bill Holmes and stay in camp nights. If you're a bad girl, I'll have to send you back to the reservation — and I'll have to tell the agent and Chief Big Turkey why I send you back. I can't have anybody in my company who doesn't act right. Now remember— don't make me speak to you again about it."
Annie-Majy-Ponies stood there, and the veiled look was in tier eyes. Her face was a smooth, brown mask — beautiful to look upon but as expressionless as the dead. She did not protest her innocence, she did not explain that she hated and
distrusted Bill Holmes and that she had, months-ago, repelled his surreptitious advances. Luck would have believed, for he had known Annie-Many-Ponies since she was a barefooted papoose, and he had ne^er known her to tell him an untruth.
" You go now and get ready for work. Wear the moccasins with the birds on the toes." He pointed to them and turned away.
Annie-Many-Ponies also turned and went her way and said nothing. What, indeed, could she say? She did not doubt that Luck had seen her the night before, and had seen also Bill Holmes when he left camp or returned — perhaps both. She could not tell him that Bill Holmes had gone out to meet Ramon, for that, she felt instinctively, was a secret which Ramon trusted her not to betray. She could not tell W&galexa Conka, either, that she met Ramon often when the camp was asleep. He would think that as bad as meeting Bill Holmes. She knew that he did not like Ramon, but merely used him and his men and horses and cattle for a price, to better his pictures. Save in a purely business way she had never seen him
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talking with Eamon. Never as lie talked with the boys of the Flying U — his Happy Family, he called them.
She said nothing. She dressed for the part she was to play. She twined flowers in her hair and smoothed out the red bows and laid them carefully away — since Wagalexa Conka did not wish her to wear ribbon bows in this picture. She murmured caresses to Shunka Chistala, the little black dog that was always at her heels. She rode with the company to the rocky gorge which was " location " for today. When Wagalexa Conka called to her she went and climbed upon a high rock and stood just where he told her to stand, and looked just as he told her to look, and stole away through the rocks and out of the scene exactly as he wished her to do.
But when Wagalexa Conka — sorry for the harshness he had felt it his duty to show that morning — smiled and told her she had done fine, and that he was pleased with her, Annie-Many-Ponies did not smile back with that slow, sweet, heart-twisting smile which was at once her sharpest weapon and her most endearing trait.
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Bill Holmes, who had also had his sharp word of warning, and had been told very plainly to cut out this flirting with Annie if he wanted to remain on Luck's payroll, eyed her strangely. Once he tried to have a secret word with her, but she moved away and would not look at him. For Annie-Many-Ponies, hurt and bitter as she felt toward her beloved Wagalexa Conka, hated Bill Holmes fourfold for being the cause of her humiliation. That she did not also hate Ramon Chavez as being equally guilty with Bill Holmes, went far toward proving how strong a hold he had gained upon her heart.
CHAPTEK VI
"l GO WHERE WAGALEXA CONKA SAY"
THAT afternoon Ramon joined them, suave as ever and seeming very much at peace with the world and his fellow-beings. He watched the new leading woman make a perilous ride down a steep, rocky, point and dash up to camera and on past it where she set her horse back upon its haunches with a fine disregard for her bones and a still finer instinct for putting just the right dash of the spectacular into her work without overdoing it.
" That senora, she's all right, you bet! " he praised the feat to those who stood near him; " me, I not be stuck on ron my caballo down that place. You bet she's fine rider. My sombrero, he's come off to that lady! "
Jean, hearing, glanced at him with that little quirk of the lips which was the beginning of a
WHERE WAGALEXA CONKA SAY
smile, and rode off to join her father and Lite Avery. " He made that sound terribly sincere, didn't he ? " she commented. " It takes a Mexi-I can to lift flattery up among the fine arts." Then she thought no more about it.
Annie-Many-Ponies was sitting apart, on a rock where her gay blanket made a picturesque splotch of color against the gray barrenness of the hill behind her. She, too, heard what Eamon said, and she, too, thought that he had made the praise sound terribly sincere. He had not spoken to her at all after the first careless nod of recognition when he rode up. And although her reason had approved of his caution, her sore heart ached for a little kindness from him. She turned her eyes toward him now with a certain wistfulness; but though Ramon chanced to be looking toward her she got no answering light in his eyes, no careful little signal that his heart was yearning for her. He seemed remote, as indifferent to her as were any of the others dulled by accustomedness to her constant presence among them. A premonitory chill, as from some great sorrow yet before her in the future, shook the heart of Annie-Many-Ponies.
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" Me, I fine out how moch more yoh want me campa here for pictures," Ramon was saying now to Luck who was standing by Pete Lowry, scribbling something on his script. " My brother To-mas, he liking for us at ranch now, s'pose yoh finish poco tiempo."
Luck wrote another line before he gave any sign that he heard. Annie-Many-Ponies, watching from under her drooping lids, saw that Bill Holmes had edged closer to Ramon, while he made pretense of being much occupied with his own affairs.
" I don't need your camp at all after today." Luck shoved the script into his coat pocket and looked at his watch.
" This afternoon when the sun is just right I want to get one or two cut-back scenes and a dissolve out. After that you can break camp any time. But I want you, Ramon — you and Es-tancio Lopez and Luis Rojas. I'll need you for two or three days in town — want you to play the heavy in a bank-robbery and street fight. The makeup is the same as when you worked up there in the rocks the other day. You three fellows
come over and go in to the ranch tomorrow if you like. Then I'll have you when I want you. You'll get five dollars a day while you work." Having made himself sufficiently clear, he turned away to set and rehearse the next scene, and did not see the careful glance which passed between Eamon and Bill Holmes.
" Annie," Luck said abruptly, swinging toward her, " can you come down off that point where Jean Douglas came? You'll have to ride horseback, remember, and I don't want you to do it unless you're sure of yourself. How about it?"
For the first time since breakfast her somber eyes lightened with a gleam of interest. She did not look at Eamon — Ramon who had told her many times how much he loved her, and yet could praise Jean Douglas for her riding. Eamon had declared that he would not care to come riding down that point as Jean had come; very well, then she would show Eamon something.
"It isn't necessary, exactly," Luck explained further. " I can show you at the top, looking down at the way Jean came; and then I can pick you
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up on an easier trail. But if you want to do it, it will save some cut-backs and put another little punch in here. Either way it's up to you."
The voice of Annie-Many-Ponies did not rise to a higher key when she spoke, but it had in it a clear incisiveness that carried her answer to Ramon and made him understand that she was speaking for his ears.
" I come down with big punch," she said.
" Where Jean came ? You're riding bareback, remember."
" No matter. I come down jus' same." And she added with a haughty tilt of her chin, " That's easy place for me."
Luck eyed her steadfastly, a smile of approval on his face. " All right. I know you've got plenty of nerve, Annie. You mount and ride up that draw till you get to the ridge. Come up to where you can see camp over the brow of the hill — sabe ? — and then wait till I whistle. One whistle, get ready to come down. Two whistles, you come. Ride past camera, just the way Jean did. You know you're following the white girl and trying to catch up with her. You're a friend and you
have a message for her, but she's scared and is running away — sabe ? You want to come down slow first and pick jour trail ? "
" No." Annie-Many-Ponies started toward the pinto pony which was her mount in this picture. " I come down hill. I make big punch for you. Pete turn camera."
" You've got more nerve than I have, Annie," Jean told her good-naturedly as she went by. " Pd hate to run a horse down there bareback."
With an easy spring she mounted the pinto pony, took the reins of her squaw bridle that was her only riding gear, folded her gay blanket snugly around her uncorseted body and touched the pinto with her moccasined heels. She was ready — ready to the least little tensed nerve that tingled with eagerness under the calm surface.
She rode slowly past Luck, got her few final instructions and a warning to be careful and to take no chances of an accident — which brought
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that inscrutable smile to her face; for Wagalexa Conka knew, and she knew also, that in the mere act of riding down that slope faster than a walk she was taking a chance of an accident. It was that risk that lightened her heart which had been so heavy all day. The greater the risk, the more eager was she to take it. She would show Ramon that she, too, could ride.
" Oh, do be careful, Annie! " Jean called anxiously when she was riding into the mouth of the draw. " Turn to the right, when you come to that big flat rock, and don't come down where I did. It's too steep. Really," she drawled to Rosemary and Lite, " my heart was in my mouth when I came straight down by that rock. It's a lot steeper than it looks from here."
" She won't go round it," Rosemary predicted pessimistically. " She's in one of her contrary moods today. She'll come down the worst way she can find just to scare the life out of us."
Up the steep draw that led to the top, Annie-Many-Ponies rode exultantly. She would show Ramon that she could ride wherever the white girl dared ride. She would shame Wagalexa Conka,
WHERE WAGALEXA CONKA SAY
too, for his injustice to her. She would put the big punch in that scene or — she would ride no more, unless it were upon a white cloud, drifting across the moon at night and looking down at this world and upon Ramon..
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