The Heritage of the Sioux Part 4

"Me? No--I not friend, querida mia. I got business. I sell Bill Holmes one silver bridle, perhaps. I don' know--mus' talk about it. Yoh tell him come here by big rock, sweetheart?"

Annie-Many-Ponies took a minute for deliberation--which is the Indian way. Ramon, having learned patience, said no more but watched her slant-eyed.

"I tell," she promised at last, and added, "I go now." Then she slipped away. And Ramon, though he stood for several minutes by the rock smiling queerly and staring down the arroyo, caught not the slightest glimpse of her after she left him. He knew that she would deliver faithfully his message to Bill Holmes, she had given her word. That was one great advantage, considered Ramon, in dealing with those direct, uncompromising natures. She might torment him with her aloofness and her reticence, but once he had won her to a full confidence and submission he need not trouble himself further about her loyalty. She would tell Bill Holmes--and, what was vastly more important, she would do it secretly; he had not dared to speak of that, but he thought he might safely trust to her natural wariness. So Ramon, after a little, stole away to his own camp quite satisfied.

The next night, when he stood in the shadow of the rock ledge and waited, he was not startled by the unexpected presence of the person he wanted to see. For although Bill Holmes came as cautiously as he knew how, and avoided the wide, bright-lighted stretches of arroyo where he would have been plainly visible, Ramon both saw and heard him before he reached the ledge. What Ramon did not see or hear was Annie-Many-Ponies, who did not quite believe that those two wished merely to talk about a silver bridle, and who meant to listen and find out why it was that they could not talk openly before all the boys.

Annie-Many-Ponies had ways of her own. She did not tell Ramon that she doubted his word, nor did she refuse to deliver the message. She waited calmly until Bill Holmes left camp stealthily that night, and she followed him. It was perfectly simple and sensible and the right thing to do; if you wanted to know for sure whether a person lied to you, you had but to watch and listen and let your own eyes and ears prove guilt or innocence.

So Annie-Many-Ponies stood by the rock and listened and watched. She did not see any silver bridle. She heard many words, but the two were speaking in that strange Spanish talk which she did not know at all, save "Querida mia," which Ramon had told her meant sweetheart.

The two talked, low-voiced and earnest, Bill was telling all that he knew of Luck Lindsay's plans--and that was not much.

"He don't talk," Bill complained. "He just tells the bunch a day ahead--just far enough to get their makeup and costumes on, generally.

But he won't stay around here much longer; he's taken enough spring roundup stuff now for half a dozen pictures. He'll be moving in to the ranch again pretty quick. And I know this picture calls for a lot of town business that he'll have to take. I saw the script the other day."

This, of course, being a free translation of the meaningless jumble of strange words which Annie heard.

"What town business is that? Where will he work?" Ramon was plainly impatient of so much vagueness.

"Well, there's a bank robbery--I paid particular attention, Ramon, so I know for certain. But when he'll do it, or what bank he'll use, I don't know any more than you do. And there's a running fight down the street and through the Mexican quarter. The rest is just street stuff--that and a fiesta that I think he'll probably me the old plaza for location.

He'll need a lot of Mexicans for that stuff. He'll want you, of course."

"That bank--who will do that?" Ramon's fingers trembled so that he could scarcely roll a cigarette. "Andy, perhaps?"

"No--that's the Mexican bunch. I--why, I guess that will maybe be you, Ramon. I wasn't paying much attention to the parts--I was after locations, and I only had about two minutes at the script. But he's been giving you some good bits right along where he needed a Mexican type; and those scenes in the rocks the other day was bandit stuff with you for lead. It'll be you or Miguel--the Native Son, as they call him--and so far he's cast for another part. That's the worst of Luck. He won't talk about what he's going to do till he's all ready to do it."

There was a little further discussion. Ramon muttered a few sentences--rapid instructions, Annie-Many-Ponies believed from the tone he used.

"All right, I'll keep you posted," Bill Holmes replied in English. And he added as he started off, "You can send word by the squaw."

He went carefully back down the arroyo, keeping as much as possible in the shade. Behind him stole Annie-Many-Ponies, noiseless as the shadow of a cloud. Bill Holmes, she reflected angrily, had seen the day, not so far in the past, when he was happy if the "squaw" but smiled upon him.

It was because she had repelled his sly lovemaking that he had come to speak of her slightingly like that; she knew it. She could have named the very day when his manner toward her had changed. Mingled with her hate and dread of him was a new contempt and a new little anxiety over this clandestine intimacy between Ramon and him. Why 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 rea.s.sured 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. FOR 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 circ.u.mstances in no wise justified--and it was Bill Holmes who first shifted his gaze in vague uneasiness when he tried to stare Applehead 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, 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 pa.s.sed 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 pa.s.sed 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 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 un.o.btrusively. "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 b.u.t.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 a couple of danged fine women in this here bunch, and I sh.o.r.e 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 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 sh.o.r.e 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 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 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 bead 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 pa.s.sed, 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 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 Ramon 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 Ramon when next she talked with him. She would tell Ramon 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 shoulder and breast, stepped soft-footedly up to 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."