The Heritage of the Sioux Part 5

Annie-Many-Ponies stood there, and the veiled, look was in her 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 surrept.i.tious advances. Luck would have believed, for he had known Annie-Many-Ponies since she was a barefooted papoose, and he had never 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 Wagalexa 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 talking with Ramon. Never as he 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.

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.

CHAPTER VI. "I 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 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 Mexican 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 Ramon 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.

"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 Tomas, 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 Estancio 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 rehea.r.s.e the next scene, and did not see the careful glance which pa.s.sed between Ramon 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 Ramon--Ramon who had told her many times how much he loved her, and yet could praise Jean Douglas for her riding. Ramon had declared that he would not care to come riding down that point as Jean had come; very well, then she would show Ramon 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 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 your 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. "I'd hate to run a horse down there bareback."

"I go where Wagalexa Conka say." From the corner of her eye she saw the quick frown of jealousy upon the face of Ramon, and her pulse gave an extra beat of triumph.

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 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, too, for his injustice to her. She would put the too, for 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.

At the top of the ridge she rode out to the edge and made the peace-sign to Luck as a signal that she was ready to do his bidding. Incidentally, while she held her hand high over her head, her eyes swept keenly the bowlder-strewn bluff beneath her. A little to one side was a narrow backbone of smoother soil than the rest, and here were printed deep the marks of Jean's horse. Even there it was steep, and there was a bank, down there by the big flat rock which Jean had mentioned.

Annie-Many-Ponies looked daringly to the left, where one would say the bluff was impa.s.sable. There she would come down, and no other place. She would show Ramon what she could do--he who had praised boldly another when she was by!

"All right, Annie!" Luck called to her through his megaphone. "Go back now and wait for whistle. Ride along the edge when you come, from bushes to where you stand. I want silhouette, you coming. You sabe?"

Annie-Many-Ponies raised her hand even with her breast, and swept it out and upward in the Indian sign-talk which meant "yes." Luck's eyes flashed appreciation of the gesture; he loved the sign-talk of the old plains tribes.

"Be careful, Annie," he cried impulsively. "I don't want you to be hurt." He dropped the megaphone as she swung her horse back from the edge and disappeared. "I'd cut the whole scene out if I didn't know what a rider she is," he added to the others, more uneasy than he cared to own. "But it would hurt her a heap more if I wouldn't let her ride where Jean rode. She's proud; awfully proud and sensitive."

"I'm glad you're letting her do it," Jean said sympathetically. "She'd hate me if you hadn't. But I'm going to watch her with my eyes shut, just the same. It's an awfully mean place in spots."

"She'll make it, all right," Luck declared. But his tone was not so confident as his words, and he was manifestly reluctant to place the whistle to his lips. He fussed with his script, and he squinted into the viewfinder, and he made certain for the second time just where the side-lines came, and thrust half an inch deeper in the sandy soil the slender stakes which would tell Annie-Many-Ponies where she must guide the pinto when she came tearing down to foreground. But he could delay the signal only so long, unless he cut out the scene altogether.

"Get back, over on that side, Bill," he commanded harshly. "Leave her plenty of room to pa.s.s that side of the camera. All ready, Pete?" Then, as if he wanted to have it over with as soon as possible, he whistled once, waited while he might have counted twenty, perhaps, and sent shrilling through the sunshine the signal that would bring her.

They watched, holding their breaths in fearful expectancy. Then they saw her flash into view and come galloping down along the edge of the ridge where the hill fell away so steeply that it might be called a cliff.

Indian fashion, she was whipping the pinto down both sides with the end of her reins. Her slim legs hung straight, her moccasined toes pointing downward. One corner of her red-and-green striped blanket flapped out behind her. Haste--the haste of the pursuer--showed in every movement, every line of her figure.

She came to the descent, and the pinto, having no desire for applause but a very great hankering for whole bones in his body, planted his forefeet and slid to a stop upon the brink. His snort came clearly down to those below who watched.

"He won't tackle it," Pete Lowry predicted philosophically while he turned the camera crank steadily round and round and held himself ready to "panoram" the scene if the pinto bolted.

But the pinto, having Annie-Many-Ponies to reckon with, did not bolt.

The braided rein-end of her squaw bridle lashed him stingingly; the moccasined heels dug without mercy into the tender part of his flanks.

He came lunging down over the first rim of the bluff; then since he must, he gathered himself for the ordeal and came leaping down and down and down, gaining momentum with every jump. He could not have stopped then if he had tried--and Annie-Many-Ponies, still the incarnation of eager pursuit, would not let him try.

At the big flat rock of which Jean had warned her, the pinto would have swerved. But she yanked him into the straighter descent, down over the bank. He leaped, and he fell and slid twice his own length, his nose rooting the soil. Annie-Many-Ponies lurched, came hard against a boulder and somehow flung herself into place again on the horse. She lifted his head and called to him in short, harsh, Indian words. The pinto scrambled to his knees, got to his feet and felt again the sting of the rein-end in his flanks. Like a rabbit he came bounding down, down where the way was steepest and most treacherous. And at every jump the rein-end fell, first on one side and then along the other, as a skilled canoeman shifts the paddle to force his slight craft forward in a treacherous current.