"Well, now, I calc'late my prope'ty is might' nigh as important as Luck's pitcher-making," Applehead contended with a selfishness born of his newly awakened hunger for the far distances. "And he ain't sent ary word that he's coming, or will need you boys immediate. The chances is we could go and git back agin before Luck shows up. And if we don't," he argued speciously, "he can't blame nobody for not wantin' to set around on their haunches all spring waiting for 'im. I'd do a lot fer luck; I've DONE a lot fer 'im. But it ain't to be expected I'd set around waitin' on him and let them danged Mexicans rustle my calves. They'll do it if they git half a show--now I'm tellin' yuh!"Pink did not say anything at all, either in assent or argument; but old Applehead, now that he had established a plausible reason for his sudden impulse, went on arguing the case while he unsaddled his horse. By the time he turned the animal loose he had thought of two or three other reasons why he should take the boys and start out as soon as possible to round up his cattle.
He was still dilating upon these reasons when Andy Green rode slowly down the slope to the corral.
"Annie-Many-Ponies come back yet?" he asked of Pink, as he swung down off his horse. "Annie? No; ain't seen anything of her. Shunky's been sitting out there on the hill for the last hour, looking for her.""Fer half a cent," threatened old Applehead, in a bad humor because his arguments had not quite convinced him that he was not meditating a disloyalty, "I'd kill that danged dawg. And if I was runnin' this bunch, I'd send that squaw back where she come from, and I'd send her quick. Take the two of 'em together and they don't set good with me, now I'm tellin' yuh! If I was to say what I think, I'd say yuh can't never trust an Injun--and shiny hair and eyes and slim build don't make 'em no trustier. They's something scaley goin' on around here, and I'd gamble on it. And that there squaw's at the bottom of it.
What fur's she ridin' off every day, 'n' nobody knowin' where she goes to? If Luck's got the sense he used to have, he'll git some white girl to act in his pitchers, and send that there squaw home 'fore she double-crosses him some way or other.""Oh, hold on, Applehead!" Pink felt constrained to defend the girl. "You've got it in for her 'cause her dog don't like your cat. Annie's all right; Inever saw anything outa the way with her yet.""Well, now, time you're old as I be, you'll have some sense, mebby," Applehead quelled. "Course you think Annie's all right. She's purty,'n' purtyness in a woman shore does cover up a pile uh cussedness--to a feller under forty.
You're boss here, Andy. When she comes back, you ask 'er where she's been, and see if you kin git a straight answer. She'll lie to yuh--I'll bet all I got, she'll lie to yuh. And when a woman lies about where she's been to and what she's been doin', you can bet there's something scaley goin' on. Yuh can't fool ME!"He turned and went up to the small adobe house where he had lived in solitary contentment with his cat Compadre until Luck Lindsay, seeking a cheap headquarters for his free-lance company while he produced the big Western picture which filled all his mind, had taken calm and unheralded possession of the ranch. Applehead did not resent the invasion; on the contrary, he welcomed it as a pleasant change in his monotonous existence. What he did resent was the coming, first, of the little black dog that was no more than a tramp and had no right on the ranch, and that broke all the laws of decency and gratitude by making the life of the big blue cat miserable. Also he resented the uninvited arrival of Annie-Many-Ponies from the Sioux reservation in North Dakota.
Annie-Many-Ponies had not only come uninvited--she had remained in defiance of Luck's perturbed insistence that she should go back home. The Flying U boys might overlook that fact because of her beauty, but Applehead was not so easily beguiled--especially when she proceeded to form a violent attachment to the little black dog, which she called Shunka Chistala in what Applehead considered a brazen flaunting of her Indian blood and language, Between the mistress of Shunka Chistala and the master of the cat there could never be anything more cordial than an armed truce. She had championed that ornery cur in a way to make Applehead's blood boil. She had kept the dog in the house at night, which forced the cat to seek cold comfort elsewhere. She had pilfered the choicest table scraps for the dog--and Compadre was a cat of fastidious palate and grew thin on what coarse bits were condescendingly left for him.
Applehead had not approved of Luck's final consent that Annie-Many-Ponies should stay and play the Indian girl in his big picture. In the mind of Applehead there lurked a grudge that found all the more room to grow because of the natural bigness and generosity of his nature. It irked him to see her going her calm way with that proud uptilt to her shapely head and that little, inscruable smile when she caught the meaning of his grumbling hints.
Applehead was easy-going to a fault in most things, but his dislike had grown in Luck's absence to the point where he considered himself aggrieved whenever Annie-Many-Ponies saddled the horse which had been tacitly set aside for her use, and rode off into the mesa without a word of explanation or excuse.
Applehead reminded the boys that she had not acted like that when luck was home. She had stayed on the ranch where she belonged, except once or twice, on particularly fine days, when she had meekly asked "Wagalexa Conka," as she persisted in calling Luck, for permission to go for a ride.
Applehead itched to tell her a few things about the social, moral, intellectual and economic status of an "Injun squaw"--but there was something in her eye, something in the quiver of her finely shaped nostrils, in the straight black brows, that held his tongue quiet when he met her face to face.