The Heritage of the Sioux | Page 5

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; I never 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. You couldn't tell about these squaws. Even luck,
who knew Indians better than most--and was, in a heathenish tribal way,
the adopted son of Old Chief Big Turkey, and therefore Annie's brother
by adoption--even Luck maintained that Annie-Many-Ponies
undoubtedly carried a knife concealed in