The Heritage of the Sioux | Page 6

her clothes and would use it if
ever the need arose. Applehead was not afraid of Annie's knife. It was

something else, something he could not put into words, that held him
back from open upbraidings.
He gave Andy's wife, Rosemary, the mail and stopped to sympathize
with her because Annie-Many-Ponies had gone away and left the
hardest part of the ironing undone. Luck had told Annie to help
Rosemary with the work; but Annie's help, when Luck was not around
the place, was, Rosemary asserted, purely theoretical.
"And from all you read about Indians," Rosemary complained with a
pretty wrinkling of her brows, "you'd think the women just LIVE for
the sake of working. I've lost all faith in history, Mr. Furrman. I don't
believe squaws ever do anything if they can help it. Before she went off
riding today, for instance, that girl spent a whole HOUR brushing her
hair and braiding it. And I do believe she GREASES it to make it shine
the way it does! And the powder she piles on her face--just to ride out
on the mesa!" Rosemary Green was naturally sweet-tempered and
exceedingly charitable in her judgements; but here, too, the cat-and-dog
feud had its influence. Rosemary Green was a loyal champion of the cat
Compadre; besides, there was a succession of little irritations, in the
way of dishes left unwashed and inconspicuous corners left unswept, to
warp her opinion of Annie-Many-Ponies.
When he left Rosemary he went straight down to where the
chuck-wagon stood, and began to tap the tires with a small rock to see
if they would need resetting before he started out. He decided that the
brake-blocks would have to be replaced with new ones--or at least
reshod with old boot-soles. The tongue was cracked, too; that had been
done last winter when Luck was producing The Phantom Herd and had
sent old Dave Wiswell down a rocky hillside with half-broken bronks
harnessed to the wagon, in a particularly dramatic scene. Applehead
went grumblingly in search of some baling wire to wrap the tongue. He
had been terribly excited and full of enthusiasm for the picture at the
time the tongue was cracked, but now he looked upon it merely as a
vital weakness in his roundup outfit. A new tongue would mean delay;
and delay, in his present mood, was tragedy.
He couldn't find any old baling wire, though he had long been
accustomed to tangling his feet in snarled bunches of it when he went
forth in the dark after a high wind. Until now he had not observed its
unwonted absence from the yard. For a long while he had not needed

any wire to mend things, because Luck had attended to everything
about the ranch, and if anything needed mending he had set one of the
Happy Family at the task.
His search led him out beyond the corrals in the little dry wash that
sometimes caught and held what the high winds brought rolling that
way. The wash was half filled with tumble-weed, so that Applehead
was forced to get down into it and kick the weeds aside to see if there
was any wire lodged beneath. His temper did not sweeten over the task,
especially since he found nothing that he wanted.
Annie-Many-Ponies, riding surreptitiously up the dry wash--meaning to
come out in a farther gully and so approach the corral from the west
instead of from the east--came upon Applehead quite unexpectedly.
She stopped and eyed him aslant from under her level, finely marked
brows, and her eyes lightened with relief when she saw that Applehead
looked more startled than she had felt. Indeed, Applehead had been
calling Luck uncomplimentary names for cleaning the place of
everything a man might need in a hurry, and he was ashamed of
himself.
"Can't find a foot of danged wire on the danged place!" Applehead
kicked a large, tangled bunch of weeds under the very nose of the horse
which jumped sidewise. "Never seen such a maniac for puttin' things
where a feller can't find 'em, as what Luck is." He was not actually
speak ing to Annie-Many-Ponies--or if he was he did not choose to
point his remarks by glancing at her.
"Wagalexa Conka, he heap careful for things belong when they stay,"
Annie-Many-Ponies observed in her musical contralto voice which
always irritated Applehead with its very melody. "I think plenty wire
all fold up neat in prop-room. Wagalexa Conka, he all time clean this
studio from trash lie around everywhere."
"He does, hey?" Applehead's sunburnt mustache bristled like the
whiskers of Compadre when he was snarling defiance at the little black
dog. The feud was asserting itself. " Well, this here danged place ain't
no studio! It's a ranch, and it b'longs to ME,