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 reassured 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 circumstances 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 passed 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 Saturday 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 passed 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?”