rinned. "She's decided that, herself. Gee,
she's pretty!"

"Certainly she is; but get this, boys: She isn't going to stay just
because she's pretty, and if I had a different bunch than you fellows,
she'd have to go for that reason. I'm responsible for her--_sabe?_ Bill
Holmes, you get this; I saw you eyeing her pretty strong. That girl is
the daughter of an influential chief, and she comes pretty near being the
pride of the reservation. There can't be any romantic stuff, if they let
her stay. Her father and the Agent will consent, if they do consent, on
the strength of the confidence they have in me. They're going to keep
that confidence. Get that, and get it strong, because I sure mean what
I'm telling you." He eased the tenseness with a laugh. "I don't mean to
offend anybody," he said, "and that's why I'm putting it straight before
the play comes up. Annie-Many-Ponies has got a heart-twisting smile, but
she's a squaw just the same. She's got the ways of the Injun to the
marrow of her bones, and I'll bet right now if you were to shake her hard
enough, you'd jingle a knife out of her clothes." He stopped and lighted
the cigarette he had been carefully rolling. "Well," he finished after
the pause, "does she stay or go?"

The Happy Family answered him with, various phrases, the meaning of which
was that he could suit himself about that; as far as they were concerned,
she could stay and welcome.

So she stayed, and Rosemary hung up a calico curtain across the one
bedroom, so that Annie-Many-Ponies might have a corner to call her own.
She stayed; and Luck rewrote two reels of his scenario so that there
should be a place in it for a beautiful Indian girl who rode like a
whirlwind and did not know the meaning of fear, and who had a mind of her
own, and who was just exactly as harmless in that camp as half a quart of
nitroglycerine, and added thereby a good bit to the load of
responsibility which Luck was shouldering.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

"PAM. BLEAK MESA--CATTLE DRIFTING BEFORE WIND--"

"Pam. bleak mesa--snow--cattle drifting before wind. Dale and Johnny dis.
riding to foreground. Reg. cold--horses leg-weary--boys all in--"

Out toward Bear Canyon, where the land to the north rose brokenly to the
mountains, Luck found the bleak stretches of which he had dreamed that
night on the observation platform of a train speeding through the night
in North Dakota,--a great white wilderness unsheltered by friendly
forests,