squaw."

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