t to be expected I'd set around
waitin' on him and let them danged Mexicans rustle my calves. They'll do
it if they git half a show--now I'm tellin' yuh!"

Pink did not say anything at all, either in assent or argument; but old
Applehead, now that he had established a plausible reason for his sudden
impulse, went on arguing the case while he unsaddled his horse. By the
time he turned the animal loose he had thought of two or three other
reasons why he should take the boys and start out as soon as possible to
round up his cattle. He was still dilating upon these reasons when Andy
Green rode slowly down the slope to the corral.

"Annie-Many-Ponies come back yet?" he asked of Pink, as he swung down
off his horse. "Annie? No; ain't seen anything of her. Shunky's been
sitting out there on the hill for the last hour, looking for her."

"Fer half a cent," threatened old Applehead, in a bad humor because
his arguments had not quite convinced him that he was not meditating a
disloyalty, "I'd kill that danged dawg. And if I was runnin' this bunch,
I'd send that squaw back where she come from, and I'd send her quick.
Take the two of 'em together and they don't set good with me, now I'm
tellin' yuh! If I was 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 turne