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?"

"You're danged right he ain't!" Applehead testified boastfully. "Compadre's got that there dawg's goat, now I'm tellin' yuh! He don't take nothin' off him ner her neither."

"What you been doing to her, then?" Luck set his empty plate on the ground beside him and began feeling for the makings of a cigarette. "Way she side-stepped you, I know there must be something."

"Well, now, I ain't done a danged thing to that there squaw! She ain't got any call to go around givin' me the bad eye." He looked at the breakfasting company and then again at Luck, and gave an almost imperceptible backward jerk of his head as he got awkwardly to his feet and strolled away toward the milling horses in the remuda.

So when Luck had lighted his fresh-rolled cigarette he followed Applehead unobtrusively. "Well, what's on