“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 turned and went up to the small adobe house where he had lived in solitary contentment with his cat Compadre until Luck Lindsay, seeking a cheap headquarters for his free-lance company while he produced the big Western picture which filled all his mind, had taken calm and unheralded possession of the ranch. Applehead did not resent the invasion; on the contrary, he welcomed it as a pleasant change in his monotonous existence. What he did resent was the coming, first, of the little black dog that was no more than a tramp and had no right on the ranch, and that broke all the laws of decency and gratitude by making the life of the big blue cat miserable. Also he resented the uninvited arrival of Annie-Many-Ponies from the Sioux reservation in North Dakota.