Shunka Chistala--which is Sioux for little dog--she banished into the
cold, and hardened her heart, against his whining. It is true that
Wagalexa Conka had not forbidden her to have the little dog in the
house, but in his displeasure he might make the dog an excuse for
scolding her and for taking the part of Rosemary, who hated dogs in the
house, and who was trying, by every ingratiating means known to woman,
to make a friend of Compadre. Rosemary was a white woman and the wife of
Wagalexa Conka's friend; Annie-Many-Ponies was an Indian girl, not even
of the same race as her brother Wagalexa Conka. And although her vanity
might lead her to believe herself and her smile the cause of Luck's
mask-like displeasure, she had no delusions as to which side he would
take in an argument between herself and Shunka Chistala on the one side,
and Rosemary and Compadre on the other; and in the back of her mind
lived always the fear that Wagalexa Conka might refuse to let her stay
and work for him in pictures.
Therefore Annie-Many-Ponies crouched humbly before the rock
fireplace, until Luck missed her at the table and told her to come
and eat; she came as comes a dog who has been beaten, and slid into
her place as noiselessly as a shadow,--humility being the heritage of
her sex and race.
No one talked at all. Even Rosemary seemed depressed and made no attempt
to stir the Happy Family to their wonted cheerfulness. They were worn out
from their long day that had been filled with real hardships as well as
work. In the general silence, Luck's deeper gloom seemed consistent and
only to be expected; for hard as the others had worked, he had worked
harder. His had been the directing brain; his hand had turned the camera
crank, lest Bill Holmes, not yet familiar with his duties, might fail
where failure would be disaster. He had endured the cold and the storm,
tramping back and forth in the snow, planning, directing, doing literally
the work of two men. Annie-Many-Ponies alone knew that exhaustion never
brought just that look into Luck's face. Annie-Many-Ponies knew that
something was very bad in Luck's heart. She knew, and she trembled while
she ate with a precise attention to her table manners lest he chide her
openly before them all.
"How long do you think this storm will last, Applehead?" Luck asked, when
he had walked heavily over to the fireplace for his smoke, and had drawn
a match sharply along the rough face of a rock.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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