When the Chavez brothers finally did show symptoms of intending to leave,
Luck beckoned to Tomas, whom he judged to be the leader. "Here," he said
in Spanish, when Tomas had come close to him. "I will pay you for using
your cattle. When I am through, my boys will drive them back to the mesa
again. For my picture I may need them again, _senor_. I promise you they
will not be harmed." And he charged in his expense book the sum, "to use
of locations."
"_Gracias_," said Tomas, and took the five dollars which Luck could ill
afford to give, but which he felt would smooth materially the trail to
their future work. Cattle he must have for his picture; cattle he would
have at any cost,--but it would be well to have them with the consent of
their owners. So the Chavez brothers rode away with smiles for their
neighbors instead of threats, and with five dollars which had come to
them like a gift.
"Yuh might better uh kicked 'em outa here without no softsoapin' about
it, now I'm tellin' yuh!" Applehead grumbled when they were out of
earshot. "You may know your business better'n what I do, but by thunder I
wouldn't uh give 'em no five dollars--ner five cents. 'S like feedin' a
stray dog; yuh won't never git rid of 'em now. They'll be hangin' around
under yer feet--"
"At that, I might have use for them," Luck retorted unmoved. "They're
fine types."
"Types!" old Applehead exploded indignantly. "Types! They're
sneak-thieves and cutthroats 't I wouldn't trust fur's I could throw a
bull by the tail. That's what they be. Types,--my granny!"
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
"PLUMB SPOILED, D' YUH MEAN?"
Luck came out of the dark room with the still, frozen, look of a trouble
that has gone too deep for words. Annie-Many-Ponies eyed him aslant and
straightway placed the hottest, juiciest piece of steak on his plate, and
poured his coffee even before she poured for old Dave Wiswell, whom she
favored as being an old acquaintance of the Pine Ridge country.
Once when her father, old chief Big Turkey, had broken his leg and
refused to have a doctor attend him, and had said that he would die if
his "son" did not make his leg well, Luck had looked as he looked now.
Still, he had set chief Big Turkey's leg so well that it grew straight
and strong again. Annie-Many-Ponies might be primitive as to her nature
and untutored as to her mind, but she could read the face of her brother
Wagalexa Conka swiftly and surely. Something was very bad in his heart.
Annie-Many-Ponies searched her soul for guilt, remembered the smile she
had given to Ramone Chavez whom Wagalexa Conka did not like, and
immediately she became humbled before her chief.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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