The Heritage of the Sioux
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B.M. Bower >> The Heritage of the Sioux
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13 This etext was prepared by Dianne Bean of Phoenix AZ with
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THE HERITAGE OF THE SIOUX by B.M. Bower
I WHEN GREEN GRASS COMES
II THE DAUGHTER OF A CHIEF
III TO THE VICTORS THE SPOILS
IV LOVE WORDS FOR ANNIE
V FOR THE GOOD OF THE COMPANY
VI "I GO WHERE WAGALEXA CONKA SAY"
VII ADVENTURE COMES SMILING
VIII THE SONG OF THE OMAHA
IX RIDERS IN THE BACKGROUND
X DEPUTIES ALL
XI ALL THIS WAR-TALK ABOUT INJUNS
XII THE WILD-GOOSE CHASE
XIII SET AFOOT
XIV ONE PUT OVER ON THE BUNCH
XV "NOW, DANG IT, RIDE!"
XVI ANNIE-MANY-PONIES WAITS
XVII APPLEHEAD SHOWS THE STUFF HE IS MADE OF
XVIII IN THE DEVIL'S FRYING-PAN
XIX PEACE TALK
XX LUIS ROJAS TALKS
XXI "WAGALEXA CONKA--COLA!"
THE HERITAGE OF THE SIOUX by B. M. Bower
CHAPTER I. WHEN GREEN GRASS COMES
Old Applehead Furrman, jogging home across the mesa from Albuquerque, sniffed
the soft breeze that came from opal-tinted distances and felt poignantly that
spring was indeed here. The grass, thick and green in the sheltered places,
was fast painting all the higher ridges and foot-hill slopes, and with the
green grass came the lank-bodied, big-kneed calves; which meant that. roundup
time was at hand. Applehead did not own more than a thousand head of cattle,
counting every hoof that walked under his brand. And with the incipient
lethargy of old age creeping into his habits of life, roundup time was not
with him the important season it once had been; for several years he had been
content to hire a couple of men to represent him in the roundups of the larger
outfits--men whom he could trust to watch fairly well his interests. By that
method he avoided much trouble and hurry and hard work--and escaped also the
cares which come with wealth.
But this spring was not as other springs had been. Something--whether an
awakened ambition or an access of sentiment regarding range matters, he did
not know--was stirring the blood in Applehead's veins. Never, since the days
when he had been a cowpuncher, had the wide spaces called to him so
alluringly; never had his mind dwelt so insistently upon the approach of
spring roundup. Perhaps it was because he heard so much range talk at the
ranch, where the boys of the Flying U were foregathered in uneasy idleness,
their fingers itching for the feel of lariat ropes and branding irons while
they gazed out over the wide spaces of the mesa.
So much good rangeland unharnessed by wire fencing the Flying U boys had not
seen for many a day. During the winter they had been content to ride over it
merely for the purpose of helping to make a motion picture of the range, but
with the coming of green grass, and with the reaction that followed the
completion of the picture that in the making had filled all their thoughts,
they were not so content. To the inevitable reaction had been added a nerve
racking period of idleness and uncertainty while Luck Lindsay, their director,
strove with the Great Western Film Company in Los Angeles for terms and prices
that would make for the prosperity of himself and his company.
In his heart Applehead knew, just as the Happy Family knew, that Luck had good
and sufficient reasons for over-staying the time-limit he had given himself
for the trip. But knowing that Luck was not to be blamed for his long absence
did not lessen their impatience, nor did it stifle the call of the wide spaces
nor the subtle influence of the winds that blew softly over the uplands.
By the time he reached the ranch Applehead had persuaded himself that the
immediate gathering of his cattle was an imperative duty and that he himself
must perform it. He could not, he told himself, afford to wait around any
longer for luck. Maybe when he came Luck would have nothing but disappointment
for them, Maybe--Luck was so consarned stubborn when he got an idea in his
head--maybe be wouldn't come to any agreement with the Great Western. Maybe
they wouldn't offer him enough money, or leave him enough freedom in his work;
maybe he would "fly back on the rope" at the last minute, and come back with
nothing accomplished. Applehead, with the experience gleaned from the stress
of seeing luck produce one feature picture without any financial backing
whatever and without half enough capital, was not looking forward with any
enthusiasm to another such ordeal. He did not believe, when all was said and
done, that the Flying U boys would be so terribly eager to repeat the
performance. He did believe--or he made himself think he believed--that the
only sensible thing to do right then was to take the boys and go out and start
a roundup of his own. It wouldn't take long--his cattle weren't so badly
scattered this year.
"Where's Andy at?" he asked Pink, who happened to be leaning boredly over the
gate when he rode up to the corral. Andy Green, having been left in nominal
charge of the outfit when Luck left, must be consulted, Applehead supposed.
"Andy? I dunno. He saddled up and rode off somewhere, a while ago," Pink
answered glumly. "That's more than he'll let any of us fellows do; the way
he's close-herding us makes me tired! Any news?"
"Ain't ary word from Luck--no word of NO kind. I've about made up my mind to
take the chuck-wagon to town and stock it with grub, and hit out on roundup
t'morrer or next day. I don't see as there's any sense in setting around here
waitin' on Luck and lettin' my own work slide. Chavez boys, they started out
yest'day, I heard in town. And if I don't git right out close onto their
heels, I'll likely find myself with a purty light crop uh calves, now I'm
tellin' yuh I" Applehead, so completely had he come under the spell of the
soft spring air and the lure of the mesa, actually forgot that he had long
been in the habit of attending to his calf crop by proxy.
Pink's face brightened briefly. Then he remembered why they were being kept so
close to the ranch, and he grew bored again.
"What if Luck pulled in before we got back, and wanted us to start work on
another picture?" he asked, discouraging the idea reluctantly. Pink had
himself been listening to the call of the wide spaces, and the mere mention of
roundup had a thrill for him.
"Well, now, I calc'late my prope'ty is might' nigh as important as Luck's
pitcher-making," Applehead contended with a selfishness born of his newly
awakened hunger for the far distances. "And he ain't sent ary word that he's
coming, or will need you boys immediate. The chances is we could go and git
back agin before Luck shows up. And if we don't," he argued speciously, "he
can't blame nobody for not wantin' to set around on their haunches all spring
waiting for 'im. I'd do a lot fer luck; I've DONE a lot fer 'im. But it ain'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 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.
Annie-Many-Ponies had not only come uninvited--she had remained in defiance of
Luck's perturbed insistence that she should go back home. The Flying U boys
might overlook that fact because of her beauty, but Applehead was not so
easily beguiled--especially when she proceeded to form a violent attachment to
the little black dog, which she called Shunka Chistala in what Applehead
considered a brazen flaunting of her Indian blood and language, Between the
mistress of Shunka Chistala and the master of the cat there could never be
anything more cordial than an armed truce. She had championed that ornery cur
in a way to make Applehead's blood boil. She had kept the dog in the house at
night, which forced the cat to seek cold comfort elsewhere. She had pilfered
the choicest table scraps for the dog--and Compadre was a cat of fastidious
palate and grew thin on what coarse bits were condescendingly left for him.
Applehead had not approved of Luck's final consent that Annie-Many-Ponies
should stay and play the Indian girl in his big picture. In the mind of
Applehead there lurked a grudge that found all the more room to grow because
of the natural bigness and generosity of his nature. It irked him to see her
going her calm way with that proud uptilt to her shapely head and that little,
inscruable smile when she caught the meaning of his grumbling hints.
Applehead was easy-going to a fault in most things, but his dislike had grown
in Luck's absence to the point where he considered himself aggrieved whenever
Annie-Many-Ponies saddled the horse which had been tacitly set aside for her
use, and rode off into the mesa without a word of explanation or excuse.
Applehead reminded the boys that she had not acted like that when luck was
home. She had stayed on the ranch where she belonged, except once or twice, on
particularly fine days, when she had meekly asked "Wagalexa Conka," as she
persisted in calling Luck, for permission to go for a ride.
Applehead itched to tell her a few things about the social, moral,
intellectual and economic status of an "Injun squaw"--but there was something
in her eye, something in the quiver of her finely shaped nostrils, in the
straight black brows, that held his tongue quiet when he met her face to face.
You couldn't tell about these squaws. Even luck, who knew Indians better than
most--and was, in a heathenish tribal way, the adopted son of Old Chief Big
Turkey, and therefore Annie's brother by adoption--even Luck maintained that
Annie-Many-Ponies undoubtedly carried a knife concealed in her clothes and
would use it if ever the need arose. Applehead was not afraid of Annie's
knife. It was something else, something he could not put into words, that held
him back from open upbraidings.
He gave Andy's wife, Rosemary, the mail and stopped to sympathize with her
because Annie-Many-Ponies had gone away and left the hardest part of the
ironing undone. Luck had told Annie to help Rosemary with the work; but
Annie's help, when Luck was not around the place, was, Rosemary asserted,
purely theoretical.
"And from all you read about Indians," Rosemary complained with a pretty
wrinkling of her brows, "you'd think the women just LIVE for the sake of
working. I've lost all faith in history, Mr. Furrman. I don't believe squaws
ever do anything if they can help it. Before she went off riding today, for
instance, that girl spent a whole HOUR brushing her hair and braiding it. And
I do believe she GREASES it to make it shine the way it does! And the powder
she piles on her face--just to ride out on the mesa!" Rosemary Green was
naturally sweet-tempered and exceedingly charitable in her judgements; but
here, too, the cat-and-dog feud had its influence. Rosemary Green was a loyal
champion of the cat Compadre; besides, there was a succession of little
irritations, in the way of dishes left unwashed and inconspicuous corners left
unswept, to warp her opinion of Annie-Many-Ponies.
When he left Rosemary he went straight down to where the chuck-wagon stood,
and began to tap the tires with a small rock to see if they would need
resetting before he started out. He decided that the brake-blocks would have
to be replaced with new ones--or at least reshod with old boot-soles. The
tongue was cracked, too; that had been done last winter when Luck was
producing The Phantom Herd and had sent old Dave Wiswell down a rocky hillside
with half-broken bronks harnessed to the wagon, in a particularly dramatic
scene. Applehead went grumblingly in search of some baling wire to wrap the
tongue. He had been terribly excited and full of enthusiasm for the picture at
the time the tongue was cracked, but now he looked upon it merely as a vital
weakness in his roundup outfit. A new tongue would mean delay; and delay, in
his present mood, was tragedy.
He couldn't find any old baling wire, though he had long been accustomed to
tangling his feet in snarled bunches of it when he went forth in the dark
after a high wind. Until now he had not observed its unwonted absence from the
yard. For a long while he had not needed any wire to mend things, because Luck
had attended to everything about the ranch, and if anything needed mending he
had set one of the Happy Family at the task.
His search led him out beyond the corrals in the little dry wash that
sometimes caught and held what the high winds brought rolling that way. The
wash was half filled with tumble-weed, so that Applehead was forced to get
down into it and kick the weeds aside to see if there was any wire lodged
beneath. His temper did not sweeten over the task, especially since he found
nothing that he wanted.
Annie-Many-Ponies, riding surreptitiously up the dry wash--meaning to come out
in a farther gully and so approach the corral from the west instead of from
the east--came upon Applehead quite unexpectedly. She stopped and eyed him
aslant from under her level, finely marked brows, and her eyes lightened with
relief when she saw that Applehead looked more startled than she had felt.
Indeed, Applehead had been calling Luck uncomplimentary names for cleaning the
place of everything a man might need in a hurry, and he was ashamed of
himself.
"Can't find a foot of danged wire on the danged place!" Applehead kicked a
large, tangled bunch of weeds under the very nose of the horse which jumped
sidewise. "Never seen such a maniac for puttin' things where a feller can't
find 'em, as what Luck is." He was not actually speak ing to
Annie-Many-Ponies--or if he was he did not choose to point his remarks by
glancing at her.
"Wagalexa Conka, he heap careful for things belong when they stay,"
Annie-Many-Ponies observed in her musical contralto voice which always
irritated Applehead with its very melody. "I think plenty wire all fold up
neat in prop-room. Wagalexa Conka, he all time clean this studio from trash
lie around everywhere."
"He does, hey?" Applehead's sunburnt mustache bristled like the whiskers of
Compadre when he was snarling defiance at the little black dog. The feud was
asserting itself. " Well, this here danged place ain't no studio! It's a
ranch, and it b'longs to ME, Nip Furrman. And any balin' wire on this ranch is
my balin' wire, and it's got a right to lay around wherever I want it t' lay.
And I don't need no danged squaw givin' me hints about 'how my place oughta be
kept--now I'm tellin' yuh!"
Annie-Many-Ponies did not reply in words. She sat on her horse, straight as
any young warchief that ever led her kinsmen to battle, and looked down at
Applehead with that maddening half smile of hers, inscrutable as the Sphinx
her features sometimes resembled. Shunka Chistala (which is Sioux for Little
Dog) came bounding over the low ridge that hid the ranch buildings from sight,
and wagged himself dislocatingly up to her. Annie-Many-Ponies frowned at his
approach until she saw that Applehead was aiming a clod at the dog, whereupon
she touched her heels to the horse and sent him between Applehead and her pet,
and gave Shunka Chistala a sharp command in Sioux that sent him back to the
house with his tail dropped.
For a full half minute she and old Applehead looked at each other in open
antagonism. For a squaw, Annie-Many-Ponies was remarkably unsubmissive in her
bearing. Her big eyes were frankly hostile; her half smile was, in the opinion
of Applehead, almost as frankly scornful. He could not match her in the
subtleties of feminine warfare. He took refuge behind the masculine bulwark of
authority.
"Where yuh bin with that horse uh mine?" he demanded harshly. "Purty note when
I don't git no say about my own stock. Got him all het up and heavin' like
he'd been runnin' cattle; I ain't goin' to stand for havin' my horses ran to
death, now I'm tellin' yuh! Fer a squaw, I must say you're gittin' too danged
uppish in your ways around here. Next time you want to go traipsin' around the
mesa, you kin go afoot. I'm goin' to need my horses fer roundup."
A white girl would have made some angry retort; but Annie-Many-Ponies, without
looking in the least abashed, held her peace and kept that little inscrutable
smile upon her lips. Her eyes, however, narrowed in their gaze.
"Yuh hear me?" Poor old Applehead had never before attempted to browbeat a
woman, and her unsubmissive silence seemed to his bachelor mind uncanny.
"I hear what Wagalexa Conka tell me." She turned her horse and rode composedly
away from him over the ridge.
"You'll hear a danged sight more'n that, now I'm tellin' yuh!" raved Applehead
impotently. "I ain't sayin' nothin' agin Luck, but they's goin' to be some
danged plain speakin' done on some subjects when he comes back, and given'
squaws a free rein and lettin' 'em ride rough-shod over everybody and
everything is one of 'era. Things is gittin' mighty funny when a danged squaw
kin straddle my horses and ride 'em to death, and sass me when I say a word
agin it--now I'm tellin' yuh!"
He went mumbling rebellion that was merely the effervescing of a mood which
would pass with the words it bred, to the store-room which Annie-Many-Ponies
had called the prop-room. He found there, piled upon a crude shelf, many
little bundles of wire folded neatly and with the outer end wound twice around
to keep each bundle separate from the others. Applehead snorted at what he
chose to consider a finicky streak in his secret idol, Luck Lindsay; but he
took two of the little bundles and went and wired the wagon tongue. And in the
work he found a salve of anticipatory pleasure, so that he ended the task to
the humming of the tune he had heard a movie theatre playing in town as he
rode by on his way home.
CHAPTER II. THE DAUGHTER OF A CHIEF
In spite of Andy Green's plea for delay until they knew what Luck meant to do,
Applehead went on with his energetic preparations for a spring roundup of his
own. Some perverse spirit seemed to possess him and drive him out of his
easy-going shiftlessness. He offered to hire the Happy Family by the day,
since none of them would promise any permanent service until they heard from
Luck. He put them to work gathering up the saddle-horses that had been turned
loose when Luck's picture was finished, and repairing harness and attending to
the numberless details of reorganizing a ranch long left to slipshod
make-shifts.
The boys of the Flying U argued while they worked, but in spite of themselves
the lure of the mesa quickened their movements. They were supposed to wait for
Luck before they did anything; an they all knew that. But, on the other hand,
Luck was supposed to keep them informed as to his movements; which he had not
done. They did not voice one single doubt of Lucks loyalty to them, but human
nature is more prone to suspicion than to faith, as every one knows. And Luck
had the power and the incentive to "double-cross" them if he was the kind to
do such a thing. He was manager for their little free-lance picture company
which did not even have a name to call itself by. They had produced one big
feature film, and it was supposed to be a cooperative affair from start to
finish. If Luck failed to make good, they would all be broke together. If Luck
cleared up the few thousands that had been their hope, why--they would all
profit by the success, if Luck--
I maintain that they showed themselves of pretty good metal, in that not even
Happy Tack, confirmed pessimist that he was, ever put the least suspicion of
Luck's honesty into words. They were not the kind to decry a comrade when his
back was turned. And they had worked with Luck Lindsay and had worked for him.
They had slept under the same roof with him, had shared his worries,his hopes,
and his fears. They did not believe that Luck had appropriated the proceeds of
The Phantom Herd and had deliberately left them there to cool their heels and
feel the emptiness of their pockets in New Mexico, while he disported himself
in Los Angeles; they did--not believe that--they would have resented the
implication that they harbored any doubt of him. But for all that, as the days
passed and he neither came nor sent them any word, they yielded more and more
to the determination of Applehead to start out upon his own business, and they
said less and less about Luck's probable plans for the future.
And then, just when they were making ready for an early start the next
morning; just when Applehead had the corral full of horses and his chuckwagon
of grub; just when the Happy Family had packed their war-bags with absolute
necessities and were justifying themselves in final arguments with Andy Green,
who refused point-blank to leave the; ranch--then, at the time a dramatist
would have chosen for his entrance for an effective "curtain," here came Luck,
smiling and driving a huge seven-passenger machine crowded to the last folding
seat and with the chauffeur riding on the running board where Luck had calmly
banished him when he skidded on a sharp turn and came near upsetting them.
Applehead, stowing a coil of new rope in the chuck-wagon, took off his hat and
rubbed his shiny, pink pate in dismay. He was, for the moment, a culprit
caught in the act of committing a grave misdemeanor if not an actual felony.
He dropped the rope and went forward with dragging feet--ashamed, for the
first time in his life, to face a friend.
Luck gave the wheel a twist, cut a fine curve around the windmill and stopped
before the house with as near a flourish as a seven-passenger automobile
loaded from tail-lamp to windshield can possibly approach.
"There. That's the way I've been used to seeing cars behave," Luck observed
pointedly to the deposed chauffeur as he slammed the door open and climbed
out. "You don't have to act like you're a catepillar on a rail fence, to play
safe. I believe in keeping all four wheels on the ground--but I like to see
'em turn once in awhile. You get me?" He peeled a five-dollar banknote off a
roll the size of his wrist, handed it to the impressed chauffeur and dismissed
the transaction with a wave of his gloved hand. "You're all right, brother,"
he tempered his criticism, "but I'm some nervous about automobiles."
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