The Phantom Herd - B. M. Bower (love novels in english txt) 📗

name was Bill Holmes, did not have very much to say, but he seemed very quick to grasp all that Luck told him. That kept Luck whistling softly between sentences, while they wound the negative around the roped half barrel that had not so much as a six penny nail in it this time, so thoroughly did Andy do his work.

The whistling ceased abruptly when Luck examined his film by the light of the ruby lamp, however, for every scene was over-exposed and worthless. Luck realized when he looked at it that the light was much stronger than any he had ever before photographed by, and that he would have to "stop down" hereafter; the problem was, how much. His light tests, he remembered, had been made rather late in the afternoon, when the light was getting yellow, and he had blundered in forgetting that the forenoon light was not the same.

He went ahead and put the film through the fixing bath and afterwards washed it carefully, more for the practice and to show Bill Holmes how to handle the negative than for any value the film would have. He discovered that Andy had not unpacked the rewinding outfit, but since he would not need it until his negative was dry, he made no comment on the subject. Bill Holmes kept at his heels, helping when he knew what to do, asking a question now and then, but silent for the most part. Luck felt extremely optimistic about Bill Holmes, but for all that he was depressed by his second failure to produce good film. A camera-man, he felt in his heart, might be the determining factor for success; but he was too stubborn to admit it openly or even to consider sending for one, even if he could have managed to pay the seventy-five dollars a week salary for the time it would take to produce the Big Picture. He could easier afford to waste a few hundred feet of negative now, he argued to himself.

"Come on down, and I'll show you what I can about the camera," he said to Bill Holmes. "The light's too tricky to-day to work by, but I'll give you a few pointers that you'll have to keep in mind when I'm too busy to think about telling you. Once I get to directing a scene, I'm liable to be busy as a one-armed prospector fighting a she-bear with cubs. I'm counting on you to remember what all I'va told you, in case I forget to tell you again. You see, I've ruined a hundred and fifty feet of negative already, just by overlooking a couple of bets. You're here to help keep that from happening again. Sabe?"

"Well, there's one or two things I don't have to learn," Bill Holmes told him by way of encouragement. "You get the camera set and ready, and I can turn it any speed you want. I'll guarantee that much. I learned that all right in projection."

"That's exactly why I brought you out here, brother," Luck assured him.
"That's why—"

"Oh, Luck Lindsay!" came Rosemary's voice excitedly. "Mr. Forrman wants you right away quick! Somebody's coming that he doesn't know, and he says it's up to you!"

"What's up to me?" Luck came hurrying down the ladder backwards. "Has Applehead gone as crazy as his cat? I've nothing to do with strangers coming to the ranch."

"Yes," said Rosemary, twinkling her brown eyes at him, "but this is a woman. Mr. Forrman refuses to take any responsibility—"

"So do I. I don't know of any woman that's liable to come trailing me up.
Where is she?"

From the doorway Rosemary pointed dramatically, and Luck went up and stood beside her, rolling down his sleeves while he stared at the trail. Down the slope, head bent to the whooping wind, a woman came walking with a free, purposeful stride that spoke eloquently of accustomedness to the open land. Her skirts flapped but could not impede her movements. She seemed to be carrying some bright-hued burden upon her shoulders, and she was, without doubt, coming straight down to the ranch as to a much-desired goal.

"You can search me," he said emphatically in answer to Applehead's question. "Must be some señora away off the trail. I never saw her before in my life."

"We-ell, now, that there lady don't act like she's lost," Applehead declared, watching her intently as she came on. "Aims to git whar she's goin', if I'm any jedge of actions. An' she shore is hittin' fur here. Ain't been ary woman on this ranch in ten year, till Mrs. Green come t'other day."

"She's none of my funeral; I don't know her from Adam," Luck disclaimed, and went back into the dark room as though be had urgent business there, which he had not. In the back of his mind was an uneasy feeling that the newcomer was "some of his funeral," and yet he could not tell how or why she should be. In her walk there was a teasing sense of familiarity; he did not know who she was, but he felt uncomfortably that he ought to know. He fumbled among the litter on the shelf, putting things in order; and all the while his ears were sharpened to the sounds that came muffled through the closed door.

"Oh, Luck Lindsay!" came Rosemary's voice at last, with what Luck fancied was a malicious note in it. "You're wanted out here!"

Luck fumbled for a minute longer while he racked his brain for some clue to this woman's identity. For a man who has lived the varied life Luck had lived, his conscience was remarkably clean; but no one enjoys having mystery stalk unawares up to one's door. However, he opened the door and went out, feeling sensitively the curious expectancy of the Happy Family, and faced the woman who stood just beyond the doorway. One look, and he stopped dead still in the middle of the room. "Well, I'll be darned!" he said in a hushed tone of blank amazement.

The woman's black eyes lighted as though flames had darted up behind them. "How, Cola?" she greeted him in the soft, cooing tones of the younger Indians whose voices have not yet grown shrill and harsh. "Wagalexa Conka!" It was the tribal name given him in great honor by his Indians of Pine Ridge Agency.

Through his astonishment, Luck's face glowed at the words. He went up and put out his hand, impelled by the hospitality which is an unwritten law of the old West, and is not to be broken save for good cause.

"How! How!" he answered her greeting. "You long ways from home,
Annie-Many-Ponies!"

Annie-Many-Ponies smiled in a way to make Happy Jack gulp with a sudden emotion he would have denied. She flashed a quick glance around at the curious faces that regarded her so intently, and she eased her shawl-wrapped burden to the ground with the air of one who has reached her journey's end.

"Yes, I plenty long ways," she assented placidly. "I don't stay by reservation no more. Too lonesome. One night I beat it. I work for you now."

"How you know you work for me?" Luck felt nine pairs of eyes trying to read his face. "That's bad, you run away. You better go back, Annie-Many-Ponies. Your father—"

"Nah!" Annie-Many-Ponies cried in swift rebellion. "I work for you all time, I no want monies. I got plenty wardrobe; you give me plenty grub; I work for you. I think you need him Indian girl in picture. I think you plenty sorry all Indians go by reservation. You no like for Indians go home," she stated with soft sympathy. "I sabe you not got monies for pay all thems Indians. I come be Indian girl for you; I not want monies. You let me stay—Wagalexa Conka!"

"You come in and eat, Annie-Many-Ponies," Luck commanded with more gentleness than he was accustomed to show. The girl must have followed him all the way from Los Angeles, and she must have walked all the way out from Albuquerque. All this she seemed to take for granted, a mere detail of no importance beside her certainty that although he had no money to pay the Indians, he must surely need an Indian girl in his pictures. Loyalty always touched Luck deeply. He had brought the little black dog back with him and hidden it in the stable, just because the dog had followed him all around town and had seemed so pleased when Luck was loading the buckboards for the return trip. He could not logically repulse the manifest friendliness of Annie-Many-Ponies.

He introduced her formally to Rosemary, and was pleased when Rosemary smiled and shook hands without the slightest hesitation. The Happy Family he lumped together in one sentence. "All these my company," he told her. "You eat now. By and by I think you better go home."

Annie-Many-Ponies looked at him with smoldering eyes, standing in the middle of the kitchen, refusing to sit down to the table until the main question was settled.

"Why you say that?" she demanded, drawing her brows down sullenly. "You got plenty more Indian girls?"

Luck shook his head.

"You think me not good-looking any more?" With her two slim brown hands she pushed back the shawl from her hair and challenged criticism of her beauty. She was beautiful,—there was no gain saying that; she was so beautiful that the sight of her, standing there like an indignant young Minnehaha, tingled the blood of more than one of the Happy Family. "You think I so homely I spoil your picture?"

"I think you must not run away from the reservation," Luck parried, refusing to be cajoled by her anger or her beauty. "You always were a good girl, Annie-Many-Ponies. Long time ago, when you were little girl with the Buffalo Bill show, you were good. You mind what Wagalexa Conka say?"

Annie-Many-Ponies bent her head. "I mind you now, Wagalexa Conka," she told him quickly. "You tell me ride down that big hill," she threw one hand out toward the bluff that sheltered the house. "I sure ride down like hell. I care not for break my neck, when you want big 'punch' in picture. You tell me be homely old squaw like Mrs. Ghost-Dog, I be homely so dogs yell to look on me. I mind you plenty—but I do not go by reservation no more."

"Yow father be mad—I let you stay, he maybe shoot me," Luck argued, secretly flattered by her persistence.

Annie-Many-Ponies smiled,—a slow, sphinx-like smile, mysteriously sweet and lingering. "Nah! Not shoot you. I write one letters, say I go work for you. Now you write one letter by Agent, say you let me stay, say I work for you, say I good girl, say I be Indian girl for your picture. I mind you plenty, Wagalexa Conka!" She smiled again coaxingly, like a child. "I like you," she stated simply. "You good man. You need Indian girl, I think. I work for you. My father not be mad; my father know you good man for Indians."

Luck turned from her and gave the Happy Family a pathetic, what's-a-fellow-going-to-do look that made Andy Green snort unexpectedly and go outside. One by one the others followed him, grinning shamelessly at Luck's helplessness. In a moment he overtook them, wanting the support of their judgment.

"The worst of it is," he confessed, after he had explained how he had known the girl since she was a barefooted papoose with the "Bill" show, and he was Indian Agent there; "the worst of it is, she's a humdinger in pictures. She gets over big in foreground stuff. Rides like a whirlwind, and as for dramatic work, she can put it over half the leading women in the business—that is, in her line of Pocohontas stuff."

"Well, why don't you let her stay?" Weary demanded. "She will anyway—mama! We're not what you can call over-run with women on this job."

"Why don't you make a squaw-man outa Dave?" Pink suggested boldly, "and let her be his daughter instead of Rosemary?"

"Say, what does that there walka-some-darn-thing mean, that she calls yuh?" Big Medicine wanted to know. "By cripes, I hate talk I don't savey."

"Wagalexa Conka?" Luck smiled shamefacedly. "Oh, that's just a name the Indians gave me. Means Big Turkey, in plain English. Her father, old Chief Big Turkey, adopted me into the tribe, and they call me by his name. Annie-Many-Ponies has heard it used ever since she was a kid. By tribal law I'm her brother. Well, what's the word, boys? Shall we let her stay or not? We could use her, all right, and put a dash of old-plains' color in the picture