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.