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.”