“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 that I haven’t got, as it stands.  It’s up to you to decide.”

“You’re wrong,” Pink grinned.  “She’s decided that, herself.  Gee, she’s pretty!”

“Certainly she is; but get this, boys:  She isn’t going to stay just because she’s pretty, and if I had a different bunch than you fellows, she’d have to go for that reason.  I’m responsible for her—­sabe? Bill Holmes, you get this; I saw you eyeing her pretty strong.  That girl is the daughter of an influential chief, and she comes pretty near being the pride of the reservation.  There can’t be any romantic stuff, if they let her stay.  Her father and the Agent will consent, if they do consent, on the strength of the confidence they have in me.  They’re going to keep that confidence.  Get that, and get it strong, because I sure mean what I’m telling you.”  He eased the tenseness with a laugh.  “I don’t mean to offend anybody,” he said, “and that’s why I’m putting it straight before the play comes up.  Annie-Many-Ponies has got a heart-twisting smile, but she’s a squaw just the same.  She’s got the ways of the Injun to the marrow of her bones, and I’ll bet right now if you were to shake her hard enough, you’d jingle a knife out of her clothes.”  He stopped and lighted the cigarette he had been carefully rolling.  “Well,” he finished after the pause, “does she stay or go?”

The Happy Family answered him with, various phrases, the meaning of which was that he could suit himself about that; as far as they were concerned, she could stay and welcome.

So she stayed, and Rosemary hung up a calico curtain across the one bedroom, so that Annie-Many-Ponies might have a corner to call her own.  She stayed; and Luck rewrote two reels of his scenario so that there should be a place in it for a beautiful Indian girl who rode like a whirlwind and did not know the meaning of fear, and who had a mind of her own, and who was just exactly as harmless in that camp as half a quart of nitroglycerine, and added thereby a good bit to the load of responsibility which Luck was shouldering.