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Ramon and Bill and this mysterious night-travelling, when there should be no trouble and no mystery at all beyond the house of the priest! So much trouble over the marriage of an Indian girl and a young Mexican cattle king? Annie-Many-Ponies was not so stupid as to believe that; she had seen too much of civilization in her wanderings with the show, and her work in pictures.
But not even Rosemary wanted to go and miss any of that wonderful scene where Annie-Many-Ponies, young savage that she was, stood in the light of her flaming camp fire and prayed to her gods before she went to meet her lover. She rehearsed it once before Luck lighted the radium flares.
In the magic light of many unnamable soft shades which the sun leaves in New Mexico as a love token for his dark mistress night, Annie-Many-Ponies sat with her back against a high, flat rock at the place where Ramon had said she must wait for him, and stared somber-eyed at what she could see of the new land that bad held her future behind the Sandias; waiting for Ramon; and she wondered if Wagalexa Conka had come home from his picture-making in Bear Canon and was angry because she had gone; and shrank from the thought, and tried to picture what life with Ramon would be like, and whether his love would last beyond the wide ring of shiny gold that was to make her a wife.
And just beyond the corner out of sight but well within hearing, Annie-Many-Ponies stood flattened against the wall and listened with fast-beating pulse for the sound of her name, spoken in the loved voice of Wagalexa Conka. She, the daughter of a chief and Luck's sister by tribal adoption would he not miss her: from among those others who welcomed him?
"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.
He came riding down to her for his trail lay that way and as he rode he called to the others a good natured "Hasta luego!" which is the Mexican equivalent of "See you later." He did not seem to notice Annie-Many-Ponies at all as he rode past her.
Behind them, treading noiselessly in her beaded deerskin moccasins, Annie-Many-Ponies followed like a houseless wraith of the plains, the little black dog at her heels. "Must be going to snow," Weary observed with a sly twinkle, "'cause Paddy cat has got his tail brustled up bigger than a trapped coon."
She waited calmly until Bill Holmes left camp stealthily that night, and she followed him. It was perfectly simple and sensible and the right thing to do; if you wanted to know for sure whether a person lied to you, you had but to watch and listen and let your own eyes and ears prove guilt or innocence. So Annie-Many-Ponies stood by the rock and listened and watched.
Bill Holmes, town-bred and awkward in the open, thankfully resigned to the Indian girl the dignity of driving the mountain wagon with its four-horse team, and huddled under blankets, while Annie-Many-Ponies piloted them calmly straight across country in the wake of the riders whom her beloved Wagalexa Conka was leading on the snuffy bay.
Ramon started and turned his face her way; in the moonlight his eyes shone with a certain love-hunger which Annie-Many-Ponies exulted to see because she did not understand.
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