nsenting to be
robbed and beaten into oblivion of his betrayal.

And--although some heartless teller of tales might keep you in the
dark about this--the red automobile, having dodged hurriedly into a
high-boarded enclosure behind a Mexican saloon, emerged presently and
went boldly off across the bridge and up through Atrisco to the sand
hills which is the beginning of the desert off that way. But another
automobile, bigger and more powerful and black, slipped out of this same
enclosure upon another street, and turned eastward instead of west. This
machine made for the mesa by a somewhat roundabout course, and emerged,
by way of a rough trail up a certain draw in the edge of the tableland,
to the main road where it turns the corner of the cemetery. From there
the driver drove as fast as he dared until he reached the hill that
borders Tijeras Arroyo. There being no sign of pursuit to this point, he
crossed the Arroyo at a more leisurely pace. Then he went speeding away
into the edge of the mountains until they reached one of those deep,
deserted dry washes that cut the foothills here and there near Coyote
Springs. There his passengers left him and disappeared up the dry wash.

Before the wound on the cashier's head had stopped bleeding, the black
automobile was returning innocently to town and no man guessed what
business had called it out upon the mesa.

CHAPTER VIII. THE SONG OF THE OMAHA

"Me, I theenk yoh not lov' me so moch as a pin," Ramon complained in
soft reproach, down in the dry wash where Applehead had looked in vain
for baling wire. "Sometimes I show yoh what is like the Spanish lov'.
Like stars, like fire--sometimes I seeng the jota for you that tell
how moch I lov' yoh. 'Te quiero, Baturra, te quiero,'" he began
humming softly while he looked at her with eyes that shone soft in the
starlight. "Sometimes me, I learn yoh dat song--and moch more I learn
yoh--"

Annie-Many-Ponies stood before him, straight and slim and with that air
of aloofness which so fired Ramon's desire for her. She lifted a hand to
check him, and Ramon stopped instantly and waited. So far had her power
over him grown.

"All time you tell me you heap love," she said in her crooning soft
voice. "Why you not talk of priest to make us marry? You say words for
love--you say no word for wife. Why you no say--"

"Esposa!" Ramon's teeth gleamed white as a wolf's in the dusk. "When
the padre marry us I maybe teach you many ways to say