XX. LUIS ROJAS TALKS

Three days of hiding by day in sequestered little groves or deep, hidden
canons, with only Luis Rojas to bear her company--Luis Rojas whom she
did not trust and therefore watched always from under her long straight
lashes, with oblique glances when she seemed to be gazing straight
before her; three nights of tramping through rough places where often
the horses must pause and feel carefully for space to set their feet.
Roads there were, but Luis avoided roads as though they carried the
plague. When he must cross one he invariably turned back and brushed out
their footprints--until he discovered that Annie-Many-Ponies was much
cleverer at this than he was; often he smoked a cigarette while Annie
covered their trail. Three days and three nights, and Ramon was not
there where they stopped for the third day.

"We go slow," Luis explained nervously because of the look in the
black, unreadable eyes of this straight, slim Indian girl who was
so beautiful--and so silent. "They go muy fas', Ramon an' Beel. Poco
tiempo--sure, we fin' dem little soon."

Annie-Many-Ponies did not betray by so much as a quiver of an eyelash
that Luis had mentioned Bill unwittingly. But she hid the name away in
her memory, and all that day she sat and pondered over the meager facts
that had come her way, and with the needle of her suspicion she wove
them together patiently until the pattern was almost complete.

Ramon and Bill--what Bill, save Bill Holmes, would be with Ramon?
Ramon and Bill Holmes--memory pictured them again by the rock in the
moonlight, muttering in Spanish mostly, muttering mystery always. Ramon
and Bill Holmes she remembered the sly, knowing glances between these
two at "location" though they scarcely seemed on speaking terms. 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. She had seen man and maid "make marriage," in pictures
and in reality. There should be no trouble, no mysterious following of
Ramon by night.

Something evil there was, since Bill Holmes was with Ramon.
Annie-Many-Ponies knew that it was so. Perhaps--perhaps the evil was
against Wagalexa Conka! Perhaps--her hea