rt forgot to beat when the
thought stabbed her brain--perhaps they had killed Wagalexa Conka! It
might be so, if he had suspected her flight and had followed Ramon, and
they had fought.

In the thick shade of a pinon Luis slept with his face to the ground,
his forehead pressed upon his folded arms. Annie-Many-Ponies got up
silently and went and stood beside him, looking down at him as though
she meant to wrest the truth from his brain. And Luis, feeling in his
sleep the intensity of her gaze, stirred uneasily, yawned and sat up,
looking about him bewilderedly. His glance rested on the girl, and he
sprang to his feet and faced her.

Annie-Many-Ponies smiled her little, tantalizing, wistfully inviting
smile--the smile which luck bad whimsically called heart-twisting.
"I awful lonesome," she murmured, and sat down with her back nestling
comfortably against a grassy bank. "You talk. I not lets you sleep all
time. You think I not good for talk to?"

"Me, I not tell w'at I'm theenk," Luis retorted with a crooning note,
and sat down facing her. "Ramon be mad me."

Annie-Many-Ponies looked at him, her eyes soft and heavy with that
languorous look which will quickest befuddle the sense of a man. "You
tell; Ramon not hear," she hinted. "Ramon, he got plenty trobles for
thinking about." She smiled again. "Ramon plenty long ways off. He got
Bill Holmes for talking to. You talk to me."

How he did it, why he did it, Luis Rojas could never explain afterwards.
Something there was in her smile, in her voice, that bewitched him.
Something there was that made him think she knew and approved of
the thing Ramon had planned. He made swift, Spanish love to
Annie-Many-Ponies, who smiled upon him but would not let him touch her
hand--and so bewitched him the more. He made love--but also he talked.
He told Annie-Many-Ponies all that she wished him to tell; and some
things that she had never dreamed and that she shrank from hearing.

For he told her of the gold they had stolen, and how they had made it
look as though Luck Lindsay had planned the theft. He told her that
he loved her--which did not interest her greatly--and he told her that
Ramon would never marry her--which was like a knife thrust to her soul.
Ramon had many loves, said Luis, and he was true to none; never would he
marry a woman to rule his life and make him trouble--it were easier to
make love and then laugh and ride away. Luis was "muy s'prised"
that Annie-Many-Ponies ha