through the afternoon she sat there with her back to the lone pine
tree and her face turned toward the southeast, while the little black
dog lay at her feet and slept. From the cabin Ramon watched her,
stubbornly waiting until she would come down to him of her own accord.
She would come--of that he was sure. She would come if he convinced her
that he would not go up and coax her to come. Ramon had known many
girls who were given to sulking over what he considered their imaginary
wrongs, and he was very sure that he knew women better than they knew
themselves. She would come, give her time enough, and she could not
fling at him then any taunt that he had been over-eager. Certainly she
would come--she was a woman!

But the shadow of the pines lengthened until they lay like long fingers
across the earth; and still she did not come. Bill Holmes and Luis,
secure in the knowledge that Ramon was on guard against any unlooked-for
visitors, slept heavily on the crude bunks in the cabin. Birds began
twittering animatedly as the beat of the day cooled and they came forth
from their shady retreats--and still Annie-Many-Ponies sat on the little
hilltop, within easy calling distance of the cabin, and never once
looked down that way. Still the little black dog curled at her feet
and slept. For all the movement these two made, they might have been of
stone; the pine above was more unquiet than they.

Ramon, watching her while he smoked many cigarettes, became filled with
a vague uneasiness What was she thinking? What did she mean to do? He
began to have faint doubts of her coming down to him. He began to be
aware of something in her nature that was unlike those other women;
something more inflexible, more silent, something that troubled him even
while he told himself that she was like all the rest and he would be her
master.

"Bah! She thinks to play with me, Ramon! Then I will go up and I will
show her--she will follow weeping at my heels--like that dog of hers
that some day I shall kill!"

He got up and threw away his cigarette, glanced within and saw that Bill
and Luis still slept, and started up the hill to where that motionless
figure sat beneath the pine and kept her face turned from him. It would
be better, thought Ramon, to come upon her unawares, and so he went
softly and very slowly, placing each foot as carefully as though he were
stalking a wild thing of the woods.

Annie-Many-Ponies did not hear him coming. All her he