slope cunningly placed by the scenic artist to catch the full sunlight
of midday, the camp of the Chavez brothers gleamed softly in the magic
light.

So far had spring roundup progressed that Luck was holding the camp in
Tijeras Arroyo for picture-making only. Applehead's calves were branded,
to the youngest pair of knock-kneed twins which Happy Jack found curled
up together cunningly hidden in a thicket. They had been honored with a
"close-up" scene, those two spotted calves, and were destined to further
honors which they did not suspect and could not appreciate.

They slept now, as slept the two camps upon the two slopes that lay
moon-bathed at midnight. Back where the moon was making the barren
mountains a wonderland of deep purple and black and silvery gray and
brown, a coyote yapped a falsetto message and was answered by one nearer
at hand--his mate, it might be. In a bush under the bank that made of
it a black blot in the unearthly whiteness of the sand, a little
bird fluttered uneasily and sent a small, inquiring chirp into the
stillness. From somewhere farther up the arroyo drifted a faint,
aromatic odor of cigarette smoke.

Had you been there by the bush you could not have told when
Annie-Many-Ponies passed by; you would not have seen her--certainly you
could not have heard the soft tread of her slim, moccasined feet. Yet
she passed the bush and the bank and went away up the arroyo, silent as
the shadows themselves, swift as the coyote that trotted over a nearby
ridge to meet her mate nearer the mountains. Sol following much the same
instinct in much the same way, Annie-Many-Ponies stole out to meet the
man her heart timidly yearned for a possible mate.

She reached the rock-ledge where the smoke odor was strongest, and she
stopped. She saw Ramon Chavez, younger of the Chavez brothers who were
ten-mile-off neighbors of Applehead, and who owned many cattle and much
land by right of an old Spanish grant. He was standing in the shadow of
the ledge, leaning against it as they of sun-saturated New Mexico always
lean against anything perpendicular and solid near which they happen to
stand. He was watching the white-lighted arroyo while he smoked, waiting
for her, unconscious of her near presence.

Annie-Many-Ponies stood almost within reach of him, but she did not make
her presence known. With the infinite wariness of her race she waited to
see what he would do; to read, if she might, what were his thoughts--his