He peered into the shadow where she had
been, and saw the place empty. He laughed, chagrined by her elusiveness,
yet hungering for her the more.

"You not touch," she warned. "Till priest say marriage prayers, no man
touch."

He called her a devil in Spanish, and she thought it a love-word and
laughed and came nearer. He did not attempt to touch her, and so,
reassured, she stood close so that he could see the pure, Indian profile
of her face when she raised it to the sky in a mute invocation, it might
be, of her gods.

"When yoh come?" he asked swiftly, his race betrayed in tone and accent.
"I look and look--I no see yoh."

"I come," she stated with a quiet meaning. "I not like cow, for make
plenty noise. I stand here, you smoke two times, I look."

"You mus' be moonbeam," he told her, reaching out again, only to lay
hold upon nothing. "Come back, sweetheart. I be good."

"I not like you touch," she repeated. "I good girl. I mind priest, I
read prayers, I mind Wagalexa Conka--" There she faltered, for the last
boast was no longer the truth.

Ramon was quick to seize upon the one weak point of her armor. "So? He
send yoh then to talk with Ramon at midnight? Yoh come to please yoh
boss?"

Annie-Many-Ponies turned her troubled face his way. "Wagalexa Conka
sleep plenty. I not ask," she confessed. "You tell me come here you tell
me must talk when no one hear. I come. I no ask Wagalexa Conka--him say
good girl stay by camp. Him say not walk in night-time, say me not talk
you. I no ask; I just come."

"Yoh lov' him, perhaps? More as yoh lov' me? Always I see yoh look at
him--always watch, watch. Always I see yoh jomp when he snap the finger;
always yoh run like train dog. Yoh lov' him, perhaps? Bah! Yoh dirt
onder his feet." Ramon did not seriously consider that any woman whom
he favored could sanely love another man more than himself, but to
his nature jealousy was a necessary adjunct of lovemaking; not to
have displayed jealousy would have been to betray indifference, as he
interpreted the tender passion.

Annie-Many-Ponies, woman-wily though she was by nature, had little
learning in the devious ways of lovemaking. Eyes might speak, smiles
might half reveal, half hide her thoughts; but the tongue, as her tribe
had taught her sternly, must speak the truth or keep silent. Now she
bent her head, puzzling how best to put her feelings toward Luck Lindsay
into honest words which Ramon would understand.

"Yoh lov'