t he was anxious.

"I not like Bill Holmes." Annie-Many-Ponies spoke with an air of
finality. "Bill Holmes comes close, I feel snakes. Him not friend to
Wagalexa Conka--say nothing--always go around still, like fox watching
for rabbit. You not friend to Bill Holmes?"

"Me? No--I not friend, querida mia. I got business. I sell Bill Holmes
one silver bridle, perhaps. I don' know--mus' talk about it. Yoh tell
him come here by big rock, sweetheart?"

Annie-Many-Ponies took a minute for deliberation--which is the Indian
way. Ramon, having learned patience, said no more but watched her
slant-eyed.

"I tell," she promised at last, and added, "I go now." Then she slipped
away. And Ramon, though he stood for several minutes by the rock smiling
queerly and staring down the arroyo, caught not the slightest glimpse
of her after she left him. He knew that she would deliver faithfully
his message to Bill Holmes, she had given her word. That was one
great advantage, considered Ramon, in dealing with those direct,
uncompromising natures. She might torment him with her aloofness and her
reticence, but once he had won her to a full confidence and submission
he need not trouble himself further about her loyalty. She would tell
Bill Holmes--and, what was vastly more important, she would do it
secretly; he had not dared to speak of that, but he thought he might
safely trust to her natural wariness. So Ramon, after a little, stole
away to his own camp quite satisfied.

The next night, when he stood in the shadow of the rock ledge and
waited, he was not startled by the unexpected presence of the person he
wanted to see. For although Bill Holmes came as cautiously as he knew
how, and avoided the wide, bright-lighted stretches of arroyo where he
would have been plainly visible, Ramon both saw and heard him before he
reached the ledge. What Ramon did not see or hear was Annie-Many-Ponies,
who did not quite believe that those two wished merely to talk about a
silver bridle, and who meant to listen and find out why it was that they
could not talk openly before all the boys.

Annie-Many-Ponies had ways of her own. She did not tell Ramon that she
doubted his word, nor did she refuse to deliver the message. She waited
calmly until Bill Holmes left camp stealthily that night, and she
followed him. It was perfectly simple and sensible and the right thing
to do; if you wanted to know for sure whether a person lied to you, you
had but to watch and