ky gorge which was "location" for today. When Wagalexa Conka
called to her she went and climbed upon a high rock and stood just where
he told her to stand, and looked just as he told her to look, and stole
away through the rocks and out of the scene exactly as he wished her to
do.

But when Wagalexa Conka--sorry for the harshness he had felt it his
duty to show that morning--smiled and told her she had done fine, and
that he was pleased with her, Annie-Many-Ponies did not smile back with
that slow, sweet, heart-twisting smile which was at once her sharpest
weapon and her most endearing trait.

Bill Holmes who had also had his sharp word of warning, and had been
told very plainly to cut out this flirting with Annie if he wanted to
remain on Luck's payroll, eyed her strangely. Once he tried to have a
secret word with her, but she moved away and would not look at him.
For Annie-Many-Ponies, hurt and bitter as she felt toward her beloved
Wagalexa Conka, hated Bill Holmes fourfold for being the cause of her
humiliation. That she did not also hate Ramon Chavez as being equally
guilty with Bill Holmes, went far toward proving how strong a hold he
had gained upon her heart.

CHAPTER VI. "I GO WHERE WAGALEXA CONKA SAY"

That afternoon Ramon joined them, suave as ever and seeming very much at
peace with the world and his fellow-beings. He watched the new leading
woman make a perilous ride down a steep, rocky point and dash up to
camera and on past it where she set her horse back upon, its haunches
with a fine disregard for her bones and a still finer instinct for
putting just the right dash of the spectacular into her work without
overdoing it.

"That senora, she's all right, you bet!" he praised the feat to those
who stood near him; "me, I not be stuck on ron my caballo down that
place. You bet she's fine rider. My sombrero, he's come off to that
lady!"

Jean, hearing, glanced at him with that little quirk of the lips which
was the beginning of a smile, and rode off to join her father and Lite
Avery. "He made that sound terribly sincere, didn't he?" she commented.
"It takes a Mexican to lift flattery up among the fine arts." Then she
thought no more about it.

Annie-Many-Ponies was sitting apart, on a rock where her gay blanket
made a picturesque splotch of color against the gray barrenness of the
hill behind her. She, too, heard what Ramon said, and she, too, thought
that he had made the praise sound terribly since