As it had been with Luis so it was now with Ramon. Her utter disregard of him held him back from touching her. He stood with wrath in his eyes and let her go--and to hide his weakness from her strength he sent after her a sneering laugh and words that were like a whip.
"All right--jus' for now I let you ron," he jeered. "Bimeby she's different.
Bimeby I show yoh who's boss. I make yoh cry for Ramon be good to yoh!"Annie-Many-Ponies did not betray by so much as a glance that she beard him.
But had he seen her face be would have been startled at the look his words brought there. He would have been startled and perhaps he would have been warned. For never bad she carried so clearly the fighting look of her forefathers who went out to battle. With the little black dog at her heels she climbed a small, round-topped hill that had a single pine like a cockade growing from the top.
For ten minutes she stood there on the top and stared away to the southeast, whence she had come to keep her promise to Ramon. Never, it seemed to her, had a girl been so alone. In all the world there could not be a soul so bitter.
Liar--thief--betrayer of women--and she had left the clean, steadfast friendship of her brother Wagalexa Conka for such human vermin as Ramon Chavez! She sat down, and with her face hidden in her shawl and her slim body rocking back and forth in weird rhythm to her wailing, she crooned the mourning song of the Omaha. Death of her past, death of her place among good people, death of her friendship, death of hope--she sat there with her face turned toward the far-away, smiling mesa where she had been happy, and wailed softly to herself as the women of her tribe had wailed when sorrow came to them in the days that were gone.
All 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 billtop, 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.
