CHAPTER XVI
ANNIE-MANY-PONIES WAITS
IF the magic light of many unnamable soft shades which the sun leaves in New Mexico as a love token for his dark mistress night, Annie-Many-Ponies sat with her back against a high, flat rock at the place where Ramon had said she must wait for him, and stared somber-eyed at what she could see of the new land that had held her future behind the Sandias; waiting for Ramon; and she wondered if Wagalexa Conka had come home from his picture-making in Bear Cañon and was angry because she had gone; and shrank from the thought, and tried to picture what life with Ramon would be like, and whether his love would last beyond the wide ring of shiny gold that was to make her a wife.
At her feet the little black dog lay licking his sore paws that had padded patiently after her all day. Beside the rock the black horse stood nibbling at some weeds awkwardly, because of the Spanish bit in his mouth. The horse was hungry, and the little black dog was hungry; Annie-Many-Ponies was hungry also, but she did not feel her hunger so much, because of the heaviness that was in her heart.
When Ramon came he would bring food, or he would tell her where she might buy. The horse, too, would be fed—when Ramon came. And he would take her to the priest who was his friend, and together they would kneel before the priest. But first, if Ramon would wait, she wanted to confess her sins, so that she need not go into the new life bearing the sins of the old. The priest could pray away the ache that was in her heart; and then, with her heart light as air, she would be married with Ramon. It was long since she had confessed—not since the priest came to the agency when she was there, before she ran away to work in pictures for Wagalexa Conka.
Before her the glow deepened and darkened. A rabbit hopped out of a thick clump of stunted bushes, sniffed the air that blew the wrong way to warn him, and began feeding. Shunka Chistala gathered his soft paws under him, scratched softly for a firm foothold in the ground, and when the rabbit, his back turned and the evening wind blowing full in his face, fed unsuspectingly upon some young bark that he liked, the little black dog launched himself suddenly across the space that divided them. There was a squeak and a thin, whimpering crying—and the little black dog, at least, was sure of his supper.
Annie-Many-Ponies, roused from her brooding, shivered a little when the rabbit cried. She started forward to save it—she who had taught the little black dog to hunt gophers and prairie dogs!—and when she was too late she scolded the dog in the language of the Sioux. She tore the rabbit away from him while he eyed her reproachfully; but when she saw that it was quite dead she flung the warm body back to him and went and sat down again with her back to the rock.
A train whistled for the little station of Bernalillo, and soon she saw its headlight paint the squat houses that had before been hidden behind the creeping dusk. Ramon was late in coming—for one breath she caught herself hoping that he would not come at all. But immediately she remembered the love words he had taught her, and smiled her inscrutable little smile that had now a tinge of sadness. Perhaps, she thought wishfully, Ramon had come on the train from Albuquerque. Perhaps he had a horse in the town, and would ride out and meet her here where he had told her to wait.
The train shrieked and painted swiftly hill and embankment and little adobe huts and a corral full of huddled sheep, and went churning away to the northeast. Annie-Many-Ponies followed its course absently with her eyes until the last winking light from its windows and the last wisp of smoke was hidden behid hills and trees. The little black dog finished the rabbit, nosed its tracks back to where it had hopped out of the brush, and came back and curled up at the feet of his mistress, licking his lips and again his travel-sore paws. In a moment, feeling in his dumb way her loneliness, perhaps, he reached up and laid his pink tongue caressingly upon her brown hand.
Dark came softly and with it a noisy wind that whistled and murmured and at last, growing more boisterous as the night deepened, whooped over her head and tossed wildly the branches of a clump of trees that grew near. Annie-Many-Ponies listened to the wind and thought it a brother, perhaps, of the night wind that came to the Dakota prairies and caroused there until dawn bade it be still. Too red the blood of her people ran in her veins for her to be afraid of the night, even though she peopled it with dim shapes of her fancy.
After a long while the wind grew chill. Annie-Many-Ponies shivered, and then rose and went to the horse and, reaching into the bundle which was still bound to the saddle, she worked a plaid shawl loose from the other things and pulled it out and wrapped it close around her and pulled it over her head like a cowl. Then she went back and sat down against the bowlder, waiting, with the sublime patience of her kind, for Ramon.
Until the wind hushed, listening for the dawn, she sat there and waited. At her feet the little black dog slept with his nose folded between his front paws over which he whimpered sometimes in his dreams. At every little sound all through the night Annie-Many-Ponies had listened, thinking that at last here came Ramon to take her to the priest, but for the first time since she had stolen out on the mesa to meet him, Ramon did not keep the tryst—and this was to be their marriage meeting! Annie-Many-Ponies grew very still and voiceless in her heart, as if her very soul waited. She did not even speculate upon what the future would he like if Ramon never came. She was waiting.
Then, just before the sky lightened, someone stepped cautiously along a little path that led through rocks and bushes back into the hills. Annie-Many Ponies turned her face that way and listened. But the steps were not the steps of Ramon; Annie-Many-Ponies had too much of the Indian keenness to be fooled by the hasty footsteps of this man. And since it was not Ramon her slim fingers closed upon the keen-edged knife she carried always in its sinew-sewed buckskin sheath near her heart.
The little black dog lifted his head suddenly and growled, and the footsteps came to a sudden stop quite near the rock.
"It is you?" asked a cautious voice with the unmistakable Mexican tone and soft, slurring accent. "Speak me what yoh name."
"Ramon comes?" Annie asked him quietly, and the footsteps came swiftly nearer until his form was silhouetted by the rock.
"Sh-sh—yoh not spik dat name," he whispered. "Luis Rojas me. I come for breeng yoh. No can come, yoh man. No spik name—som'bodys maybe hears."
Annie-Many-Ponies rose and stood peering at him through the dark. "What's wrong?" she asked abruptly, borrowing the curt phrase from Luck Lindsay. "Why I not speak name? Why—some body—?" she laid ironical stress upon the word—"not come? What business you got, Luis Rojas?"
"No—don' spik names, me!" The figure was seen to throw out an imploring hand. "Moch troubles, yoh bet! Yoh come now—somebodys she wait in dam-hurry!"
Annie-Many-Ponies, with her fingers still closed upon the bone handle of her sharp-edged knife, thought swiftly. Wariness had been born into her blood—therefore she could understand and meet halfway the wariness of another. Perhaps Wagalexa Conka had suspected that she was going with Ramon; Wagalexa Conka was very keen, and his anger blazed hot as pitch-pine flame. Perhaps Ramon feared Wagalexa Conka—as she, too, feared him. She was not afraid—she would go to Ramon.
She stepped away from the rock and took the black horse by its dropped bridle-reins and followed Luis Rojas up the dim path that wound through trees and rocks until it dropped into a little ravine that was chocked with brush, so that Annie-Many-Ponies had to put the stiff branches aside with her hand lest they scratch her face as she passed.
Luis went swiftly along the path, as though his haste was great; but he went stealthily as well, and she knew that he had some unknown cause for secrecy. She wondered a little at this. Had Wagalexa Conka discovered where she and Ramon were to meet? But how could he discover that which had been spoken but once, and then in the quiet loneliness of that place far back on the mesa? Wagalexa Conka had not been within three miles of that place, as Annie-Many-Ponies knew well. How then did he know? For he must have followed, since Ramon dared not come to the place he had named for their meeting.
Dawn came while they were still following the little, brush-choked ravine with its faint pathway up the middle of it, made by cattle or sheep or goats, perhaps all three. Luis hurried along, stopping now and then and holding up a hand for silence so that he might listen. Fast as he went, Annie-Many-Ponies kept within two long steps of his heels, her plaid shawl drawn smoothly over her black head and folded together under her chin. Her mouth was set in a straight line, and her chin had the square firmness of the Indian. Luis, looking back at her curiously, could not even guess at her thoughts, but he thought her too calm and cold for his effervescent nature—though he would have liked to tell her that she was beautiful. He did not, because he was afraid of Ramon.
"Poco tiempo, come to his camp, Ramon," he said when the sun was peering over the high shoulder of a ridge; and he spoke in a hushed tone, as if he feared that someone might overhear him.
"You 'fraid Wagalexa Conka, he come?" Annie-Many-Ponies asked abruptly, looking at him full.
Luis did not understand her, so he lifted his shoulders in the Mexican gesture which may mean much or nothing. "Quien sabe?" he muttered vaguely and went on. Annie-Many-Ponies did not know what he meant, but she guessed that he did not want to be questioned upon the subject; so she readjusted the shawl that had slipped from her head and went on silently, two long steps behind him.
In a little he turned from the ravine, which was becoming more open and not quite so deep. They scrambled over boulders which the horse must negotiate carefully to avoid a broken leg, and then they were in another little ravine, walled round with rocks and high, brushy slopes. Luis went a little way, stopped beside a huge, jutting boulder and gave a little exclamation of dismay.
"No more here, Ramon," he said, staring down at the faintly smoking embers of a little fire. "She's go som' place, I don't know, me."
The slim right hand of Annie-Many-Ponies went instinctively to her bosom and to what lay hidden there. But she waited, looking from the little campfire that was now almost dead, to Luis whom she suspected of treachery. Luis glanced up at her apologetically, caught something of menace in that unwinking, glittering stare, and began hastily searching here and there for some sign that would enlighten him further.
"She's here when I go, Ramon," he explained deprecatingly. "I don' un'stan', me. She's tell me go breeng yoh thees place. She's say I mus' huree w'ile dark she's las'. I'm sure s'prised, me!" Luis was a slender young man with a thin, patrician face that had certain picture values for Luck, but which greatly belied his lawless nature. Until he stood by the rock where she had waited for Ramon, Annie-Many-Ponies had never spoken to him. She did not know him, therefore she did not trust him—and she looked her distrust.
Luis turned from her after another hasty glance, and began searching for some sign of Ramon. Presently, in a tiny cleft near the top of the boulder, his black eyes spied a folded paper—two folded papers, as he discovered when he reached up eagerly and pulled them out.
"She's write letter, Ramon," he cried with a certain furtive excitement. "Thees for yoh."And he smiled while he gave her a folded note with "Ana" scrawled hastily across the face of it.
Annie-Many-Ponies extended her left hand for it, and backed the few steps away from him which would insure her safety against a sudden attack, before she opened the paper and read:
"Querida mia, you go with Luis. Hes all rite you trus him. He bring you where i am. i lov you.
She read it twice and placed the note in her bosom—next the knife—and looked at Luis, the glitter gone from her eyes. She smiled a little. "I awful hongry," she said in her soft voice, and it was the second sentence she had spoken since they left the rock where she had waited.
Luis smiled back, relief showing in the uplift of his lips and the lightening of his eyes. "She's cache grob, Ramon," he said. "She's go som' place and we go also. She's wait for us. Dam-long way—tree days, I theenk me."
"You find that grub," said Annie-Many-Ponies, letting her hand drop away from the knife. "I awful hongry. We eat, then we go."
"No—no go till dark comes! We walk in night—so somebody don' see!"
Annie-Many-Ponies looked at him sharply, saw that he was very much in earnest, and turned away to gather some dry twigs for the fire. Up the cañon a horse whinnied inquiringly, and Luis, hastening furtively that way, found the horse he had ridden into this place with Ramon. With the problem of finding provender for the two animals, he had enough to occupy him until Annie-Many-Ponies, from the coarse food he brought her, cooked a crude breakfast.
Truly, this was not what she had dreamed the morning would be like—she who had been worried over the question of whether Ramon would let her confess to the priest before they were married! Here was no priest and no Ramon, even; but a keen-eyed young Mexican whom she scarcely knew at all; and a mysterious hiding-out in closed-in cañons until dark before they might follow Ramon who loved her. Annie-Many-Ponies did not understand why all this stealthiness should be necessary, for she knew that proof of her honorable marriage would end Luck's pursuit—supposing he did pursue—even though his anger might live always for her. She did not understand; and when an Indian confronts a situation which puzzles him, you may be very sure that same Indian is going to be very, very cautious. Annie-Many-Ponies was Indian to the middle of her bones.