“Me? I don' snap my teeth, sweetheart.” It cost Ramon some effort to keep his voice softened to the love key.
“Why you not ask Wagalexa Conka what he do?”
“I don' care, that's why I don' ask. Me, it's' no matter.”
He hesitated a moment, evidently weighing a matter of more importance to him than he would have Annie-Many-Ponies suspect. “Sweetheart, yoh do one thing for Ramon?” His voice might almost be called wheedling. “Me, I'm awful busy tomorrow. I got long ride away off—to my rancho. I got to see my brother Tomas. I be back here not before night. Yoh tell Bill Holmes he come here by this rock—yoh say midnight that's good time—I sure be here that time. Yoh say I got something I wan' tell him. Yoh do that for Ramon, sweetheart?”
He waited, trying to hide the fact that 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.