“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. Ramon”
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.”