In Tijeras Arroyo the moon made black shadows where stood the tiny knolls here and there, marking frequently the windings of dry washes where bushes grew in ragged patches and where tall weeds of mid-May tangled in the wind. The roundup tents of the Flying U Feature Film Company stood white as new snow in the moonlight, though daylight showed them an odd, light-blue tint for photographic purposes. On a farther slope cunningly placed by the scenic artist to catch the full sunlight of midday, the camp of the Chavez brothers gleamed softly in the magic light.
So far had spring roundup progressed that Luck was holding the camp in Tijeras Arroyo for picture-making only. Applehead's calves were branded, to the youngest pair of knock-kneed twins which Happy Jack found curled up together cunningly hidden in a thicket. They had been honored with a "close-up" scene, those two spotted calves, and were destined to further honors which they did not suspect and could not appreciate.
They slept now, as slept the two camps upon the two slopes that lay moon-bathed at midnight. Back where the moon was making the barren mountains a wonderland of deep purple and black and silvery gray and brown, a coyote yapped a falsetto message and was answered by one nearer at hand--his mate, it might be. In a bush under the bank that made of it a black blot in the unearthly whiteness of the sand, a little bird fluttered un,easily and sent a small, inquiring chirp into the stillness. From somewhere farther up the arroyo drifted a faint, aromatic odor of cigarette smoke.
Had you been there by the bush you could not have told when Annie-Many-Ponies passed by; you would not have seen her--certainly you could not have heard the soft tread of her slim, moccasined feet. Yet she passed the bush and the bank and went away up the arroyo, silent as the shadows themselves, swift as the coyote that trotted over a nearby ridge to meet her mate nearer the mountains.
Sol following much the same instinct in much the same way, Annie-Many-Ponies stole out to meet the man her heart timidly yearned for a possible mate.
She reached the rock-ledge where the smoke odor was strongest, and she stopped. She saw Ramon Chavez, younger of the Chavez brothers who were ten-mile-off neighbors of Applehead, and who owned many cattle and much land by right of an old Spanish grant. He was standing in the shadow of the ledge, leaning against it as they of sun-saturated New Mexico always lean against anything perpendicular and solid near which they happen to stand. He was watching the white-lighted arroyo while he smoked, waiting for her, unconscious of her near presence.
Annie-Many-Ponies stood almost within reach of him, but she did not make her presence known. With the infinite wariness of her race she waited to see what he would do; to read, if she might, what were his thoughts--his attitude toward her in his unguarded moments. That little, inscrutable smile which so exasperated Applehead was on her lips while she watched him.
Ramon finished that cigarette, threw away the stab and rolled and lighted another. Still Annie-Many-Ponies gave no little sign of her presence. He watched the arroyo, and once he leaned to one side and stared back at his own quiet camp on the slope that had the biggest and the wildest mountain of that locality for its background. He settled himself anew with his other shoulder against the rock, and muttered something in Spanish--that strange, musical talk which Annie-Many-Ponies could not understand. And still she watched him, and exulted in his impatience for her coming, and wondered if it would always be lovelight which she would see in his eyes.
He was not of her race, though in her pride she thought him favored when she named him akin to the Sioux. He was not of her race, but he was tall and he was straight, he was dark as she, he was strong and brave and he bad many cattle and much broad acreage. Annie-Many-Ponies smiled upon him in the dark and was glad that she, the daughter of a chief of the Sioux, had been found good in his sight.
Five minutes, ten minutes. The coyote, yap-yap-yapping in the broken land beyond them, found his mate and was silent. Ramon Chavez, waiting in the shadow of the ledge, muttered a Mexican oath and stepped out into the moonlight and stood there, tempted to return to his camp--for he, also, had pride that would not bear much bruising.
Annie-Many-Ponies waited. When he muttered again and threw his cigarette from him as though it had been something venomous; when he turned his face toward his own tents and took a step forward, she laughed softly, a mere whisper of amusement that might have been a sleepy breeze stirring the bushes somewhere near. Ramon started and turned his face her way; in the moonlight his eyes shone with a certain love-hunger which Annie-Many-Ponies exulted to see--because she did not understand.
"You not let moon look on you," she chided in an undertone, her sentences clipped of superfluous words as is the Indian way, her voice that pure, throaty melody that is a gift which nature gives lavishly to the women of savage people. "Moon see, men see."Ramon swung back into the shadow, reached out his two arms to fold her close and got nothing more substantial than another whispery laugh.
"Where are yoh,sweetheart?" He peered into the shadow where she had been, and saw the place empty. He laughed, chagrined by her elusiveness, yet hungering for her the more.
"You not touch," she warned. "Till priest say marriage prayers, no man touch."He called her a devil in Spanish, and she thought it a love-word and laughed and came nearer. He did not attempt to touch her, and so, reassured, she stood close so that he could see the pure, Indian profile of her face when she raised it to the sky in a mute invocation, it might be, of her gods.
"When yoh come?" he asked swiftly, his race betrayed in tone and accent. "Ilook and look--I no see yoh."
