Chapter IV. Love Words for Annie

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,