Chapter VI. "I Go Where Wagalexa Conka Say"

That afternoon Ramon joined them, suave as ever and seeming very much at peace with the world and his fellow-beings. He watched the new leading woman make a perilous ride down a steep, rocky point and dash up to camera and on past it where she set her horse back upon, its haunches with a fine disregard for her bones and a still finer instinct for putting just the right dash of the spectacular into her work without overdoing it.

"That senora, she's all right, you bet!" he praised the feat to those who stood near him; "me, I not be stuck on ron my caballo down that place. You bet she's fine rider. My sombrero, he's come off to that lady!"

Jean, hearing, glanced at him with that little quirk of the lips which was the beginning of a smile, and rode off to join her father and Lite Avery. "He made that sound terribly sincere, didn't he?" she commented. "It takes a Mexican to lift flattery up among the fine arts." Then she thought no more about it.

Annie-Many-Ponies was sitting apart, on a rock where her gay blanket made a picturesque splotch of color against the gray barrenness of the hill behind her. She, too, heard what Ramon said, and she, too, thought that he had made the praise sound terribly sincere. He had not spoken to her at all after the first careless nod of recognition when he rode up. And although her reason had approved of his caution, her sore heart ached for a little kindness from him. She turned her eyes toward him now with a certain wistfulness; but though Ramon chanced to be looking toward her she got no answering light in his eyes, no careful little signal that his heart was yearning for her. He seemed remote, as indifferent to her as were any of the others dulled by accustomedness to her constant presence among them. A premonitory chill, as from some great sorrow yet before her in the future, shook the heart of Annie- Many-Ponies.

"Me, I fine out how moch more yoh want me campa here for pictures," Ramon was saying now to Luck who was standing by Pete Lowry, scribbling something on his script. "My brother Tomas, he liking for us at ranch now, s'pose yoh finish poco tiempo."

Luck wrote another line before he gave any sign that he heard. Annie-Many-Ponies, watching from under her drooping lids, saw that Bill Holmes had edged closer to Ramon, while he made pretense of being much occupied with his own affairs.

"I don't need your camp at all after today." Luck shoved the script into his coat pocket and looked at his watch.

"This afternoon when the sun is just right I want to get one or two cut-back scenes and a dissolve out. After that you can break camp any time. But I want you, Ramon- -you and Estancio Lopez and Luis Rojas. I'll need you for two or three days in town--want you to play the heavy in a bank-robbery and street fight. The makeup is the same as when you worked up there in