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."

"No--no go till dark comes! We walk in night--so somebody don' see!"

Annie-Many-Ponies looked at him sharply, saw that he was very much in
earnest, and turned away to gather some dry twigs for the fire. Up the
canon a horse whinnied inquiringly, and Luis, hastening furtively that
way, found the horse he had ridden into this place with Ramon. With
the problem of finding provender for the two animals, he had enough to
occupy him until Annie-Many-Ponies, from the coarse food he brought her,
cooked a crude breakfast.

Truly, this was not what she had dreamed the morning would be like--she
who had been worried over the question of whether Ramon would let her
confess to the priest before they were married! Here was no priest and
no Ramon,