“Bud's got a bullet in his arm,” Luck said, “but the bone wasn't hit, so he'll make out, and one of the pack-horses was shot in the ear. We got off mighty lucky, and I'm certainly glad Lite didn't get careless. Cost me about fifty dollars to square us as it is. You stay where you are, Applehead, till I get rid of the Indians. The old fellow acts like he feels he ought to stick along till we're outa here. He's kind of taken a notion to me because I can talk sign, and he seems to want to make sure we don't mix it again with the tribe. Some of them are kinda peeved, all right. You've got no quarrel with this old fellow, have you? He's a big-league medicine man in the tribe, and his Spanish name is Mariano Pablo Montoya. Know him?” “No I don't, 'n' I don't keer to neither,” Applehead retorted crossly. “Shoo 'em off, Luck, so's we kin eat. My belly's shore a floppin' agin m' backbone, 'n' I'm tellin' yuh right!” CHAPTER XX. LUIS ROJAS TALKS Three days of hiding by day in sequestered little groves or deep, hidden canons, with only Luis Rojas to bear her company--Luis Rojas whom she did not trust and therefore watched always from under her long straight lashes, with oblique glances when she seemed to be gazing straight before her; three nights of tramping through rough places where often the horses must pause and feel carefully for space to set their feet. Roads there were, but Luis avoided roads as though they carried the plague. When he must cross one he invariably turned back and brushed out their footprints--until he discovered that Annie-Many-Ponies was much cleverer at this than he was; often he smoked a cigarette while Annie covered their trail. Three days and three nights, and Ramon was not there where they stopped for the third day. “We go slow,” Luis explained nervously because of the look in the black, unreadable eyes of this straight, slim Indian girl who was so beautiful--and so silent. “They go muy fas', Ramon an' Beel. Poco tiempo--sure, we fin' dem little soon.” Annie-Many-Ponies did not betray by so much as a quiver of an eyelash that Luis had mentioned Bill unwittingly. But she hid the name away in her memory, and all that day she sat and pondered over the meager facts that had come her way, and with the needle of her suspicion she wove them together patiently until the pattern was almost complete.