At the top of the ridge she rode out to the edge and made the peace-sign
to Luck as a signal that she was ready to do his bidding. Incidentally,
while she held her hand high over her head, her eyes swept keenly the
bowlder-strewn bluff beneath her. A little to one side was a narrow
backbone of smoother soil than the rest, and here were printed deep the
marks of Jean's horse. Even there it was steep, and there was a
bank, down there by the big flat rock which Jean had mentioned.
Annie-Many-Ponies looked daringly to the left, where one would say the
bluff was impassable. There she would come down, and no other place. She
would show Ramon what she could do--he who had praised boldly another
when she was by!
“All right, Annie!” Luck called to her through his megaphone. “Go back
now and wait for whistle. Ride along the edge when you come, from bushes
to where you stand. I want silhouette, you coming. You sabe?”
Annie-Many-Ponies raised her hand even with her breast, and swept it
out and upward in the Indian sign-talk which meant “yes.” Luck's eyes
flashed appreciation of the gesture; he loved the sign-talk of the old
plains tribes.
“Be careful, Annie,” he cried impulsively. “I don't want you to be
hurt.” He dropped the megaphone as she swung her horse back from the
edge and disappeared. “I'd cut the whole scene out if I didn't know what
a rider she is,” he added to the others, more uneasy than he cared to
own. “But it would hurt her a heap more if I wouldn't let her ride where
Jean rode. She's proud; awfully proud and sensitive.”
“I'm glad you're letting her do it,” Jean said sympathetically. “She'd
hate me if you hadn't. But I'm going to watch her with my eyes shut,
just the same. It's an awfully mean place in spots.”
“She'll make it, all right,” Luck declared. But his tone was not so
confident as his words, and he was manifestly reluctant to place the
whistle to his lips. He fussed with his script, and he squinted into
the viewfinder, and he made certain for the second time just where the
side-lines came, and thrust half an inch deeper in the sandy soil the
slender stakes which would tell Annie-Many-Ponies where she must guide
the pinto when she came tearing down to foreground. But he could delay
the signal only so long, unless he cut out the scene altogether.
“Get back, over on that side, Bill,” he commanded harshly. “Leave her
plenty of room to pass that side of the camera. All ready, Pete?” Then,
as if he wanted to have it over with as soon as possible, he whistled
once, waited while he might have counted twenty, perhaps, and sent
shrilling through the sunshine the signal that would bring her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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