“I good girl,” Annie-Many-Ponies stated simply. “I love my husband when priest says that's right thing to do. You no gets priest, I no go with you. I think mens not much cares for marry all time. Womens not care, they go to hell. That's what priest tells. Girls got to care. That's truth.” Simple as two-plus-two was the rule of life as Annie-Many-Ponies laid it down in words before him. No fine distinctions between virtue and superwomanhood there, if you please! No slurring of wrong so that it may look like an exalted right. “Womens got to care,” said Annie-Many-Ponies with a calm certainty that would brook no argument. “Sure theeng,” Ramon agreed easily. “Yoh theenk I lov' yoh so moch if yoh not good?” “You gets priest?” Annie-Many-Ponies persisted. “Sure, I gets padre. You theenk Ramon lies for soch theeng?” “You swear, then, all same white mans in picture makes oath.” There was a new quality of inflexibility under the soft music of her voice. “You lift up hand and says, 'Help me by God I makes you for-sure my wife!'” She had pondered long upon this oath, and she spoke it now with an easy certainty that it was absolutely binding, and that no man would dare break it. “You makes that swear now,” she urged gently. “Foolish one! Yoh theenk I mus' swear I do what my hearts she's want? I tell yoh many times we go on one ranch my brother Tomas says she's be mine. We lives there in fine house weeth mooch flowers, yoh not so moch as lif' one finger for work, querida mia. Yoh theenk I not be trus', me, Ramon what loves yoh?” “No hurt for swears what I tells,” Annie-Many-Ponies stepped back from him a pace, distrust creeping into her voice. “All right.” Ramon moved nearer. “So I make oath, perhaps you make oath also! Me, I theenk yoh perhaps not like for leave Luck Leensay--I theenk perhaps yoh loves heem, yoh so all time watch for ways to please! So I swear, then yoh mus' swear also that yoh come for-sure. That square deal for both--si?” Annie-Many-Ponies hesitated, a dull ache in her breast when Ramon spoke of Luck. But if her heart was sore at thought of him, it was because he no longer looked upon her with the smile in his eyes. It was because he was not so kind; because he believed that she had secret meetings with Bill Holmes whom she hated. And in spite of the fact that Bill Holmes had left the company the other day and was going away, Wagalexa Conka still looked upon her with cold eyes and listened to the things that Applehead said against her. The heart of Wagalexa Conka, she told herself miserably, was like a stone for her. And so her own heart must be hard. She would swear to Ramon, and she would keep the oath--and Wagalexa Conka would not even miss her or be sorry that she had gone. “First you make swears like I tells you,” she said. “Then I make swears.”