Until the wind hushed, listening for the dawn, she sat there and waited. At her feet the little black dog slept with his nose folded between his front paws over which he whimpered sometimes in his dreams. At every little sound all through--the night Annie-Many-Ponies had listened, thinking that at last here came Ramon to take her to the priest, but for the first time since she had stolen out on the mesa to meet him, Ramon did not keep the tryst--and this was to be their marriage meeting! Annie-Many-Ponies grew very still and voiceless in her heart, as if her very soul waited. She did not even speculate upon what the future would be like if Ramon never came. She was waiting. Then, just before the sky lightened, someone stepped cautiously along a little path that led through rocks and bushes back into the hills. Annie-Many Ponies turned her face that way and listened. But the steps were not the steps of Ramon; Annie-Many-Ponies had too much of the Indian keenness to be fooled by the hasty footsteps of this man. And since it was not Ramon--her slim fingers closed upon the keen-edged knife she carried always in its sinew-sewed buckskin sheath near her heart. The little black dog lifted his head suddenly and growled, and the footsteps came to a sudden stop quite near the rock. “It is you?” asked a cautious voice with the unmistakable Mexican tone and soft, slurring accent, “speak me what yoh name.” “Ramon comes?” Annie asked him quietly, and the footsteps came swiftly nearer until his form was silhouetted by the rock. “Sh-sh--yoh not spik dat name,” he whispered. “Luis Rojas me. I come for breeng yoh. No can come, yoh man. No spik name--som'bodys maybe hears.” Annie-Many-Ponies rose and stood peering at him through the dark. “What's wrong?” she asked abruptly, borrowing the curt phrase from Luck Lindsay. “Why I not speak name? Why--some body--?” she laid ironical stress upon the word--“not come? What business you got, Luis Rojas?” “No--don' spik names, me!” The figure was seen to throw out an imploring hand. “Moch troubles, yoh bet! Yoh come now--somebodys she wait in dam-hurry!” Annie-Many-Ponies, with her fingers still closed upon the bone handle of her sharp-edged knife, thought swiftly. Wariness had been born into her blood--therefore she could understand and meet halfway the wariness of another. Perhaps Wagalexa Conka had suspected that she was going with Ramon; Wagalexa Conka was very keen, and his anger blazed hot as pitch-pine flame. Perhaps Ramon feared Wagalexa Conka--as she, too, feared him. She was not afraid--she would go to Ramon. She stepped away from the rock and took the black horse by its dropped bridle-reins and followed Luis Rojas up the dim path that wound through trees and rocks until it dropped into a little ravine that was chocked with brush, so that Annie-Many-Ponies had to put the stiff branches aside with her hand lest they scratch her face as she passed.