Page:B M Bower - Heritage of the Sioux.djvu/133

THE SONG OF THE OMAHA their purses safely inside their shirtwaists and saddled and rode away to town. And the last they heard as they put the ranch behind them was the wailing chant of Annie-Many-Ponies and the prodigious, long-drawn howling of the little black dog.

Annie-Many-Ponies, hearing the beat of hoofs, ceased her chanting and looked out in time to see the girls just disappearing over the low brow of the hill. She stood for a moment and stared after them with frowning brows. Rosemary she did not like and never would like, after their hidden feud of months over such small matters as the cat and the dog, and unswept floors, and the like. A mountain of unwashed dishes stood between these two, as it were, and forbade anything like friendship.

But the parting that was at hand had brushed aside her jealousy of Jean as leading woman. Intuitively she knew that with any encouragement Jean would have been her friend. Oddly, she remembered now that Jean had been the first to ask for her when she came to the ranch. So, although Jean would never know, Annie-Many-Ponies raised 121