Page:B M Bower - Heritage of the Sioux.djvu/251

ANNIE-MANY-PONIES WAITS he would not come at all. But immediately she remembered the love words he had taught her, and smiled her inscrutable little smile that had now a tinge of sadness. Perhaps, she thought wishfully, Ramon had come on the train from Albuquerque. Perhaps he had a horse in the town, and would ride out and meet her here where he had told her to wait.

The train shrieked and painted swiftly hill and embankment and little adobe huts and a corral full of huddled sheep, and went churning away to the northeast. Annie-Many-Ponies followed its course absently with her eyes until the last winking light from its windows and the last wisp of smoke was hidden behid hills and trees. The little black dog finished the rabbit, nosed its tracks back to where it had hopped out of the brush, and came back and curled up at the feet of his mistress, licking his lips and again his travel-sore paws. In a moment, feeling in his dumb way her loneliness, perhaps, he reached up and laid his pink tongue caressingly upon her brown hand.

Dark came softly and with it a noisy wind that whistled and murmured and at last, growing more 239