Page:B M Bower - Heritage of the Sioux.djvu/252

THE HERITAGE OF THE SIOUX boisterous as the night deepened, whooped over her head and tossed wildly the branches of a clump of trees that grew near. Annie-Many-Ponies listened to the wind and thought it a brother, perhaps, of the night wind that came to the Dakota prairies and caroused there until dawn bade it be still. Too red the blood of her people ran in her veins for her to be afraid of the night, even though she peopled it with dim shapes of her fancy.

After a long while the wind grew chill. Annie-Many-Ponies shivered, and then rose and went to the horse and, reaching into the bundle which was still bound to the saddle, she worked a plaid shawl loose from the other things and pulled it out and wrapped it close around her and pulled it over her head like a cowl. Then she went back and sat down against the bowlder, waiting, with the sublime patience of her kind, for Ramon.

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, 240