Page:B M Bower - Heritage of the Sioux.djvu/92

THE HERITAGE OF THE SIOUX talking with Ramon. Never as he talked with the boys of the Flying U—his Happy Family, he called them.

She said nothing. She dressed for the part she was to play. She twined flowers in her hair and smoothed out the red bows and laid them carefully away—since Wagalexa Conka did not wish her to wear ribbon bows in this picture. She murmured caresses to Shunka Chistala, the little black dog that was always at her heels. She rode with the company to the rocky gorge which was "location" for today. When Wagalexa Conka called to her she went and climbed upon a high rock and stood just where he told her to stand, and looked just as he told her to look, and stole away through the rocks and out of the scene exactly as he wished her to do.

But when Wagalexa Conka—sorry for the harshness he had felt it his duty to show that morning—smiled and told her she had done fine, and that he was pleased with her, Annie-Many-Ponies did not smile back with that slow, sweet, heart-twisting smile which was at once her sharpest weapon and her most endearing trait. 80