Her face
was a smooth, brown mask--beautiful to look upon but as expressionless as the
dead. She did not protest her innocence, she did not explain that she hated
and distrusted Bill Holmes and that she had, months ago, repelled his
surreptitious advances. Luck would have believed, for he had known
Annie-Many-Ponies since she was a barefooted papoose, and he had never known
her to tell him an untruth.
"You go now and get ready for work. Wear the moccasins with the birds on the
toes." He pointed to them and turned away.
Annie-Many-Ponies also turned and went her way and said nothing. What, indeed,
could she say? She did not doubt that Luck had seen her the night before, and
had seen also Bill Holmes when he left camp or returned--perhaps both. She
could not tell him that Bill Holmes had gone out to meet Ramon, for that, she
felt instinctively, was a secret which Ramon trusted her not to betray. She
could not tell Wagalexa Conka, either, that she met Ramon often when the camp
was asleep. He would think that as bad as meeting Bill Holmes. She knew that
he did not like Ramon, but merely used him and his men and horses and cattle
for a price, to better his pictures.
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