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
behind 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, be 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 boisterous as the night deepened, whooped over her bead 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.
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