one stood upon the very edge of it, Annie-Many-Ponies stopped again and stood
looking out from under her spread palm. Presently the dust cloud moved over
the crest of a ridge, and now that it was so much closer she saw clearly the
horseman loping abreast of the dust. Annie-Many-Ponies stood for another
moment watching, with that inscrutable half smile on her lips. She untied the
cerise silk kerchief which she wore knotted loosely around her slim neck,
waited until the horseman showed plainly in the distance and then, raising her
right hand high above her head, waved the scarf three times in slow, sweeping
half circles from right to left. She waited, her eyes fixed expectantly upon
the horseman. Like a startled rabbit he darted to the left, pulled in his
horse, turned and rode for three or four jumps sharply to the right; stopped
short for ten seconds and then came straight on, spurring his horse to a
swifter pace.

Annie-Many-Ponies smiled and went down into the shallow basin and seated
herself upon the wide, adobe curbing of an old well that marked, with the
nearby ruins of an adobe house, the site, of an old habitation of tragic
history. She waited with the absolute patience of her race for the horseman
had yet a good two miles to cover. While she waited she smiled dreamily to
herself and with dainty little pats and pulls she widened the flaring red bows
on her hair and retied the cerise scarf in its picturesque, loose knot about
her throat. As a final tribute to that feminine instinct which knows no race
she drew from some cunningly devised hiding place a small, cheap "vanity box,"
and proceeded very gravely to powder her nose.



CHAPTER III. TO THE VICTORS THE SPOILS

"Hey, boys!" Luck Lindsay shouted to Applehead and one or two of the Happy