She rode slowly past luck, got her few final instructions and a warning to be careful and to take no chances of an accident--which brought that inscrutable smile to her face; for Wagalexa Conka knew, and she knew also, that in the mere act of riding down that slope faster than a walk she was taking a chance of an accident. It was that risk that lightened her heart which had been so heavy all day. The greater the risk, the more eager was she to take it. She would show Ramon that she, too, could ride.
"Oh, do be careful, Annie!" Jean called anxiously when she was riding into the mouth of the draw. "Turn to the right, when you come to that big flat rock, and don't come down where I did. It's too steep. Really," she drawled to Rosemary and Lite, "my heart was in my mouth when I came straight down by that rock. It's a lot steeper than it looks from here.""She won't go round it," Rosemary predicted pessimistically. "She's in one of her contrary moods today. She'll come down the worst way she can find just to scare the life out of us."Up the steep draw that led to the top, Annie-Many-Ponies rode exultantly. She would show Ramon that she could ride wherever the white girl dared ride. She would shame Wagalexa Conka, too, for his injustice to her. She would put the too, for big punch in that scene or--she would ride no more, unless it were upon a white cloud, drifting across the moon at night and looking, down at this world and upon Ramon.
At the top of the ridge she rode out to the edge and made the peace-sign to Luck as a signal that she was ready to do his bidding. Incidentally, while she held her hand high over her head, her eyes swept keenly the bowlder-strewn bluff beneath her. A little to one side was a narrow backbone of smoother soil than the rest, and here were printed deep the marks of Jean's horse. Even there it was steep, and there was a bank, down there by the big flat rock which Jean had mentioned. Annie-Many-Ponies looked daringly to the left, where one would say the bluff was impassable. There she would come down, and no other place. She would show Ramon what she could do--he who had praised boldly another when she was by!
"All right, Annie!" Luck called to her through his megaphone. "Go back now and wait for whistle. Ride along the edge when you come, from bushes to where you stand. I want silhouette, you coming. You sabe?"Annie-Many-Ponies raised her hand even with her breast, and swept it out and upward in the Indian sign-talk which meant "yes." Luck's eyes flashed appreciation of the gesture; he loved the sign-talk of the old plains tribes.
"Be careful, Annie," he cried impulsively. "I don't want you to be hurt." He dropped the megaphone as she swung her horse back from the edge and disappeared. "I'd cut the whole scene out if I didn't know what a rider she is," he added to the others, more uneasy than he cared to own. "But it would hurt her a heap more if I wouldn't let her ride where Jean rode. She's proud;awfully proud and sensitive."
"I'm glad you're letting her do it," Jean said sympathetically. "She'd hate me if you hadn't. But I'm going to watch her with my eyes shut, just the same.
It's an awfully mean place in spots."
"She'll make it, all right," Luck declared. But his tone was not so confident as his words, and he was manifestly reluctant to place the whistle to his lips. He fussed with his script, and he squinted into the viewfinder, and he made certain for the second time just where the side-lines came, and thrust half an inch deeper in the sandy soil the slender stakes which would tell Annie-Many-Ponies where she must guide the pinto when she came tearing down to foreground. But he could delay the signal only so long, unless he cut out the scene altogether.
"Get back, over on that side, Bill," he commanded harshly. "Leave her plenty of room to pass that side of the camera. All ready, Pete?" Then, as if he wanted to have it over with as soon as possible, he whistled once, waited while he might have counted twenty, perhaps, and sent shrilling through the sunshine the signal that would bring her.
