The Happy Family

times I show yoh what is like the Spanish lov'. Like stars, like fire-sometimes I seeng the jota for you that tell how moch I lov' yoh. 'Te quiero, Baturra, te qu

oofness which so fired Ramon's desire for her. She lifted a hand to check him

soft voice. "Why you not talk of priest to make us marry? You

you many ways to say wife!" He laughed under his breath. "How I calls yoh wife when I not gets one k

e us marry?" Annie-Many-Ponies edged closer

r speak lies, me? Sure, I gets padre, foolish one! Me, I not li

are, they go to hell. That's what priest tells. Girls got to care. That's truth." Simple as two-plus-two was the rule of life as Annie-Many-Ponies laid it down in words before him. No fine distinctions betwee

easily. "Yoh theenk I lov' y

t?" Annie-Many-

You theenk Ramon li

. "You lift up hand and says, 'Help me by God I makes you for-sure my wife!'" She had pondered long upon this oath, and she spoke it now

e ranch my brother Tomas says she's be mine. We lives there in fine house weeth mooch flowers, yoh not

ie-Many-Ponies stepped back from him a

ps not like for leave Luck Leensay-I theenk perhaps yoh loves heem, yoh so all time watch for ways t

t she had secret meetings with Bill Holmes whom she hated. And in spite of the fact that Bill Holmes had left the company the other day and was going away, Wagalexa Conka still looked upon her with cold eyes and listened to the things that Applehead said a

ike I tells you," she sa

good enough for yoh, perhaps? Queeck yoh make oath yoh leave these place Manana-tomorra. Yoh go by ol' rancho where we talk so many time. I leav

r proud place beside Ramon who had much land and many cattle and who l

and brushed her glossy hair until it shone in the sunlight like the hair of a high-caste Chinese woman. She tied upon it the new bows of red ribbon which she had bought in the secret hope that they would be a part of her wedding finery. She put on her Indian gala dress of beaded buckskin wi

e that day. But Luck unconsciously opened wide the trail for her. He announced at breakfast that they would work up in Bear Canon that day, and that he would

and packed all of her clothes into a bundle which she wrapped in her plaid shawl, and was proud because the bundle was so big, and because she had much fine beadwo

h her little, inscrutable smile. She was engaged to be married, now, just like white girls; and t

r the little black dog and stood before her tent to watch the Happy Family mount and ride away with Wagalexa Conka in their midst and with the mountain wagon rattling after them loaded with "props" and th

saddened, because this was the last time she would see Wagalexa Conka riding away to make pictures-the last time she would see him

efore, except once or twice in scenes that he directed. But after all he did not go. They were late in getting started that morning, which irked his energetic soul; and women's whims

mournful, might mean much or they might mean merely a fit of the blues. The others rode on talking and laughing together, and Luck rode with them; but the chant of the Omaha

til the last bobbing hatcrown had gone down out of sight in the long, low swa

ther hear a band of gray wolves tune up when you're caught out in the breaks and have to r

they could not hear so plainly. "She's getting more Injuny every day of her lif

h! Hiu-hiu-hi-i-a

her. "I wonder if she'd be mad," she drawled, "if I went out and told her to shut up. It sounds as

winter. And there's a kind of a teetery dance that goes with it. It's supposed to be a mourning song, as Luck explains it. But don't

ir to have around the house. And I know one thing-if they keep that up much lo

death, Jean, if we l

d to write poetry today-I thought of an awfully striking

very femininely afraid of guns. "She'd-why, there's no t

few bird-shot, too. She's got nothing

shes. To her it was as though death sat beside her; the death of Wagalexa Conka's friendship for her. She forgot his harshness because he thought her disobedient and wicked. She forgot that she loved Ramon Chavez,

ays when warriors returned to the villages and told of their dead. So had her mother wailed when the Great Spirit took away her first man-child. So had the squaws wailed in the

in after the mail, Rosemary. Maybe the squaw in her will be howled out by the time we get back." And she added with a venomous sincerity that woul

the dog for about eight months and I'm getting kind of hardened to it. But I never did hear t

ck of understanding. Which, if you will stop to think, is true of half the unsympathetic attitudes in the world. Because they did not understand, the two dressed hastily and tucked their purses safely inside thei

d for a moment and stared after them with frowning brows. Rosemary she did not like and never would like, after their hidden feud of months over such small matter

ement Jean would have been her friend. Oddly, she remembered now that Jean had been the first to ask for her when she came to the ran

wn across her chest and shoulders. So had the women of her tribe borne burdens since the land was young; but none had ever borne a heavier load than did Annie-Many-Ponies when she went soft footed across the open space

that was in her chest. It seemed to her that some bad spirit was driving her forth an exile. She could not understand, last night she had been glad at the thou

e sat down beside the well and stared somberly away to the mountains, and wondered why she was go sad when she should be happy. She twisted the ring with the big red stone round and round her finger, but she got no pleasure from the crimson glow of it. The stone looked to her n

of which she was beginning to feel afraid. There would be no more riding up to camera, laughing or sighing or frowning as Wagalexa Conka commanded her to do. There would be no more shy greetings of the slim you

mountains hid the new life from her. And she must ride around that last, sharp-pointed one, and come into the new life that was on the other side-and

happily to his voice that was so soft and so steeped in love, Annie-Many-Ponies stood up with her face to the mountains and sorrow in her eyes, and chanted again the wailing, O

saddle-string and with the red sash that had bound it across her chest and shoulders. Then, as her great grandmother had plodded across the bleak plains of the Dakotas at her master's behest, Annie-Many-Ponies took the bridle reins and led the h