“Oh, Luck Lindsay!” came Rosemary’s voice at last, with what Luck fancied was a malicious note in it.  “You’re wanted out here!”

Luck fumbled for a minute longer while he racked his brain for some clue to this woman’s identity.  For a man who has lived the varied life Luck had lived, his conscience was remarkably clean; but no one enjoys having mystery stalk unawares up to one’s door.  However, he opened the door and went out, feeling sensitively the curious expectancy of the Happy Family, and faced the woman who stood just beyond the doorway.  One look, and he stopped dead still in the middle of the room.  “Well, I’ll be darned!” he said in a hushed tone of blank amazement.

The woman’s black eyes lighted as though flames had darted up behind them.  “How, Cola?” she greeted him in the soft, cooing tones of the younger Indians whose voices have not yet grown shrill and harsh.  “Wagalexa Conka!” It was the tribal name given him in great honor by his Indians of Pine Ridge Agency.

Through his astonishment, Luck’s face glowed at the words.  He went up and put out his hand, impelled by the hospitality which is an unwritten law of the old West, and is not to be broken save for good cause.

“How!  How!” he answered her greeting.  “You long ways from home, Annie-Many-Ponies!”

Annie-Many-Ponies smiled in a way to make Happy Jack gulp with a sudden emotion he would have denied.  She flashed a quick glance around at the curious faces that regarded her so intently, and she eased her shawl-wrapped burden to the ground with the air of one who has reached her journey’s end.

“Yes, I plenty long ways,” she assented placidly.  “I don’t stay by reservation no more.  Too lonesome.  One night I beat it.  I work for you now.”

“How you know you work for me?” Luck felt nine pairs of eyes trying to read his face.  “That’s bad, you run away.  You better go back, Annie-Many-Ponies.  Your father—­”

“Nah!” Annie-Many-Ponies cried in swift rebellion.  “I work for you all time, I no want monies.  I got plenty wardrobe; you give me plenty grub; I work for you.  I think you need him Indian girl in picture.  I think you plenty sorry all Indians go by reservation.  You no like for Indians go home,” she stated with soft sympathy.  “I sabe you not got monies for pay all thems Indians.  I come be Indian girl for you; I not want monies.  You let me stay—­Wagalexa Conka!”

“You come in and eat, Annie-Many-Ponies,” Luck commanded with more gentleness than he was accustomed to show.  The girl must have followed him all the way from Los Angeles, and she must have walked all the way out from Albuquerque.  All this she seemed to take for granted, a mere detail of no importance beside her certainty that although he had no money to pay the Indians, he must surely need an Indian girl in his pictures.  Loyalty always touched Luck deeply.  He had brought the little black dog back with him and hidden it in the stable, just because the dog had followed him all around town and had seemed so pleased when Luck was loading the buckboards for the return trip.  He could not logically repulse the manifest friendliness of Annie-Many-Ponies.