The Talking Leaves

The Talking Leaves, by William
O. Stoddard

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Title: The Talking Leaves An Indian Story
Author: William O. Stoddard

Release Date: June 23, 2007 [eBook #21913]
Language: English
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THE TALKING LEAVES
An Indian Story
by
WILLIAM O. STODDARD

[Frontispiece: "Halt! They've brought out the boys"]

Harper & Brothers Publishers New York and London Copyright, 1882,
by Harper & Brothers Copyright, 1910, by William O. Stoddard

THE TALKING LEAVES
AN INDIAN STORY
CHAPTER I
"Look, Rita! look!"
"What can it mean, Ni-ha-be?"
"See them all get down and walk about."
"They have found something in the grass."
"And they're hunting for more."

Rita leaned forward till her long hair fell upon the neck of the beautiful
little horse she was riding, and looked with all her eyes.
"Hark! they are shouting."
"You could not hear them if they did."
"They look as if they were."
Ni-ha-be sat perfectly still in her silver-mounted saddle, although her
spirited mustang pony pawed the ground and pulled on his bit as if he
were in a special hurry to go on down the side of the mountain.
The two girls were of about the same size, and could not either of them
have been over fifteen years old. They were both very pretty, very well
dressed and well mounted, and they could both speak in a strange,
rough, and yet musical language; but there was no other resemblance
between them.
"Father is there, Rita."
"Can you see him?"
"Yes, and so is Red Wolf."
"Your eyes are wonderful. Everybody says they are."
Ni-ha-be might well be proud of her coal-black eyes, and of the fact
that she could see so far and so well with them. It was not easy to say
just how far away was that excited crowd of men down there in the
valley. The air was so clear, and the light so brilliant among those
snow-capped mountain ranges, that even things far off seemed
sometimes close at hand.
For all that there were not many pairs of eyes, certainly not many
brown ones like Rita's, which could have looked, as Ni-ha-be did, from
the pass into the faces of her father and brother and recognized them at
such a distance.

She need not have looked very closely to be sure of one thing
more--there was not a single white man to be seen in all that long, deep,
winding green valley.
Were there any white women?
There were plenty of squaws, old and young, but not one woman with a
bonnet, shawl, parasol, or even so much as a pair of gloves. Therefore,
none of them could have been white.
Rita was as well dressed as Ni-ha-be, and her wavy masses of brown
hair were tied up in the same way, with bands of braided deer-skin, but
neither of them had ever seen a bonnet. Their sunburnt, healthy faces
told that no parasol had ever protected their complexions, but Ni-ha-be
was a good many shades the darker. There must have been an immense
amount of hard work expended in making the graceful garments they
both wore. All were of fine antelope-skin; soft, velvety, fringed, and
worked and embroidered with porcupine quills. Frocks and capes and
leggings and neatly fitting moccasins, all of the best, for Ni-ha-be was
the only daughter of a great Apache chief, and Rita was every bit as
important a person according to Indian notions, for Ni-ha-be's father
had adopted her as his own.
Either one of them would have been worth a whole drove of ponies or a
wagon-load of guns and blankets, and the wonder was that they had
been permitted to loiter so far behind their friends on a march through
that wild, strange, magnificent land.
Had they been farther to the east, or south, or north, it is likely they
would have been kept with the rest pretty carefully; but Many Bears
and his band were on their way home from a long buffalo-hunt, and
were already, as they thought, safe in the Apache country--away
beyond any peril from other tribes of Indians, or from the approach of
the hated and dreaded white men.
To be sure, there were grizzly bears and wolves and