The Talking Leaves | Page 7

the scarred and wrinkled warrior,
however, and when they rode up with Red Wolf, and the latter briefly
stated the facts of the case--all he knew of them--the face of Many
Bears relaxed into a grim smile.
"Squaw find sign. Ugh! Good!"
"Rita says they are talking leaves. Much picture. Many words. See!"
Her father took from Ni-ha-be, and then from Rita, the strange objects
they held out so excitedly, but to their surprise he did not seem to share
in their estimate of them.
"No good. See them before. No tell anything true. Big lie."
Many Bears had been among the forts and border settlements of the
white men in his day. He had talked with army officers and
missionaries and government agents. He had seen many written papers
and printed papers, and had had books given him, and there was no
more to be told or taught him about nonsense of that kind. He had once
imitated a pale-faced friend of his, and looked steadily at a newspaper
for an hour at a time, and it had not spoken a word to him.
So now he turned over the three magazines in his hard, brown hand,
with a look of dull curiosity mixed with a good deal of contempt.
"Ugh! Young squaws keep them. No good for warriors. Bad medicine.
Ugh!"
Down they went upon the grass, and Rita was free to pick up her
despised treasures and do with them as she would. As for Red Wolf,
after such a decision by his terrible father, he would have deemed it
beneath him to pay any farther attention to the "pale-face signs"
brought into camp by two young squaws.
Another lodge of poles and skins had been pitched at the same time
with that of Many Bears, and not a great distance from it. In fact, this
also was his own property, although it was to cover the heads of only a

part of his family.
In front of the loose "flap" opening, which served for the door of this
lodge, stood a stout, middle-aged woman, who seemed to be waiting
for Ni-ha-be and Rita to approach. She had witnessed their conference
with Many Bears, and she knew by the merry laugh with which they
gathered up their fallen prizes that all was well between them and their
father. All the more for that, it may be, her mind was exercised as to
what they had brought home with them which should have needed the
chief's inspection.
"Rita!"
"What, Ni-ha-be?"
"Don't tell Mother Dolores a word. See if she can hear for herself."
"The leaves won't talk to her. She's Mexican white, not white from the
North."
Nobody would have said to look at her, that the fat, surly-faced squaw
of Many Bears was a white woman of any sort. Her eyes were as black
and her long, jetty hair was as thick and coarse, and her skin was every
shade as dark as were those of any Apache house-keeper among the
scattered lodges of that hunting-party.
She was not the mother of Ni-ha-be. She had not a drop of Apache
blood in her veins, although she was one of the half-dozen squaws of
Many Bears. Mother Dolores was a pure "Mexican," and therefore as
much of an Indian, really, as any Apache, or Lipan, or Comanche. Only
a different kind of an Indian, that was all.
Her greeting to her two young charges, for such they were, was
somewhat gruff and brief, and there was nothing very respectful in the
manner of their reply. An elderly squaw, even though the wife of a
chief, is never considered as anything better than a sort of servant, to be
valued according to the kind and quantity of the work she can do.
Dolores could do a great deal, and was therefore more than usually

respectable; and she had quite enough force of will to preserve her
authority over two such half-wild creatures as Ni-ha-be and Rita.
"You are late. Come in! Tell me what it is!"
Rita was as eager now as Ni-ha-be had been with her father and Red
Wolf; but even while she was talking Dolores pulled them both into the
lodge.
"Talking leaves!"
Not Many Bears himself could have treated those poor magazines with
greater contempt than did the portly dame from Mexico. To be sure, it
was many a long year since she had been taken a prisoner and brought
across the Mexican border, and reading had not been among the things
she had learned before coming.
"Rita can tell us all they say, by-and-by, Mother Dolores."
"Let her, then. Ugh!"
She turned page after page, in a doubtful way, as if it were quite
possible one of them might bite her, but suddenly her whole manner