The Talking Leaves | Page 8

changed.
"Ugh!"
"Rita," exclaimed Ni-ha-be, "the leaves have spoken to her."
She had certainly kissed one of them. Then she made a quick motion
with one hand across her brow and breast.
"Give it to me, Rita! You must give it to me!"
Rita held out her hand for the book, and both the girls leaned forward
with open mouths to learn what could have so disturbed the mind of
Dolores.
It was a picture.

A sort of richly carved and ornamented door-way, but with no house
behind it, and in it a lady with a baby in her arms, and over it a great
cross of stone.
"Yes, Dolores," said Rita, "we will give you that leaf."
It was quickly cut out, and the two girls wondered more and more to
see how the fingers of Dolores trembled as they closed upon that bit of
paper.
She looked at the picture again with increasing earnestness. Her lips
moved silently, as if trying to utter words her mind had lost.
Then her great fiery black eyes slowly closed, and the amazement of
Ni-ha-be and Rita was greater than they could have expressed, for
Mother Dolores sunk upon her knees hugging that picture. She had
been an Apache Indian for long years, and was thoroughly
"Indianized," but upon that page had been printed a very beautiful
representation of a Spanish "Way-side Shrine of the Virgin."
CHAPTER IV
A mountain range is not at all like a garden fence. You do not just
climb up one side of it and drop down into another garden beyond.
The one which arose before the Lipans that day, and through which the
Apaches before them had driven their long lines of ponies, loaded with
buffalo-meat and all the baggage of an Indian hunting-camp, was really
a wide strip of very rough country, full of mountains and rising to a
high range in the centre. The Lipans were not very well acquainted with
it, except by what they had heard from others, and there had been some
murmuring among them at first, when their leader announced his
intention of following his "war-path" to the other side of such a barrier
as that.
His speech had settled it all, however, and his warriors were ready to go
with him no matter where he should lead them. Anything rather than go
back empty-handed to be laughed at.

The moment luncheon was over every man was on horseback. It was
absolutely necessary to find "grass" before night, if their horses were to
be good for anything the next day.
They knew that the particular band of Apaches they were pursuing
must be two or three days' march ahead of them; but they also knew
that every mountain range has its deep, green valleys, and that the trail
left by their enemies would surely lead through the best of these.
Up, up, up, through rugged ravines and gorges for nearly an hour, and
then down again almost as far, and then, sooner than they had expected,
they came upon the very thing they were looking for. It was not so
large or so beautiful a valley as the one in which Many Bears and his
men were encamped, miles and miles beyond. It did not widen like that
at its lower end into a broad and undulating plain, with a river and a
forest far away; but there was plenty of grass in it for tired and hungry
horses, and To-la-go-to-de at once decided that there they should halt
for the night.
It was little beyond the middle of the afternoon, and a war-party of
Lipans has neither tents to pitch nor much baggage to care for. Little
time was lost in mere "going into camp," and even before that was done
every fifth brave was ordered out to look for game. Not only would
fresh meat be better than dry, if they could get any, but it would save
their somewhat slender stock of provisions for another day.
"Steve! Steve Harrison!"
"What is it, Murray?"
"I've spoken to old Two Knives. You and I are to hunt."
"Hurrah for that! Which way are you going?"
"Most of the others seem to be setting out southerly. I guess they're
right, so far as game is concerned. You and I'll try that gap to the
north-west. There's no telling where it may lead to."

The "gap" he pointed at was a sombre-looking chasm, the mouth of
which opened into the little valley where they were, at a distance of
about half a mile.
Nobody could tell, indeed, where it might lead to, nor could any one
have guessed, until he was actually in it, what a very remarkable gap it
was.
The two white hunters, little as they looked like white men, had chosen