The Talking Leaves | Page 7

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 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.