The Talking Leaves: An Indian Story, William O. Stoddard [best novels for beginners TXT] 📗

have her beaten if she isn't good to me. I'm an Apache!"

The black-eyed daughter of the great chief had plenty of self-will and temper. There could be no doubt of that. She sprang upon her mustang with a quick, impatient bound, and Rita followed, clinging to her prizes, wondering what would be the decision of Many Bears and his councillors as to the ownership of them.

A few minutes of swift riding brought the two girls to the border of the camp.

"Rita? Red Wolf!"

"I see him—he is coming to meet us, but he does not want us to think so."

That was a correct guess.

The tall, hawk-nosed young warrior, who was now riding toward them, was a perfect embodiment of Indian haughtiness, and even his sister was a mere "squaw" in his eyes. As for Rita, she was not only a squaw but also not even a full-blooded Apache, and was to be looked down upon accordingly.

He was an Indian and a warrior, and would one day be a chief like his father.

Still, he had so far unbent his usual cold dignity as to turn his horse to meet that sisterly pair, if only to find out why they were in such a hurry.

"What scare you?"

"We're not scared. We've found something—pale-face sign."

"Apache warriors do not ask squaws if there are pale-faces near them. The chiefs know all; their camp was by the spring."

"Was it?" exclaimed Ni-ha-be. "We have found some of their talking leaves. Rita must show them to father."

"Show them to me!"

"No. You are an Apache; you cannot hear what they say: Rita can—she is white."

"Ugh! Show leaves, now!"

Ni-ha-be was a "squaw," but she was also something of a spoiled child, and was less afraid of her brother than he may have imagined. Besides, the well-known rule of the camp, or of any Indian camp, was in her favor.

All "signs" were to be reported to the chief by the finder, and Ni-ha-be would make her report to her father like a warrior.

Rita was wise enough to say nothing, and Red Wolf was compelled to soften his tone a little. He even led the way to the spot near the spring where the squaws of Many Bears were already putting up his "lodge."

There was plenty of grass and water in that valley, and it had been decided to rest the horses there for three days, before pushing on deeper into the Apache country.

The proud old chief was not lowering his dignity to any such work as lodge-pitching. He would have slept on the bare ground without a blanket before he would have touched one pole with a finger.

That was "work for squaws," and all that could be expected of him was that he should stand near and say "Ugh!" pleasantly, when things were going to please him, and to say it in a different tone if they were not.

Ni-ha-be and Rita were favorites of 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 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 to go on foot, and not one of their Lipan friends had accompanied them. If they were men to be "watched" at any other time, even the sharp eyes of Indian suspicion saw no need