ster ceased even to whisper to her,
and she could hear the loud breathing of Mother Dolores on the opposite
side of the lodge.

Then she opened her eyes in the darkness, and tried to recall all she
had seen in the three marvellous magazines, page by page.

How it all did come back to her! Some of the words, too, that she had
not understood begun to have a meaning to her.

"They are talking now," she said to herself. "They are almost all
talking. They are helping me remember. I'm sure that was my
mother--my white mother. But where is my white father? He was not
there at all. I must look for him again tomorrow. We must ride off
away from the camp, where nobody can see us, and we can talk as much as
we please."

"We" meant herself and Ni-ha-be, of course, but it also meant her three
prizes. She had brought them to bed with her on her soft buffalo-skin,
and she was hugging them closely now. It seemed to her as if they were
alive, and had come to tell her almost anything she could think to ask.

Then it was all so still, and she was so tired with her journey and her
excitement, that she fell asleep at last, to dream of more people and
stranger things than had ever come to her mind before, sleeping or
waking.

When morning came there was no need for Rita to propose a ride on
horseback. Ni-ha-be spoke of it first, and for the self-same reason;
but there was nothing unusual about it, for they almost lived in the
saddle, like genuine daughters of the great Apache nation.

That, too, was why nobody paid them any attention when, an hour or so
after their late breakfast, they were seen to scold a couple of
wild-looking boys into bringing up their horses for them. The chief's
two favorites were entitled to that much of service, and were apt to
insist upon it.

For a while the very delight of galloping up and down the valley on
such swift and beautiful animals as they were riding almost drove out
of their minds the thought of talking leaves; but when, a little later,
Many Bears slowly arose from a long fit of thinking, there in front of
his lodge, and said to Red Wolf, "Call Rita," Rita was nowhere to be
seen.

"Find her. Tell her to come and bring me the white men's medicine,
talking leaves."

Red Wolf sprang upon the nearest horse--and there were several standing
ready for sudden errands--and dashed away in search of his truant
sisters.

Mother Dolores could tell him nothing, but his loud, half-angry
qu