ation. The
squaws had insisted upon making all the boys and girls who were big
enough swim instead of going over on pony-back, and the youngsters in
their turn had revenged themselves by doing all the mischievous pranks
they knew.

Old Too Many Toes had been conspicuous in shoving small Indians into
the water, and when at last she finished packing her little borrowed
mule and a borrowed pony, there was a perfect swarm of "divers and
duckers" around her. The water came well up the sides of the little
mule, and she would not have minded that if the boys had been willing
it should go no higher.

Even the solemn face of Many Bears himself expanded into a chuckle of
dignified fun.

"Ugh! Squaw scold. Get spattered."

"Look!" said Red Wolf at the same instant. "Drop baby."

Not her pappoose, for it was safe under her blanket, but her
three-year-old girl had slipped from behind her, and the river was
sweeping it down stream.

"It will be drowned!" exclaimed Steve, in some excitement.

"No. Apache baby never sink. Swim a heap. Look!"

Steve looked, and there was no question but what the queer little thing
was paddling bravely, and not even showing fear. To be sure, the
current was carrying it away, but Steve now saw that three or four
older boys and girls were swimming around it and were ready to give it
all the help needed.

For all that, the wrath and anxiety of Too Many Toes exhibited itself
in a torrent of long words.

Steve had learned among the Lipans that the red men have a great deal
of fun in their compositions, but he was almost surprised to hear Red
Wolf say, "Squaw talk big rain. Fall in river. Have freshet then.
Lipans can't follow Apaches."

If talk could have raised the river, the chatter of nearly two hundred
squaws of all ages, added to the scolding of Too Many Toes, would have
made a torrent of it.

And yet a number of the squaws, wives and daughters of men of character
and station attended to the business of fording the stream with the
silence and gravity of the most dignified white matrons.

Dolores would have scorned putting herself on a level with such a squaw
as Too Many Toes, even in the use of her tongue; and as for Ni-ha-be
and Rita, they never forgot for a moment whose family they belonged to.

"Rita," said Ni-ha-be, as they rode down to the river, "your blanket is
loose. Red Wolf and Knotted Cord are watching us."

"Send Warning is not there."

"No, of course not. H