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