her
adopted sister helped to broiled venison again and again before a
morsel had been handed to her, the born heiress of the great chief.
Her keen black eyes put on a continual watchfulness and they soon
detected other strange things, and so did her quick, suspicious ears.
She saw Rita look in the face of Send Warning as if she had known him
all her life, and she was sure she had heard both him and Knotted Cord
speak to her in the detested tongue of their race.

It was all the work of those miserable talking leaves, and they were
therefore the worst kind of "bad medicine." She would have burnt them
up if she could, but now they were no longer within her reach. Rita
had one, but Send Warning and his young friend had taken possession of
the others, and were "listening to them" at every opportunity.

Steve said to Murray that the reading of those magazines made him feel
as if he were half-way home again.

"We're anything but that, Steve. What do you think old Many Bears
proposed this morning?"

"I can't guess."

"Wants to adopt us into his band. Have us marry Indian wives, and
settle down."

"Tell him I'm too young. Can't take care of a squaw."

"So I did, and he answered, 'Ugh! Buy squaw some time. No hurry.
Young brave good.'"

"Tell him you don't want a wife, but you'd like to buy a daughter, and
keep her for me when I get old enough."

"Steve!"

"Now, Murray, I didn't mean to offend you."

"I'm not offended. It's an idea. It's a good one. It would sound
right in Indian ears. I will think about it. I've been an Indian so
long I hardly know how it would sound to my friends in England."

"They wouldn't care what you did, I guess, to get Rita out of the hands
of the Apaches."

"Of course they would not."

Still, it was a delicate piece of business, and Murray went at it very
carefully.

That afternoon, as they were riding along side by side, Many Bears
again remarked to him that he would be better off among his Apache
friends than anywhere else.

"Have lodge. Have squaw. Be chief a little. Be great brave."

"Got good lodge now."

"Yes, but lodge empty. Want squaw."

"Send Warning is old. No child. Rather have daughter. He has taken
the Knotted Cord for a son. All he needs now is a young squaw. Keep
her for young brave by-and-by."

"Ugh! Good! All Apaches say Send Warning is wise. Know what he likes
best. Buy young squaw. Braves get killed in fight. Plenty young
squaw