ree years a prisoner, and
was now getting free! He might as well have gone to sleep on his
horse, if he had been out there among the warriors on the prairie.

Murray walked away from the lodge very slowly.

"It's not a bad place for a camp," he said to himself, "but that side
of it is all bushes, and they have corralled all their loose ponies
right in there. Old Many Bears will make some changes when he comes to
see it. The squaws laid it out this time."

The lodges of the chief were not far apart from each other, and Murray
had not gone twenty steps before he found himself in front of them and
face to face with a very stout and dark-complexioned squaw. If she had
been a warrior in the most hideous war-paint she could not have
expected a man like Send Warning to be startled so at meeting her.

Perhaps she did not notice the tremor which went over him from head to
foot, or that his voice was a little husky when he spoke to her. At
all events she answered him promptly enough, for at that moment there
was nobody in sight or hearing for whose approval or disapproval Mother
Dolores cared a button.

She did not so much as give a thought to the youthful occupants of the
lodge behind her.

If Ni-ha-be and Rita were not asleep they should be, and they were mere
girls anyhow.

Ni-ha-be had not closed her black eyes for a moment, and Rita had only
refrained from talking because of the presence of Dolores.

"I am glad she's gone, Rita. It's too bad we are shut up here, where
we can't know a word of all that's going on."

"There will be noise enough when the chief and the warriors come."

"Or if the camp is attacked. My bow and arrows are ready."

"I don't believe we are in any danger. Hark! Ni-ha-be, don't speak."

"Somebody is talking with Dolores."

"Hark!"

They listened more and more eagerly, and they even crept to the outer
edge of the lodge and gently raised the bottom of the deer-skin
covering.

"Ni-ha-be, it is Send Warning."

Murray and Dolores were talking in Mexican Spanish. He was not saying
anything about the Lipans, or anything else that seemed to Ni-ha-be
very interesting. Neither did Rita understand why it should all be so
much so to her, or why her heart should beat and her cheeks burn as she
listened.

Murray had used his eyes to some purpose when he had watched Dolores at
her cookery, and his first words had made her his very good friend.

"Squaw of great chief. Squaw great cook