band have puzzled their heads over
the white man's way of learning things and sending messages to a
distance, and Red Wolf's ideas had nothing unusual in them. If the
talking leaves could say anything at all, they could be made to tell a
chief and his warriors the precise things they wanted to know.

Ni-ha-be's talk with her brother lasted until he pointed to the
camp-fire, where Many Bears was resting after his first attack upon the
results of Mother Dolores's cooking.

"Great chief eat. Good time talk to him. Go now."

There was no intentional lack of politeness in the sharp, overbearing
tone of Red Wolf. It was only the ordinary manner of a warrior
speaking to a squaw. It would therefore have been very absurd for
Ni-ha-be to get out of temper about it; but her manner and the toss of
her head as she turned away was decidedly wanting in the submissive
meekness to be expected of her age and sex.

"It won't be long before I have a lodge of my own," she said,
positively. "I'll have Rita come and live with me. Red Wolf shall not
make her burn the talking leaves. Maybe she can make them talk to me.
My eyes are better than hers. She's nothing but a pale-face, if she
did get brought into my father's lodge."

A proud-spirited maiden was Ni-ha-be, and one who wanted a little more
of "her own way" than she could have under the iron rule of her great
father and the watchful eyes of Mother Dolores.

"I'll go to the bushes and see Rita. Our supper won't be ready yet for
a good while."

It would be at least an hour, but Ni-ha-be had never seen a clock in
her life, and knew nothing at all about "hours." There is no word for
such a thing in the Apache language.

She was as light of foot as an antelope, and her moccasins hardly made
a sound upon the grass as she parted the bushes and looked in upon
Rita's hiding-place.

"Weeping? The talking leaves have been scolding her! I will burn
them! They shall not say things to make her cry!"

In a moment more her arms were around the neck of her adopted sister.
It was plain enough that the two girls loved each other dearly.

"Rita, what is the matter? Have they said strong words to you?"

"No, Ni-ha-be; good words, all of them. Only I cannot understand them
all."

"Tell me some. See if I can understand them. I am the daughter of a
great chief."

Ni-ha-be did not know how very little help the wealth of a girl's
father can give her in a quarrel with her school