Wonota stared at her. “Do you mean, Miss Helen, that there are cholos—are greasers—in these woods? My geography book that I study shows this country to be far, far from Mexico.”
“Oh, my aunt!” chuckled Helen. “She thinks nobody but Mexicans can wear gay handkerchiefs bound about their noble brows. Wait till you see sure-enough pirates—”
“That is perfect nonsense, Wonota,” said Ruth, warningly. “Helen is only in fun.”
“Ah,” said the practical Indian maid, “I understand English—and American; only I do not always grasp the—er—humor, do you call it?”
“Good!” applauded Ruth. “Serves you right, Helen, for your silly nonsense.”
“The Indians’ fun is different,” explained Wonota, not wishing to offend the white girl.
“You are a pair of old sober-sides, that is what is the matter,” declared Helen gaily. “Oh, Ruth! drive the canoe ashore yonder—on that rocky beach. Did you ever see such ferns?”
They brought the canoe carefully in to the shore, landing on a sloping rock which was moss-grown above the mark of the last flood. Ruth fastened the tow-rope to the staff of a slender sapling. Wonota got out to help Helen gather some of the more delicately fronded ferns. Ruth turned her back upon them and began climbing what seemed to be a path among the boulders and trees.
This was not a very large island, and it was well out from the American shore, but inside the line between the States and Canada. Although the path Ruth followed seemed well defined, she scarcely thought the island was inhabited.
As they had paddled past it in the canoe there had been no sign of man’s presence. It had been left in the state of nature, and nothing, it seemed, had been done to change its appearance from the time that the first white man had seen it.