XV
THE PONIES ARE FOUND
The following day the boy sergeants rose from their beds fully refreshed, and after breakfast began to explore the town. They made some purchases in the stores, and found much amusement in watching a bevy of Mojave Indian girls buying pigments to be used in adorning their necks, arms, and faces. Following the bronze maidens to the shore of a lagoon that backed up to the town from the river, they seated themselves beneath a cottonwood and witnessed the designing of tracings in many colors, made with endless and musical chatterings, accompanied by an evident consciousness that they were objects of interest to two pale-face boys.
After completing the tinting the girls would walk about for a while and display their work to admiring friends, and then plunge into and swim about the lagoon with the ease and grace of a lot of mermaids; emerging with no trace left of their recent ornamentation, they would proceed to renew it in different designs, and take another swim.
"Quite like watering-place belles with extensive wardrobes," remarked Frank.
"And takes about as long to put on the paint as to put on a fashionable dress," said Henry, "but not so long to remove it."
Another thing that amused the boys was a balsa, or raft, made by the Mojaves, of the cane-grass which grew in the river-bottoms to the height of fifteen feet. A large bundle bound at the ends with grass ropes would sustain two men. The boys borrowed one of an Indian girl, who was sitting in the shade of some willows prinking herself artistically with an original and intricate pigmentary pattern. Stepping on board, they paddled about the lagoon for a considerable period.
Tiring at last of the sport, they separated, Frank saying that he was going for his shot-gun, and perhaps shoot for some quail, and Henry that he meant to find Tom Clary and set some lines for catfish.
The younger sergeant failing to find the soldier, selected a line, and, procuring some bait, returned alone to the lagoon. On his way he met the Indian girl walking along the sidewalk, an object of admiration and envy to the men and women of her people. Her bronze flesh was adorned with a lacelike tracery of beautiful design, in many tints.
"How exceedingly pretty!" said Henry, in Spanish, a language fairly well understood by the aborigines of the Southwest.