"Si si," answered the woman, who was of the Mexican type. "Approach!" and she indicated an old bench under the mendicant vines that straggled around the hut. So heavy had they grown the rain of the shower had not penetrated their depths, and like a canopy, they arched over the poles, propped at ends for their support. She stared at the girls without any pretext of apology. Judith with her dark hair seemed particularly attractive to the squaw's flagrant scrutiny. Aunt Mary remained outside.
"The young ladies wonder," ventured Mr. Allen, "if you have heard from Teekawata lately, Woo Nah. Perhaps he has sent a message for their good health?"
"Health!" she repeated in good English. "The medicine man forgets not the health of good white brothers. The sunset gives light to their cheeks, and the stars sleep in their eyes," she rhapsodied.
Jane nudged Judith to make note of the compliment.
"When Woo Nah was at the government school," continued the Indian, "she has seen many young girl. They come to give English. Some with hair and eyes like the morning, others with the midnight hair and coals from the fire eyes. But they all like Woo Nah," she insisted.
"Of course," chimed in Jane. "We like her also. Will you tell us what you know from your great husband, the Medicine Man of Broken Hill?"
"Teekawata, would not that I should foretell. But I give a dream--a dream of happiness," and she arose from the patched chair to lead the party within the cabin.
"I shall wait here," concluded Aunt Mary, who had no curiosity about the fortune telling or the interior of the ramshackle hut. In fact she was holding unnecessarily tight to her small hand-bag.
"Woozy," whispered Judith, whose eyes were sparkling like the coals or the quartz gems Woo Nah had described.
Within the cabin an assortment of snake skins and some very large ears of dried corn formed a queer decoration on the log walls. A few skins, perhaps those of the prairie rat, were also in evidence, while the glossy red corn with its artistic husk hung gracefully over a strange picture, that Jane told Judith was a portrait of the famous medicine man Teekawata. Chairs were relics of civilization which must have touched the spot at some time in a period of miners transition. The table was nailed to the wall and on it the litter of stuff spoiled an otherwise rustic effect. An American stove in the corner was evidently of the same vintage as the chairs, and there were other bits of furniture and dishes--perhaps accepted in payment for the services of the medicine man, who for years had given some sort of service to the settlers and their families.