“The wing does not seem broken.” Winona said. “I think the bird flew against the wall of rock, and for a time was stunned, do you say?”
She glanced inquiringly at Virginia, who nodded. “I wish we might find the message,” Virg said. “If it were in Spanish I could read it.”
“We may find it,” Winona replied, “but come and I will give you your supper.”
“My father, Chief Grey Hawk, is away hunting with several of our men,” the Indian girl told them as they walked back to the village, “and so I am alone in my home. There is one wide bed and in it you three shall sleep unless you would rather have another house by yourselves.”
“Oh, no, no,” Babs heard herself saying eagerly. “Please, Winona, let us stay with you.”
The Indian maiden smiled. This pretty, bubbling girl was so different from anyone whom she had met before. “I’d like to have you stay with me. This is my home. Let us go indoors.”
Babs glanced about the one large room with eager curiosity. The house they had entered was more pretentious than the others in the village, but that was natural, she decided, since it was the home of the chief.
“Oh, Megsy, what adorable rugs are on this stone floor,” Babs said softly, “and what warm, sunny colors are in the blankets on the walls, and oh, oh, if there isn’t a fireplace! And that queer-shaped red pottery, and those blankets! I truly never saw anything more artistic than this room. Why, I don’t feel skeery at all.”
Winona had gone out of a rear door, and Virginia, who had followed her, soon called to the others. “If you want to see Winona’s bake-oven, come out here.”
The rounding-topped stone oven in the dooryard was evidently used by all the neighboring women, and one buxom young mother, with a papoose strapped to her back, was busy even then making corn cakes. Winona said something in her own tongue, and the young matron nodded. The Indian maiden seemed pleased with the reply she had received, and, going indoors, soon returned with a tray of basket weave which she held out while the young matron heaped it high with corn cakes, steaming hot, that had just been taken from the oven.