The girl addressed, shook her head. “Not easily,” she said. “The writing is very difficult to make out. However, I am sure that the words are Spanish but the letters are so queerly made it may take me a long time to decipher it.”
“Why not leave it until morning” Winona suggested. “It will soon be dark and I was going to invite you girls to climb with me to the top of the cliff trail to watch the sun set and the stars come out. Of course sunsets are beautiful anywhere on the desert, but I do feel that my own particular sunset view is a little more wonderful than any other that I have ever seen.”
“Let us go then,” Virginia said as she refolded the bit of brown paper and placed it in her pocket, “since this message can have nothing whatever to do with us or our friends, I will postpone trying to decipher the very queer writing until there is more light. Lead on, Winona, and we will follow.”
As the girls wandered through the Indian village, many unkempt little wolf-like children paused in their antics to gaze wide-eyed at the “white face” maidens whom they seemed to regard with awe as though they were beings supernatural.
“Poor little kiddies!” Babs said softly to Margaret, “I wonder if they really know how to play.” Approaching the group nearest, she asked, “Little folks, do you know how to play ‘Ring-around-a-rosie?”
Of course they could not understand, and the smiling Winona came to be interpreter. Then the oldest of the children, looking eagerly at Babs, prattled something in her own tongue. “Will you play it with them, Sunny Day wishes to know.”
“Indeed I will,” Babs replied. “You three girls may climb the cliff trail and look at the sunset. I’d a heap rather romp with these solemn-eyed babies. I want to see them smile and hear them laugh.”
And so Babs, in pantomime, explained the merry game and soon had those Papago children whirling about and shouting as gleefully as their leader could desire.
The other three girls often looked back as they climbed the cliff trail.
“Who is Barbara?” Winona asked. “I never heard you speak of her, Virginia.”