“There was an old chief of the Navajo,
Fell over the wigwam and broke his toe,
And now he is gone where the good Injuns go,
And his blanket is done up in cam-pho-o-or!”
She trailed out the last word into such a mournful wail that the Winnebagos shrieked with laughter.
A few minutes later she came down the stairs with a mystified face. “The blanket’s gone!” she announced. “Stolen. I had it in the lower drawer of the linen closet off the hall upstairs, all wrapped up in tar paper. The tar paper’s there in the drawer, folded up, with the mothballs lying on top of it, and the blanket is gone. Did any of you take it out to wear to-night?” she asked, looking relieved at the thought.
No one had taken it, however. Slim was the only one who wanted to be an Indian, and he was waiting for Nyoda to fetch the blanket for him. Without a doubt it had been stolen. So the midnight visitor had been a thief after all! But why did he take a blanket and nothing else? It was a valuable blanket, but the silverware and jewelry in the house were worth a great deal more. The mystery reared its head again. What manner of man was this strange visitor?
“My mother always used to keep her silver wrapped in the blankets in a clothes closet,” said Gladys, “and burglars broke into our house and found it all. The policeman that papa reported it to said that was a common place for people to hide valuables and burglars usually searched through blankets. This burglar must have been looking for valuables in the blanket, and got scared away before he looked anywhere else, but took the blanket because it was such a good one.”
“That must have been it,” said Nyoda. “I’ve heard of cases before where valuables were stolen from their hiding places in blankets and bedding. Well, we were lucky to get away as we did.
“Slim, you’ll have to be something beside an Indian chief, for I haven’t another Navajo blanket. It’s too bad, too, because you had the real bow and arrows, but cheer up, we’ll find something else. The trouble is, though,” she mourned, “we haven’t much of anything that will fit you. The blanket would have solved the problem so nicely.”