"How are we ever to get them to give up Rita?"
Murray was thinking the same thought just then, and it seemed to him as if he must go out to the door of the lodge for a little breath of fresh air. The chief and his councillors were nowhere to be seen, but there was Mother Dolores by the camp fire. Murray tried hard to assume a calm and steady face and voice as he strode forward and stood beside her. He spoke to her in Spanish.
"Well, Dolores, which do you like best, cooking for Mexican miners or for the great chief?"
"SHE DROPPED HER STEW-PAN AND STOOD LOOKING AT HIM."
She dropped her stew-pan, and stood looking at him for a moment, drawing her breath hard, and then she exclaimed:
"I was right. It is Señor Murray. Ah, señor, it is so long ago! The poor señora—"
"Don't speak of her. I know. We found her. My Rita?"
"Yes, she is your Rita. But they will kill you if you tell them. I will keep your secret, señor. I have kept it until now."
She had dimly recognized him, then, and she too had been in doubt what to do or say. In answer to a few more questions she told him, very truly, that she had been better off among the Apaches than before she was captured. Less hard work, better treatment, better food, better position, just about as much real civilization. Poor Dolores had never known anything much better than the hard lot of a Mexican woman of the lower class among the rough miners. It was better, she said, to be the wife of a chief, and have plenty to eat and little hard work to do.