Ni-ha-be had slept as soundly as usual that night, and Rita had "made believe" do so, until her adopted sister ceased even to whisper to her, and she could hear the loud breathing of Mother Dolores on the opposite side of the lodge.
Then she opened her eyes in the darkness, and tried to recall all she had seen in the three marvellous magazines, page by page.
How it all came back to her! Some of the words that she had not understood began to have a meaning to her.
"They are talking now," she said to herself; "they are almost all talking. They are helping me remember. I'm sure that was my mother, my white mother. But where is my white father? He was not there at all. I must look for him again to-morrow. We must ride off away from the camp, where nobody can see us, and we can talk as much as we please."
"We" meant herself and Ni-ha-be, of course, but it also meant her three prizes. She had brought them to bed with her on her soft buffalo-skin, and she was hugging them now. It seemed to her as if they were alive, and had come to tell her almost anything she could think to ask.
When morning came there was no need for Rita to propose a ride on horseback. Ni-ha-be spoke of it first, and for the self-same reason; but there was nothing unusual about it, for they almost lived in the saddle, like genuine daughters of the great Apache nation.
For a while the very delight of galloping up and down the valley on such swift and beautiful animals as they were riding almost drove out of their minds the thought of the talking leaves. But when, a little later, Many Bears slowly arose from a long fit of thinking there in front of his lodge, and said to Red Wolf, "Call Rita," Rita was nowhere to be seen.
"Find her. Tell her to come, and bring me the white men's medicine, talking leaves."
Red Wolf sprang upon the nearest horse—and there were several standing ready for sudden errands—and dashed away in search of his truant sisters.
Mother Dolores could tell him nothing, but his loud, half-angry questionings drew together a knot of squaws and children, two or three of whom were ready to point toward the northeastern slope of the valley, and tell him he would have to hunt in that direction.