A very fat and dreadfully ugly squaw rode astride with a pappoose on her back, his round head popping out behind his mother's ragged locks. A twelve-year-old boy had climbed up in front, and his younger brother and sister clung on behind, so that the little mule was turned into a sort of four-footed omnibus.
It seemed, too, as if there were more wretched-looking dogs following after this forlorn mule than attended the ponies of any chief's family in the whole band.
"Look, Rita," said Ni-ha-be. "Look at old Too-many-Toes and her mule."
This squaw had a name of her own as well as the others, but it had not been given her for her beauty.
"Isn't she homely?" said Rita. "I wonder where the rest of her children are."
"I guess she's divided them around among her relations. There's enough of them to load another mule. Her husband'll never be rich enough to buy ponies. He's lazy."
"He doesn't beat her."
"He's too lazy for that. And he's afraid of her. I don't believe he's an Apache. Think of a brave afraid of his own squaw!"
There was something very bad in that, according to all Indian notions, but Rita only said,
"What would that mule do if she wanted him to run?"