If Dolores had been a little alarmed at the prospect of being forced to "remember," a very different feeling had entered the mind of Rita when she and her sister came out of the lodge.
"What shall we do, Ni-ha-be?"
"Red Wolf told me he had something to say to me. There he is now. He beckons me to come. He does not want you."
"I am glad of it. There are trees and bushes down there beyond the corral. I will go and be alone."
"You will tell me all the talking leaves say to you?"
"Yes, but they will talk very slowly, I'm afraid."
Even the harsher sounds of the Apache tongue had a pleasant ring in the sweet, clear voices of the two girls, and the softer syllables, of which there were many, rippled after each other like water in a brook. It seemed, too, as if they said quite as much to each other by signs as by words. That is always so among people who live a great deal out-of-doors, or in narrow quarters, where other people can easily hear ordinary conversation.
The one peculiar thing about the signs used by the American Indians is that they mean so much and express it so clearly. Men of different tribes, not able to understand a word of each other's spoken tongue, will meet and talk together by the hour in "sign language," as intelligently as two well-trained deaf-mutes among the whites.
Perhaps one reason more for so much "sign-talking" is that there are so many tribes, each with a very rough tongue of its own, that is not easy for other tribes to pick up.
Red Wolf was again beckoning to Ni-ha-be, and there was an impatient look on his dark, self-willed face. It was time for her to make haste, therefore, and Rita put the three magazines under the light folds of her broad antelope-skin cape, and tripped away toward the bit of bushy grove just beyond the "corral."