In front of the loose "flap" opening which served for the door of this lodge stood a stout, middle-aged woman, who seemed to be waiting for Ni-ha-be and Rita to approach. She had witnessed their conference with Many Bears, and she knew by the merry laugh with which they gathered up their fallen prizes that all was well between them and their father. All the more for that, it may be, her mind was exercised as to what they had brought home with them which should have needed the chief's inspection.
"Rita!"
"What, Ni-ha-be?"
"Don't tell Mother Dolores a word. See if she can hear for herself."
"The leaves won't talk to her. She's Mexican white, not white from the North."
Nobody would have said, to look at her, that the fat, surly-faced squaw of Many Bears was a white woman of any sort. Her eyes were as black and her long jetty hair was as thick and coarse and her skin was every shade as dark as were those of any Apache housekeeper among the scattered lodges of that hunting party. She was not the mother of Ni-ha-be. She had not a drop of Apache blood in her veins, although she was one of the half-dozen squaws of Many Bears. Mother Dolores was a pure Mexican, and therefore as much of an Indian, really, as any Apache or Lipan or Comanche—only a different kind of Indian, that was all.
Her greeting to her two young charges—for such they were—was somewhat gruff and brief, and there was nothing very respectful in the manner of their reply. An elderly squaw, even though the wife of a chief, is never considered as anything better than a sort of servant, to be valued according to the kind and quantity of the work she can do.
Dolores could do a great deal, and was therefore more than usually respectable, and she had quite enough force of will to preserve her authority over two such half-wild creatures as Ni-ha-be and Rita.
"You are late. Come in. Tell me what it is."