She need not have looked very closely to be sure of one thing more—there was not a single white man to be seen in all that long, deep, winding green valley.
Were there any white women?
There were plenty of squaws, old and young, but not one woman with a bonnet, shawl, parasol, or even so much as a pair of gloves. Therefore none of them could have been white.
Rita was as well dressed as Ni-ha-be, and her wavy masses of brown hair were tied up in the same way with bands of braided deer-skin; but neither of them had ever seen a bonnet. Their sunburned, healthy faces told that no parasol had ever protected their complexions; but Ni-ha-be was a good many shades the darker.
There must have been an immense amount of hard work expended in making the graceful garments they both wore. All were of fine antelope-skin, soft, velvety, fringed, and worked and embroidered with porcupine quills. Frocks, and capes, and leggings, and neatly fitting moccasins, all of the best, for Ni-ha-be was the only daughter of a great Apache chief, and Rita was every bit as important a person, according to Indian notions, for Ni-ha-be's father had adopted her as his own.
Either one of them would have been worth a whole drove of ponies, or a wagon-load of guns and blankets, and the wonder was that they had been permitted to loiter so far behind their friends on a march through that wild, strange, magnificent land.
Had they been further to the east or south or north it is likely they would have been kept with the rest pretty carefully, but Many Bears and his band were on their way home from a long buffalo-hunt, and were already, as they thought, safe in the Apache country, away beyond any peril from other tribes of Indians, or from the approach of the hated and dreaded white men. To be sure, there were grizzly bears, and wolves, and other wild animals to be found among those mountain passes, but they were not likely to remain very near a band of hunters like the one now gathered in that valley.
Great hunters, brave warriors, well able to take care of themselves and their families, but just now they were very much excited about something.
Something on the ground.
The younger braves, to the number of more than a hundred, were standing back respectfully, while the older and more experienced warriors carefully examined a number of deep marks on the grass around a bubbling spring.