The squaw rode her mule after the fashion of her people, and that was just as if she had been a brave instead of a squaw. But no brave in all the band would have allowed a twelve-year-old boy to climb up in front of him, as she did, or let his younger brother and sister cling on behind her; so that the little mule was turned into a sort of four-footed omnibus.
It did seem, too, as if there were more and more wretched-looking dogs following after that forlorn mule than behind 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!"
That squaw had a name of her own, as well as anybody, 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?"