Oh, how she did long just then for a look at a real pale-face woman, gotten up and ornamented like one of those pictured on the pages before her! She was learning a great deal—more than she had any idea of.
But Rita had learned a great deal more; for the faces and the dresses had joined themselves in her mind with ever so many things that came floating up from her memory—things she had forgotten for so long a time that they would never have come back to her at all if something like this had not stirred them up.
Just now, while Ni-ha-be had the fashion plates, Rita was busy with the illustrations of "gold-mining" which had so aroused the mind of Many Bears.
Not that she knew or cared anything about mines or ores or miners, but that some of those pictures also seemed to her to have a familiar look.
"Did I ever see anything like that?" she murmured to herself. "The great chief says he did. It is not a lie. Maybe it will come back to me some day. I don't care for any more pictures now; I'll try and read some words."
That was harder work; but there were strange, new thoughts beginning to come to Rita.
"You have not spoken to me," said Dolores at last. "Do the leaves talk all the while?"
"Look at these," said Ni-ha-be. "They are better than the one you cut out. There's only one squaw in that, and a pappoose. Here are ever so many. And look at the funny little children. How those things must hurt them! The pale-faces are cruel to their families."
Dolores look earnestly enough at the fashion plates. With all her ignorance she had seen enough in her day to understand more of them than the girls could. Once, long ago, when the band of Many Bears had been near one of the frontier "military posts," where United States troops were encamped, she had seen the beautiful "white squaws" of the officers, in their wonderful dresses and ornaments, and she knew that some of these were much like them. She could even help Ni-ha-be to understand it.
Rita had been silent a very long time. All the while the train had travelled nearly five miles. Now she suddenly exclaimed, "Oh, Ni-ha-be! Dolores!" And when they turned to look at her her face was perfectly radiant with triumph and pleasure.