"What is it? Have you found either of them?"
"I can do it! I have done it!"
"What have you done?"
"It is a story talk. Big lie about it all, such as the Apache braves tell at the camp-fire when they are too lazy to hunt. I have read it all."
"Is it a good talk?"
"Let me tell it. I can say it all in Apache words."
That was not the easiest thing in the world to do. It would have been impossible, if the short story which Rita had found had not been of the simplest kind—only about hunters following chamois in the Alps and tumbling into snow-drifts, and being found and helped by great, wise, benevolent St. Bernard dogs.
There were mountains in sight of the girls now that helped make it real, and among them were big-horn antelopes as wild as the chamois, and with very much the same habits. There were snow-drifts up there, too, for they could see the white peaks glisten in the sinking sun. It was all better than the talk of the braves around the winter camp-fires; and, besides, there were the pictures of the dogs and of the chamois. Neither Ni-ha-be nor Dolores uttered a word until Rita had rapidly translated that "story talk" from beginning to end.
"Oh, Rita! are there any more talks like that?"
"Maybe. I don't know. Most of them are very long. Big words, too—more than I can hear."