"You are late. Come in! Tell me what it is!"
Rita was as eager now as Ni-ha-be had been with her father and Red Wolf; but even while she was talking Dolores pulled them both into the lodge.
"Talking leaves!"
Not Many Bears himself could have treated those poor magazines with greater contempt than did the portly dame from Mexico. To be sure, it was many a long year since she had been taken a prisoner and brought across the Mexican border, and reading had not been among the things she had learned before coming.
"Rita can tell us all they say, by-and-by, Mother Dolores."
"Let her, then. Ugh!"
She turned page after page, in a doubtful way, as if it were quite possible one of them might bite her, but suddenly her whole manner changed.
"Ugh!"
"Rita," exclaimed Ni-ha-be, "the leaves have spoken to her."
She had certainly kissed one of them. Then she made a quick motion with one hand across her brow and breast.