Harper's Young People, October 4, 1881 An Illustrated Weekly

"Look, Rita! Look!"

"What can it mean. Ni-ha-be?"

"See them all get down and walk around."

"They have found something in the grass."

"And they're hunting for more."

Rita leaned forward until her long hair fell upon the neck of the beautiful little horse she was riding, and looked with all her eyes.

"Hark! they are shouting."

"You could not hear them if they were."

"They look as if they were."

Ni-ha-be sat perfectly still in her silver-mounted saddle, although her spirited mustang pony pawed the ground and pulled on his bit as if he were in a special hurry to go on down the side of the mountain.

The two girls were of about the same size, and could not either of them have been over fifteen years old. They were both very pretty, very well dressed, and well mounted, and they could both speak that strange, rough, and yet musical language, but there was no other resemblance between them.

"Father is there, Rita."

"Can you see him?"

"Yes; and so is Red Wolf."

"Your eyes are wonderful. Everybody says they are."

Ni-ha-be might well be proud of her coal-black eyes, and of the fact that she could see so far and so well with them. It was not easy to say just how far away was that excited crowd of men down there in the valley. The air was so clear and the light so brilliant among those snow-capped mountain ranges that even things far off seemed sometimes close at hand.

For all that, there were not many pairs of eyes, certainly not many brown ones like Rita's, which could have looked as Ni-ha-be did from the pass into the faces of her father and brother, and recognized them at such a distance.

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.

There had been a camp there not long before, and the first discovery made by the foremost Apache who had ridden up to that spring was that it had not been a camp of his own people.

The prints of the hoofs of horses showed that they had been shod, and there are neither horseshoes nor blacksmiths among the red men of the Southwest.

The tracks left by the feet of men were not such as can be made by moccasins. There are no heels on moccasins, and no nails in the soles of them.

Even if there had been Indian feet in the boots, the toes would not have been turned out in walking. Only white men do that.

So much was plain at a mere glance, but there were a good many other things to be studied and interpreted before Many Bears and his followers could feel satisfied.

It was a good deal like reading a newspaper. Nobody tears one up until it has been read through, and the Apaches did not trample the ground around the spring until they had searched out all that the other trampling could tell them.

Then the dark-faced ferocious-looking warriors who had made the search all gathered around their chief, and, one after another, reported what they had found.

There had been a strong party of white men at that spot three days before. Three wagons drawn by mule-teams. Many spare mules. Twenty-five men who rode horses, besides the men who drove the wagons.

"Were they miners?"

Every warrior and chief was ready to say "No," at once.

"Traders?"

No, it could not have been a trading party.

"All right," said Many Bears, with a solemn shake of his gray head. "Blue coats. Cavalry. Come from Great Father at Washington. No stay in Apache country. Go right through. Not come back. Let them go."