Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/328

254 She said: "The girl will come to the berry-patch every day until we go there for her, provided the Indians with whom she lived would let her go, that she might be there to-morrow, and she might not come till the next day. The girl is willing to go with you, and we will go to the berry-patch to-morrow and wait till she comes."

The next morning the three of us started out ostensibly to pick berries.

After we were out of sight of the village the young Indian man took my Pinto horse and started in the direction of Fort Yuma, it being understood that he was to stop about half way between Fort Yuma and the place where we would meet the girl. He was to wait there until the middle of the afternoon, and if we were not there by that time he was to return to camp.

Nawasa and I went on to the berry-patch, but the white girl was not there. We had not waited long, however, until Nawasa looked up and said in Spanish, "There she comes now."

I looked and saw the girl running. She did not discover us until she was within about fifty yards of us, and when she saw us she stopped very suddenly and hung her head.

I did not know at the time whether she was ashamed or whether she had been with the Indians so long that she was really afraid of a white person; but Nawasa was not long in getting to her, and the girl would look at me and then look back, as though she had a notion to go back to the Apache village.

When I rode up to where she was, she dropped her head and would not look up for some little time.