An Apache Queen

In the slant of the evening sunshine a young girl, an Indian, was
crouching among the bare rocks at the edge of a steep and rugged
descent. One tawny little hand, shapely in spite of scratches, was
uplifted to her brows, shading her keen and restless eyes against the
glare. In the other hand, the right, she held a little, circular
pocket-mirror, cased in brass, and held it well down in the shade.
Only the tangle of her thick, black hair and the top of her head could
be seen from the westward side. Her slim young body was clothed in a
dark-blue, well-made garment, half sack, half skirt, with long, loose
trousers of the same material. There was fanciful embroidery of bead
and thread about the throat. There was something un-Indian about the
cut and fashion of the garments that suggested civilized and feminine
supervision.

The very way she wore her hair, parted and rolling back,
instead of tumbling in thick, barbaric "bang" into her eyes, spoke of
other than savage teaching; and the dainty make of her moccasins; the
soft, pliant folds of the leggins that fell, Apache fashion, about her
ankles, all told, with their beadwork and finish, that this was no
unsought girl of the tribespeople. Even the sudden gesture with which,
never looking back, she cautioned some follower to keep down, spoke
significantly of rank and authority. It was a chief's daughter that
knelt peering intently over the ledge of rocks toward the black
shadows of the opposite slope. It was Natzie, child of a warrior
leader revered among his people, though no longer spared to guide
them--Natzie, who eagerly, anxiously searched the length of the dark
gorge for sign or signal, and warned her companion to come no further.