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Show Page 12 mother had called the Gazette an "awful" magazine and had forbidden her to read it. So, of course, Ann read it. But it wasn't long before a "snoopy" housekeeper found where the Gazette was hidden. She immediately papered the bunkhouse walls with it, pasting the pages upside down much to Ann's and the cowpunchers' dismay, for it made reading very difficult. There was another place. "Queen Ann" liked to visit. Years before, the Ute Indians had buried their dead in trees. A family friend showed Ann and her brother, Sam, where the body of an Indian papoose had been placed in the top of a cedar tree. Tiny moccasin tracks had been chipped into rocks and pointed to where the tiny skeleton lay, wrapped in cedar bark and rabbit fur. The children, knowing this was a place sacred to the Indians, would not so much as touch the mysterious bundle and told no one else of its existence. But someone found the burial tree and carried off the baby Indian's skeleton. Ann was angered that some "wickedly unscrupulous vandal" would dare remove what she thought of as her secret treasure. Only the thought of the little footprints chipped deeply into the rock, never to be erased, gave her any comfort. |