Neither had the Sun Maid paid them any attention, for she had always been accustomed to meeting the savages both at the Fort and on her rides abroad with any of her garrison friends; so she deliberately sipped her breakfast, pausing now and then to arrange the pouch-like petals of some favored blossoms and to converse with them in her fantastic fashion, quite believing that they heard and understood.
"Did the nice Feather-man bring you all softly, little posies? Aren"t you glad you"ve come to live with Kitty? Other Mother will give you all some breakfast, too, of coldest water in the brook. Then you will sit up straight and hold your heads high. That"s the way the children do when my Captain takes the book with the green cover and makes them spell things out of it. Oscar doesn"t like the green book. It makes him wriggle his nose--so; but Margaret is as fond of it as I am of you. Oh, dear! Some day, all my mothers say, I, too, will have to sit and look on the printing and spell words. I can, though, even now.
Listen, posies. D-o-g--that"s--that"s--I guess it"s "cat." Isn"t it, posies? But you don"t have to spell things, do you? I needn"t either.
Not to-day, and maybe not to-morrow day. Because, you see, I runned away. Oh, how I did run! So fast, so far, before I found your little sisters, posies, dear. Then I guess I went to sleep, without ever saying my "Now I lay me," and the black Feather-man came, and--that"s all."
Wahneenah had gone back to her household duties, for she had many things on hand that day. Not the least, to make her neglected tepee a brighter, fitter home for this stray sunbeam which the Great Spirit had sent to her out of the sky, and into which He had breathed the soul of her lost one. Indistinctly, she heard the murmuring of the babyish voice at the threshold and occasionally caught some of the words it uttered. These served but to establish her in her belief that the child had more than mortal senses; else how should she fancy that the blossoms would hear and understand her prattle?
"Listen. She talks to the weeds as the white men talk to us. She is a witch," said the Man-Who-Kills to his neighbor in the circle, the White Pelican.
"She is only a child of the pale-faces. The Black Partridge has set her among us to move our hearts to pity."
"The White Pelican was ever a coward," snorted the Man-Who-Kills.
But the younger warrior merely turned his head and smiled contemptuously. Then he critically scrutinized the ill-proportioned figure of the ugly-tempered brave. The fellow"s crooked back, abnormally long arms and short legs were an anomaly in that race of stalwart Indians, and the soul of the savage corresponded to his outward development. For his very name had been given him in derision; because, though he always threatened and always sneaked after his prey, he had never been known to slay an enemy in open combat.
"That is as the tomahawks prove. The scalps hang close on the pole of my wigwam," finally remarked the Pelican.
"Ugh! But there was never such a scalp as that of the papoose yonder.
It shall hang above all others in _my_ tepee. I have said it."
"Having said it, you may unsay it. That is no human fleece upon that small head. She is sacred."
"How? Is the White Pelican a man of dreams?"
The elder brave also used a tone of contempt, though not with marked success. His thought reverted to the night before, when the chief had stood beside the council fire holding the sleeping child in his arms.
Her wonderful yellow hair, fine as spun cobwebs and almost as light, had blown over the breast of Black Partridge like a cloud, and it had glistened and shimmered in the firelight as if possessed of restless life. The little figure was clothed in white, as the Fort mothers had fancied best suited their charge"s fairness, even though the fabric must of necessity be coa.r.s.e; and this garment likewise caught the glow of the dancing flames till it seemed luminous in itself.
As an idle rumor spreads and grows among better cultured people so superst.i.tion held in power these watchful Indians. Said one:
"The father of his tribe has met a spirit on the prairie and brought it to our village. Is the deed for good or evil?"
This was what the men in the semi-circle had come to find out. So they relapsed again into silence, but kept a fixed gaze upon the indifferent child before them. She continued her playing and feeding as unconsciously as if she, the flowers, and the sunshine, were quite alone. Some even fancied that they could hear the orchids whispering in return; and it was due to that morning"s incident that, thereafter, few among the Pottawatomies would lightly bruise or break a blossom which they then learned to believe was gifted with a sensate life.
But presently a sibilant "Hst!" ran the length of the squatting line, and warriors who feared not death for themselves felt their muscles stiffen under a tension of dread as they saw the slow, sinuous approach of a poisonous reptile to the child on the mat; and the thought of each watcher was the same:
"Now, indeed, the test--spirit or mortal?"
The snake glided onward, its graceful body showing through the gra.s.s, its head slightly upraised, and its intention unmistakable.
An Indian can be the most silent thing on earth, if he so wills, and at once it was as if all that row of red men had become stone. Even Wahneenah, in the wigwam behind, was startled by the stillness, and cautiously tiptoed forward to learn its cause. Then her heart, like theirs, hushed its beating and she rigidly awaited the outcome.
Only the child herself was undisturbed. She did not cease the slow lifting of the clay spoon to her lips, and between sips she still prattled and gurgled in sheer content.
"Kitty is most fulled up, "cause she did have so big a breakfast, she did. Nice Other Mother did give it me. I wish my bunny rabbit had not runned away. Then he could have some. Never mind. Here comes a beau"ful cunning snake. I did see one two times to my Fort. Bad Jacky soldier did kill him dead, and that made Kitty cry. Come, pretty thing, do you want Kitty"s breakfast? Then you may have it every bit."
So she tossed her hair from her eyes and sat with uplifted spoon while the moccasin glided up to the mat and over it, till its mouth could reach the shallow bowl in the child"s lap.
"Oh! the funny way it eats. Poor thing! It hasn"t any spoon. It might have Kitty"s, only----"
The bright eyes regarded the rudely shaped implement and the mouth it was to feed; then the little one"s ready laughter bubbled forth.
"Funny Kitty! How could it hold a spoon was bigger "n itself--when its hands have never grown? Other pretty one, that Jacky killed, that didn"t have its hands, either. Hush, snaky. Did I make you afraid, I laugh so much? Now I will keep very, very still till you are through.
Then you may go back home to your childrens, and tell them all about your nice breakfast. Where do you live? Is it in a Fort, as Kitty does? Oh, I forgot! I did promise to keep still. Quite, quite still, till you go way away."
So she did; while not only the red-skins, but all nature seemed to pause and watch the strange spectacle; for the light breeze that had come with the sunrise now died away, and every leaf stood still in the great heat which descended upon the earth.
It seemed to Wahneenah, watching in a very motherly fear, and to the squatting braves, in their increasing awe, as if hours pa.s.sed while the child and the reptile remained messmates. But at length the dangerous serpent was satisfied and, turning slowly about, retreated whence it came.
Then Mistress Kitty lifted her voice and called merrily:
"Come, Other Mother! Come and see. I did have a lovely, lovely creepy one to eat with me. He did eat so funny Kitty had to laugh. Then I remembered that my other peoples to my Fort tell all the children to be good and I was good, wasn"t I? Say, Other Mother, my posies want some water."
"They shall have it, White Papoose, my Girl-Child-Who-Is-Safe. She whom the Great Spirit has restored nothing can harm."
Then she led the Sun Maid away, after she had gathered up every flower, not daring that anything beloved of her strange foster-child should be neglected.
The watching Indians also rose and returned into the village from that point on its outskirts where Wahneenah"s wigwam stood. They spoke little, for in each mind the conviction had become firm that the Sun Maid was, in deed and truth, a being from the Great Beyond, safe from every mortal hurt.
Yet still, the Man-Who-Kills fingered the edge of his tomahawk with regret and remarked in a manner intended to show his great prowess:
"Even a mighty warrior cannot fight against the powers of the sky."
After a little, one, less credulous than his fellows, replied boastfully:
"Before the sun shall rise and set a second time the white scalp will hang at my belt."
n.o.body answered the boast till at length a voice seemed to come out of the ground before them, and at its first sound every brave stood still to listen for that which was to follow. All recognized the voice, even the strangers from the most distant settlements. It was heard in prophecy only, and it belonged to old Katasha, the One-Who-Knows.
"No. It is not so. Long after every one of this great Pottawatomie nation shall have pa.s.sed out of sight, toward the place where the day dies, the hair of the Sun Maid"s head shall be still shining. Its gold will have turned to snow, but generation after generation shall bow down to it in honor. Go. The road is plain. There is blood upon it, and some of this is yours. But the scalp of the Sun Maid is in the keeping of the Great Spirit. It is sacred. It cannot be harmed. Go."
Then the venerable woman, who had risen from her bed upon the ground to utter her message, returned to her repose, and the warriors filed past her with bowed heads and great dejection of spirit. In this mood they joined another company about the dead council fire, and in angry resentment listened to the speech of the Black Partridge as he pleaded with them for the last time.
"For it is the last. This day I make one more journey to the Fort, and there I will remain until you join me. We have promised safe escort for our white neighbors through the lands of the hostile tribes who dare not wage war against us. The white man trusts us. He counts us his friends. Shall we keep our promise and our honor, or shall we become traitors to the truth?"
It was Shut-Hand who answered for his tribesmen:
"It is the pale-face who is a traitor to honesty. The goods which our Great Father gave him in trust for his red children have been destroyed. The white soldiers have forgotten their duty and have taught us to forget ours. When the sun rises on the morrow we will join the Black Partridge at the Fort by the great water, and we will do what seems right in our eyes. The Black Partridge is our father and our chief. He must not then place the good of our enemies before the good of his own people. We have spoken."
So the great Indian, who was more n.o.ble than his clansmen, went out from among them upon a hopeless errand. This time he did not make his journey on foot, but upon the back of his fleetest horse; and the medal he meant to relinquish was wrapped in a bit of deerskin and fastened to his belt.
"Well, at least the Sun Maid will be safe. When the braves, with the squaws and children, join their brothers at the camp, Wahneenah will remain at Muck-otey-pokee; as should every other woman of the Pottawatomie nation, were I as powerful in reality as I appear. It is the squaws who urge the men to the darkest deeds. Ugh! What will be must be. Tchtk! Go on!"
But the bay horse was already travelling at its best, slow as its pace seemed to the Black Partridge.
CHAPTER III.