‘I met some one in the village who lives in my country, and he told me that my mother is very, very ill, and if I do not go to her at once she will be dead before I arrive. I will return as soon as I can, and now farewell.’ And she set forth in the direction of the mountains. But this story was not true; she knew nothing about her mother, only she wanted an excuse to go home and tell her family that their prophecies had come true, and that the buffalo was dead.
Balancing her basket on her head, she walked along, and directly she had left the village behind her she broke out into the song of the Rover of the Plain, and at last, at the end of the day, she came to the group of huts where her parents lived. Her friends all ran to meet her, and, weeping, she told them that the buffalo was dead.
This sad news spread like lightning through the country, and the people flocked from far and near to bewail the loss of the beast who had been their pride.
‘If you had only listened to us,’ they cried, ‘he would be alive now. But you refused all the little girls we offered you, and would have nothing but the buffalo. And remember what the medicine-man said: “If the buffalo dies you die also!”’
So they bewailed their fate, one to the other, and for a while they did not perceive that the girl’s husband was sitting in their midst, leaning his gun against a tree. Then one man, turning, beheld him, and bowed mockingly.
‘Hail, murderer! hail! you have slain us all!’
The young man stared, not knowing what he meant, and answered, wonderingly:
‘I shot a buffalo; is that why you call me a murderer?’
‘A buffalo—yes; but the servant of your wife! It was he who carried the wood and drew the water. Did you not know it?’
‘No; I did not know it,’ replied the husband in surprise. ‘Why did no one tell me? Of course I should not have shot him!’