“Yes,” was the whispered response. “I have known her well; she was a very queen for goodness, virtue, and truth among the Dacotahs.”
They found the Indian widow stretched upon the grave of her late lord and master. They thought that, worn out with suffering and watchfulness, she had cast herself down to sleep; and so she had. The poor woman had fallen into that sleep which knows no waking. She had passed from earth calmly and apparently without a struggle, for no traces of pain lingered on the pale-face—upturned, as if looking to the blue heaven above. With a broken heart she had followed her husband to the happy hunting-grounds, faithful even in death. By his side she was buried; and as the kind, tender-hearted frontiersman piled the last stone upon the rude monument that was to mark her grave, his eyes filled with tears, and he hoarsely whispered:
“Poor woman! May she be happier in heaven than she ever was on earth. I didn’t think I should ever have cried over a red-skin; but thar’s no use in denyin’ it now, and if she had lived. Waal, waal, she’s at rest.”
In sorrow and sadness of heart they returned to the plateau. In the freshness of that dewy morning, with Osse ’o again mounted on the snowy steed, for Esther would have it so, herself mounted on “Black Star,” and Waltermyer walking silently forward, they left the mountain and the lonely graves, never to tread again those rocky and dangerous fastnesses.
CHAPTER XVIII.
HOME.
A swift ride through the prairies brought Esther Morse with the two horsemen who had proved a sure escort, into her father’s camp. Two days and a night they had journeyed on from the mountain where Black Eagle and his wife lay sleeping. Danger is to love what the hot-house proves to a delicate plant—its blossoms spring into quick, vivid life, with little regard to time.
When the little party rode into Morse’s canvas settlement, there was no Indian in the group; yet the number was exactly the same as when it left the mountain—three, and no more. Osse ’o was there in his rich, savage dress, his noble person unchanged, but his complexion had grown fair, and in his eyes you saw the brooding tenderness with which young La Clide had regarded the first lady of his love. Never had the grand passion changed a man as Osse ’o was changed after he knew how near Esther had been to forgiving the savage character he had assumed. His disgust of civilized life died a gentle death; his taste for prairie adventures disappeared. He was the betrothed husband of Esther Morse; the bereaved father had only recovered his child to give her away again.
It was settled that the party should turn back from the Oregon trail, and seek the first white settlement where the marriage ceremony could be performed. Morse sent his followers on their way, made wealthy by the property with which he had intended to open a new settlement. So with wagons well crowded with stock and tents, the train moved one way, while the few persons in whom we are most interested retraced their steps toward civilization.
At Laramie a quiet marriage service made Esther Morse the wife of young La Clide. To this point Waltermyer had accompanied his friends. Perhaps he had intended to leave them there; but if so, his great heart failed him; and he journeyed on in their company till school-houses and steeples ceased to be a novelty to him.
They reached the bank of the giant Missouri, where its turbulent tide rushes grandly into the “father of waters.” The boat that was to bear them away was already puffing at its wharf, when the father and husband wrung the hand of Waltermyer, and tendered a home with them in exchange for his prairie life.