“Let the daughter of the pale chief sleep. Let her banish the black thoughts from her heart. She would go again to the moving wigwams of her people. It shall be so. But first she must renew her strength by slumber. The gens du lac will keep guard, and she may rest safely as if her mother rocked. When the sun is high, and birds that love the bright gold of noon are singing their songs of praise to the good Manitou, then will Osse ’o call her and the trail shall begin.”
“Thanks, a thousand thanks. Yes; I am very weary. But my poor, poor father.”
“There will be joy again in his heart. Sleep! The herbs of the forest are sweet as the rose-scented gardens of the East, where the honey-bee wanders and humming-birds fold their wings in the cups of flowers. Sleep, lady, sleep; the Wahkan Tanka, the Supreme Spirit of earth, air and water, ever guards the pure in heart. Sleep.”
With these words the Indian left her. She watched his tall, graceful form as it passed from the cavern, and was seated at the entrance with the face turned away. Faint and worn out, she lay down in the couch of fresh pine-branches and strove to sleep, but wild fancies haunted her tired brain, and she could not hush them into slumber while the strange man’s shadow fell across the mouth of the cave. Who could he be, with the garb of a savage and graceful courtesy which marks the highest civilization? Truly, he was an Indian, but with that voice, those gentle words, it was difficult to think of him as a savage. He had been kind to her as a brother, and evidently meant her well. Or—her heart bounded again, as if serpent-stung—could all this be treachery? She put this idea aside. Then the scene changed and she thought of her father, of his agony at her loss, of his brave heart but aged limbs toiling on the mountain trail to rescue her, of his patient sufferings and utter forgetfulness of self. But again she looked and saw Osse ’o still seated as before, but with his head bowed upon his hands. Could he, also, have bitter thoughts? Did the heart of an Indian ever feel the fierce passions that cause the sufferings she was enduring?
“Oh, shame! shame!” almost burst from her lips, as she reflected how nobly he had acted, and then her folded arms received the aching head, and she softly wept herself to sleep.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE DACOTAH’S CAMP—LOVE’S TRIUMPH.
Surprised as the Black Eagle was at the escape of his fair prisoner, he was too free from the superstitions of his people for any idea that she had disappeared by supernatural means. But for the certainty that Osse ’o had been thrown over the precipice by his own hands, to meet a death which no mortal power could avert, he might have suspected that singular man of being the agent of her escape; but no human agency was apparent here. The girl must have extricated herself in the height of the melée, and urged her horse off in wild desperation. Ignorant of the trail, she must still be wandering in the mountains, and to discover and bring her back was his first business. He waited, however, to see such of his band as had been wounded properly cared for, as that was a duty no Indian chief could delay with impunity. Then, leaving a guard to protect them from the wild animals that a scent of blood had drawn prowling to the neighborhood, he gathered up the rest of his force, and took the backward trail.
It was not difficult to find the trail, or, for a time, follow its windings. But when it had led him into the most intricate fastnesses of the mountain, the thunder-storm burst out in its furious wrath, and he stood in the depth of the wilderness awe-struck and trembling with abject fear. The angry Manitou was howling fierce wrath upon him for the cowardly murder he had done. Struck with terror by this idea, the stout warrior of the forest fell upon his face and shrunk his limbs together, groveling close to the earth, in dread of the fiery arrows that came shooting through the leaves, while the mountain on which he lay reverberated with thunder-bursts. As every battle-note of the storm swept over him, he clung closer to the earth, till the eagle-plume on his head was trailed in mud, and his rich barbarian garments were dripping with rain. When the telegraph of heaven sent its subtle fluid athwart the face of the mountain, a cold shiver ran through him, and he cried aloud in his wild Indian tongue, pleading for mercy. His only answer was a fresh burst of thunder, more vivid gleams of lightning, a wilder turmoil among the giant forest-trees, which brought him up from the earth in a fierce panic. When this fresh outbreak of the storm had gone howling off through the wilderness, he sunk crouching to the earth again, and in the darkness and drifting rain, blinded, chilled, and shocked to the soul—a very wreck of savage pride and savage perfidy.
“The Wahkan Tanka is angry with his children,” whispered a savage, who sat near him. “He has sent the dark-winged spirits of the evil one to upheave the strong mountains, and topple down the lofty cliffs.”
“The spirits of the Wahkan Shecha are here!” replied the Black Eagle, shaking in all his limbs, when a fiercer crash burst upon their ears, and a tree was splintered and fell in blazing ruins almost at their feet, lightning-struck, and illuminating all the rocky points of the mountain.