“It was there I first saw him, mother.”
“Listen to me, Tahmeroo: were I to command you never again to see this man, could you obey me?”
The young Indian started from her mother’s arms, and the fire of her dark eyes flashed even in the half-smothered light.
“Never see him? What, tear away all this light from my own heart? Obey? No, mother, no. Put me out from my father’s lodge—make me a squaw of burden, the lowest woman of our tribe—give me to the tomahawk, to the hot fire—but ask me not to rend the life from my bosom. The white blood which my heart drank from yours must curdle that of the Indian when his child gives or takes love at the bidding of anything but her own will! No, mother, I could not obey—I would not.”
Catharine Montour was struck dumb with astonishment. Was she, the despotic ruler of a fierce war-tribe, to be braved by her own child? The creature she had loved and cherished with an affection so deep and passionate—had she turned rebellious to her power? Her haughty spirit aroused itself; the gladiator broke from her eyes as they were bent on the palpitating and half-recumbent form of Tahmeroo.
The girl did not shrink from the fierce gaze, but met it with a glance of resolute daring. The young eaglet had begun to plume its wing! There was something of wild dignity in her voice and gesture, which assorted well with the curbless strength of her mother’s spirit.
Catharine Montour had studied the human heart as a familiar book, and she knew that it would be in vain to contend with the spirit so suddenly aroused in the strength of its womanhood. She felt that her power over that heart must hereafter be one of love unmixed with fear—an imperfect and a divided power. The heart of the strong woman writhed under the conviction, but she stretched herself on the couch without a word of expostulation. Her own fiery spirit had sprung to rapid growth in the bosom of her child; passions akin to those buried in her experience had shot up, budded and blossomed, in a night time. The stern mother trembled when she thought of the fruit which, in her own life, had turned to ashes in the ripening.
When Tahmeroo awoke in the morning the lodge was empty. Her mother had left the encampment at early dawn.
CHAPTER VI
THE MISSIONARY’S CABIN
The history of Wyoming is interwoven with that of the Indian missionary whose paternal care had so long protected the family on Monockonok Island. Like Zinzendorf, his life was one errand of mercy, alike to the heathen and the believer. For years he had served as a link of union between the savage life of the woods and the civilization of the plains.