He looked at her in sorrowful surprise.
“Is Mahaska in haste to quit the chief?” he asked. “He has been gone so many days, and she sends him from her now.”
She made an impatient gesture.
“Gi-en-gwa-tah must pay the penalty of his greatness,” she said; “is there a chief in the tribe that would not obey Mahaska’s wishes to be in his place? Mahaska hears voices—she must obey them.”
Without another word she left him alone, so full of sad thoughts after the triumph he had expected, that his heart was chilled to the core.
CHAPTER V.
THE PALACE AND ITS FURNITURE.
The chief’s love for his wife was a feeling so powerful that all others had fallen into insignificance beside it. To please and gratify her were the highest wishes he had, and, in spite of her white blood, her education, she might well have been proud of his love.
His personal advantages were very great; he was one of the handsomest men in the tribe, a bold, manly type of beauty, and had always been regarded as the most prominent among the young chiefs. He was open and honest to a degree astonishing in an Indian, with a regard for his word which no temptation could have forced him to break, his whole character presenting a strange contrast to that of Mahaska, whose highest action was dictated by craft, and whose promises were only meant to deceive.
When she first came among them she had ordered the building of a stone mansion, by the lake, which she styled her palace, and had carried out her plans in spite of all difficulties.
“Where should the queen live?” she asked. “Is Mahaska a squaw that Gi-en-gwa-tah should give her a bark wigwam? Yonder by the lake stands the unfinished walls of her lodge; the queen will not have full faith in the chief until he urges on her wishes and makes his lazy people toil to complete it.” She would have no further discussion, and anxious to gratify her the chief urged on the work with new zeal and haste, and every morning when Mahaska looked out upon it, she could see her new mansion assuming habitable shape. At length the palace, as she loved to call it, was completed—the wonder and admiration of the whole tribe, who had labored so faithfully in its construction.