“Below the lodge,” pursued Ahmo, “there stand two willow trees. Mahaska has not forgotten them.”
It was not likely; as a child she had played under their shadow; as a girl she had sat there weaving her wild visions; often in her sleep had she heard the rustle of the long branches as they swayed to and fro, to awaken, suddenly, almost believing for an instant that the events of the past had been a dream, and that she was still a girl in the old lodge on Orleans Island.
“Mahaska will find a little knot at the foot of the lower tree; let her dig it away and push back the bark—she will see a box that was Chileli’s, Mahaska’s mother—it is full of gold.”
Mahaska was not greatly surprised; she knew that in her mother’s lifetime Frontenac had paid a large sum to old Ahmo, but she always averred that it had been squandered among the tribe.
“How much gold has Ahmo there?” she asked.
The woman named the sum—it was much larger than Mahaska expected, and the avaricious greed in her soul woke at once.
“But why did Ahmo leave it there?” she demanded.
The woman returned some vague answer.
“Mahaska can get it,” she said.
“But how? It will not be easy for Mahaska now to go so near Quebec. It would have been better to have brought the money when Ahmo came on to join the tribe.”