Blue Sky, the pretty daughter of the Sioux chief, put on her best doeskin gown trimmed with elks’ teeth, and investing her favorite spotted pony with his beaded saddle-blanket, she went forth in company with one of her maiden friends. Soon two young warriors overtook the pair; and as they approached they covered their heads with their robes, exposing only the upper part of the face disguised with paint and the single eagle feather standing upright. One carried a bow and quiver full of arrows; the other, a war-club suspended from his right arm.
“Ah, hay, hun, hay!” saluted one of them; but the modest maidens said never a word! It was not their way to speak; only the gay calico ponies pranced about and sportively threw back their ears to snap at the horses of the two young men.
“‘Tis a brave welcome your horses are giving us!” he continued, while the two girls merely looked at one another with perfect understanding.
Presently Matoska urged his pony close to the Blue Sky’s side.
“It may be that I am overbold,” he murmured in her ear, “to repeat so soon my tale of love! I know well that I risk a reprimand, if not in words, then by a look or action!”
He paused to note the effect of his speech; but alas! it is the hard rule of savage courtship that the maiden may with propriety and dignity keep silence as long as she wishes, and it is often exasperatingly long.
“I have spoken to no maiden,” he resumed, “because I wished to win the war-bonnet before doing so. But to you I was forced to yield!” Again he paused, as if fearing to appear unduly hasty; but deliberate as were speech and manner, his eyes betrayed him. They were full of intense eagerness mingled with anxiety.
“Sometimes I have imagined that I am in the world with you alone, traveling over the prairie of life, or sitting in our lonely white teepee, as the oriole sits with his mate before their swaying home. Yet I seemed to be never lonely, because you were there!” He finished his plea, and with outward calmness awaited her reply.
The maiden had not lost a word, but she was still thinking. She thought that a man is much like the wind of the north, only pleasant and comfortable in midsummer! She feared that she might some time have to furnish all the fuel for their love’s fires; therefore she held her peace. Matoska waited for several minutes and then silently withdrew, bearing his disappointment with dignity.
Meanwhile the camp was astir with the returning youths and maidens, their horses’ sides fringed with the long meadow grass, singing plaintive serenades around the circular rows of teepees before they broke up for the night.