She delays no longer. A knife-blade glitters for an instant in the moonlight—and Cloudy Sky is dead. Strange, is it not, that the thunder birds flap so heavily along the west at that moment and a peal of laughter sounds from the lake? She washes the blood from the blade, steals to her father's lodge, and pretends to sleep. In the morning she is loud in her grief when it is made known to her that the medicine-man was no more, and the doer of the deed is never discovered. In time her wan face gets its color and when the leaves begin to fall Red Deer returns and weds her.
They seem to be happy for a time, and have two sons who promise to be famous hunters, but consumption fastens on Red Deer and he dies far from the village. The sons are shot by enemies, and while their bodies are on their way to Harpstenah's lodge she, too, is stricken dead by lightning. The spirit of Cloudy Sky had rejoined the thunder birds, and the water manitou had promised falsely.
PROVIDENCE HOLE
The going of white men into the prairies aroused the same sort of animosity among the Indians that they have shown in other parts of the country when retiring before the advance of civilization, and many who tried to plant corn on the rolling lands of Iowa, though they did no harm to the red men, paid for the attempt with their lives. Such was the fate of a settler who had built his cabin on the Wyoming hills, near Davenport. While working in his fields an arrow, shot from a covert, laid him low, and his scalp was cut away to adorn the belt of a savage. His little daughter, left alone, began to suffer from fears and loneliness as the sun went lower and lower, and when it had come to its time of setting she put on her little bonnet and went in search of him. As she gained the slope where he had last been seen, an Indian lifted his head from the grass and looked at her.
Starting back to run, she saw another behind her. Escape seemed hopeless, and killing or captivity would have been her lot had not a crevice opened in the earth close to where she stood. Dropping on hands and knees she hastily crawled in, and found herself in what seemed to be an extensive cavern. Hardly had she time to note the character of the place when the gap closed as strangely as it had opened and she was left in darkness. Not daring to cry aloud, lest Indians should hear her, she sat upright until her young eyes could keep open no longer; then, lying on a mossy rock, she fell asleep. In the morning the sun was shining in upon her and the way to escape was open. She ran home, hungry, but thankful, and was found and cared for by neighbors. "Providence Hole" then passed into the legends of the country. It has closed anew, however.
THE SCARE CURE
Early in this century a restless Yankee, who wore the uninspiring name of Tompkinson, found his way into Carondelet—or Vuide Poche, the French settlement on the Mississippi since absorbed by St. Louis—and cast about for something to do. He had been in hard luck on his trip from New England to the great river. His schemes for self-aggrandizement and the incidental enlightenment and prosperity of mankind had not thriven, and it was largely in pity that M. Dunois gave shelter to the ragged, half-starved, but still jaunty and resourceful adventurer. Dunois was the one man in the place who could pretend to some education, and the two got on together famously.
As soon as Tompkinson was in clothes and funds—the result of certain speculations—he took a house, and hung a shingle out announcing that there he practised medicine. Now, the fellow knew less about doctoring than any village granny, but a few sick people that he attended had the rare luck to get well in spite of him, and his reputation expanded to more than local limits in consequence. In the excess of spirits that prosperity created he flirted rather openly with a number of virgins in Carondelet, to the scandal of Dunois, who forbade him his house, and of the priest, who put him under ban.
For the priest he cared nothing, but Dunois's anger was more serious—for the only maid of all that he really loved was Marie Dunois, his daughter. He formally proposed for her, but the old man would not listen to him. Then his "practice" fell away. The future looked as dark for him as his recent past had been, until a woman came to him with a bone in her throat and begged to be relieved. His method in such cases was to turn a wheel-of-fortune and obey it. The arrow this time pointed to the word, "Bleeding."
He grasped a scalpel and advanced upon his victim, who, supposing that he intended to cut her throat open to extract the obstacle, fell a-screaming with such violence that the bone flew out. What was supposed to be his ready wit in this emergency restored him to confidence, and he was able to resume the practice that he needed so much. In a couple of years he displayed to the wondering eyes of Dunois so considerable an accumulation of cash that he gave Marie to him almost without the asking, and, as Tompkinson afterward turned Indian trader and quadrupled his wealth by cheating the red men, he became one of the most esteemed citizens of the West.