“As yet nothing but sounds and scenes of love were in that little world; and the strong, terrible brutes knew not that they had fierce passions or the taste for blood; but Ki-ke-wee would stand before the grizzly bear and pluck his jaws and switch his fierce eyeballs until he learned to growl with pain, and then she would mock him; and when he growled louder she would mock him still, until at last he roared with rage and sprang upon the panther—for he feared Ki-ke-wee’s eye!—and the panther tasted blood and sprang to the battle fiercely. And now the tempest broke, and everything with claws and fangs howled in the savage discord. Ki-ke-wee clapped her hands and laughed. Mnemoia raised the enchantment of her song above it all, and it was stilled. Then Ki-ke-wee would tease the eagle and mock him till he screamed and dashed at the great vulture in his rage; and she would dance and shout for joy; and Mnemoia would quell it, then go aside and weep.
“The Wako loved the beautiful witch, and when he plead with her she would mock even him, and every day and every hour this mocking elf stirred some new passion, until at last even Mnemoia’s song had lost its charm, and the bear skulked in the deep thickets and shook them with his growl, and the panther moaned from out the forest, and the gaunt wolves snapped their white teeth and howled, and all the timid things fled away from these fierce voices; and battle, and blood, and death, were rife where love and peace had been. The birds scattered in affright and sung their new songs in snatches only; and hateful sounds of deadly passions, and the screams and wails of fear, resounded everywhere.
“Ki-ke-wee made a bow and poisoned the barbed arrow, and mocked the death-bleat of the milk-white fawn when the Wako shot it at her tempting. This was too much! Ah-i-wee-o cursed her and she fell. The Wako knelt over her and wept; and when the dissolving spasm seemed upon her, he covered his face with his hands and wailed aloud. A voice just above him wailed too! He looked up surprised; a strange bird with graceful form and sharp black spiteful eyes was mocking him! He looked down—Ki-ke-wee was gone; and the strange bird gaped its long bill hissing at him; and when it spread its wings to bound up from the twig in an ecstacy of passion, he knew by the broad white stripes across them that it was Ki-ke-wee!
“He found the neglected Mnemoia weeping in the forest; and soon after they scaled the cliffs and fled from that fair land to hide from Ki-ke-wee. But she has followed them and mocks their children yet, and we dare not slay her, for the wise men think she was the daughter of the Evil Spirit that poured the green fluid down the Wako’s throat, and that the same bad fire burns yet in our veins. Our hunters chasing the mountain-goat sometimes look from the bluffs into that lovely vale that lies in the bosom of the Rocky Mountain chain, but they never venture to go down!”
CHAPTER XIX.
SOME SELECT SCENES.
Some short glimpses of daily scenes may convey, perhaps, a clearer idea of how life sped now with Manton, amidst the new charms which it had gained. The whole man was rapidly changed; his habits of excess in wine-drinking were, in a great measure, thrown aside, and the hours he had thus wasted in stupifying madness, were given to the society and development of these fair children, that had thus come to him in blessing. He now knew no difference in his thought of them; they had grown to be twin-flowers to him, transfused with a most tender light of spring-dawn in his darkened heart. Yes, there it was—that little spot of light—he felt it warm, and slowly spread and waken in soft beams, tremulous and faint, along the ice-bound chaos where the life-floods met within him.
His brow would grow serene and lose its painful tension, as, hour by hour, he watched beside them, guiding their wayward pencils with his sure eye, to teach their yet irresolute wills and unaccustomed fingers to act together with that consciousness that always triumphs; and then, with the long evenings, came lessons in botany, or the eloquent discourse, half poetical, half rhapsodical, and all inspired, which led their young spirits forth, amidst the mysteries and beauties of the other kingdoms of the natural world. Or, when the stars came out, and their calm inspiration slid into his soul, he communed with them of higher themes—of aspirations holy, wise, and pure—of the heroic souls of art—of their pale, unmoved dedication, through dark, saddened years of neglect, obloquy, and want—of their glorious triumphs, their immortal bays, that time can never wither—until, with trembling lips and glistening eyes, they hung upon his words.
It was wonderful to see how quickly Elna wept, like an April shower, at any tender word or thought; but the great eyes of Moione only trembled like dark violets brimming with heavy dew. All the truth, the religion of Manton’s soul, was poured out at such times.
The door would sharply open—“Elna! Moione! go to bed!” This would be spoken in a low tone, evidently half-choked with rage, by the woman. Her bent form looming within the shadow of the entry, looks ghastly enough in her white gown, loose dark hair, and the greenish glitter of her oblique eye. The poor children rise, with a deep sigh from Moione over her broken dream, and a quick exclamation of petulant wrath from Elna—while Manton mutters an involuntary curse on the unwelcome intruder; and, as the light forms of the children recede before his vision and disappear in the dark passage, he shudders, unconsciously, as if a ghoul had disturbed him at a feast with angels.
Now, again, had he fallen back to hell. With a fierce outbreak of jealous fury, she would spring into the room, as if literally to devour him with talons and teeth; and, when but a few paces off, catching his cold, concentrated eye, she would stagger backwards, as if shot through the heart, toss her white arms wildly into the air, and, with head thrown back, utter, in a strange, choking, guttural screech—