“No one can help me but you. If you do not help me, I can live no longer. My brother, the daughter of the white-haired chief must not go into the lodge of Good Ax. I must take her away from him. I must take her away from the Blackfeet, and restore her to her people.”
“The Great Spirit has surely deprived my brother of his senses. He speaks of something that can not be done.”
“It can be done, and it must be done. It can easily be done with your help. Will you not help me?”
White Shield shook his head mournfully.
“Then I must die. I have pledged my word to the white maiden. I have never yet broken my word, and, if I fail to keep it now, I can live no longer.”
“Let my brother follow me,” said White Shield, as he arose, with troubled looks, and walked out of the lodge.
Wilder followed him through the village, and out into the hills that lay to the westward. The young warrior went on swiftly and in silence, until he came to the brink of a precipice, that reached down, full three hundred feet in a perpendicular line, to the plain below. Here he stopped, and turned to his companion, with outstretched hand pointing downward.
“Let my brother ask me to throw myself from this rock,” said he, “and I will do it. I am ready to die for my brother, when he bids me go to the spirit-land; but he asks more than death. If I should do what he asks me to do, I must betray my people, and must leave them forever; for I should be cast out from among them, and even my father and my brothers would seek to kill me.”
Wilder exhausted his arguments upon his friend, telling him that, if such a step were necessary, he would be no loser by severing his connection with the tribe, as he would be taken to the village of the white men, where he would be shown wonders without end, such as he could never have believed to be possible. The warrior sadly shook his head, and begged his brother to order him to throw himself from the cliff.