“Here is a bit of cloth. Mainutung sent it to the Woman of the Bright River.”
She took the scrap in her fingers and looked at it long. Then she looked at the Humming-Bird and seemed to understand. Mainutung wished to give his daughter in marriage, but had no present for the bridegroom. The best he could do was to demand Keego for the Bear, and she recognized Mainutung’s right to demand it.
“My son will pay his debts. Once I told him how he came upon the earth, but he has forgotten. It was in the early spring, forty-nine years ago. We had been to Mackinac and were returning on the ice. I was in a sled with Wayish-kee, my first-born, and my husband Ussaba was drawing the sled. My son Ojeeg was not yet born, but I was nearing my time. At Point au Frenes it began to snow. I laughed and told the baby that Pup-puk-e-wiss was gathering hay to keep his children warm. But the snow turned to sleet and blinded us.”
Jean translated this long speech in a low voice, while the old mother clutched the piece of cloth to her breast.
“I sang no more, for I was in pain. I shut my teeth. Ussaba staggered on, unable to see a rod before him. The wind howled like ghosts. Then the ice broke beneath his feet, and he went in. He clung to the ice and cried, ‘Au secours!’ I was frightened, and my child was born.
“I thought my man would die and my child would die. All was dark before my eyes. Then I felt the sled move back. I could hear some one helping Ussaba out of the water. I felt warm young hands, strong like a man’s, gentle like a woman’s. Then I went to sleep.
“When I woke up, I was lying on a nice smooth bed. It was made of a horse’s hair, and it sprung like a bed of boughs. My new baby was on my arm, safe and warm. Ussaba lay on the floor near the fire, his feet bound up with linen. At the foot of my bed sat Mainutung. His face was smooth as any Indian’s, and his eyes were laughing at me.
“How far can a man hear from the north when such a storm is blowing from the west? He cannot hear a moose bellow ten rods off. Yet my son’s baby voice was heard for half a mile. Now he hears the voice of Mainutung asking payment—an island for a life.”
Ojeeg rose to his feet and spoke with equal dignity in the same language.
“Ningah, I am not deaf. When the Keen Ear needs Keego for himself, he shall have it. When he needs these hands, he shall have them. But this thief is not Mainutung.”