She was leading and half-dragging something—was it a dog or a wolf? Wahceta sprang forward to take the child in her arms. "Get behind, mother, and push," said little White Doe. "It's a white doe and I've held it all night for fear it would get away! Push hard, mother, dear, and we will get it in the teepee and tie it with green withes, and it will become gentle, and bring us all good luck."
The child had discovered this white fawn with its mother, feeding near a salt-lick. White Doe lay on a rock above the spring, waiting for the deer to come up close. There the girl waited for hours. She knew that at dusk the deer would come to the spring.
Sure enough, her patience was suddenly rewarded. She leaped from her rock and pinned the white fawn fast. The old deer disappeared into the forest. The girl held on to her prize. It struck her with its forefeet, but she held it close. By and by, tired out, the fawn lay still and rested entwined in the girl's arms. Now came the test—to get it home! She succeeded.
In the teepee of Wahceta, the animal was fed, caressed and cared for.
It grew docile, and in a few days followed its little mistress about wherever she went. The Indians looked on in half-dread, with superstitious awe.
"All the wild animals would be as tame as this if you were not so cruel to them," she said. "You fear the wolves and bears and so you kill them!"
To prove her point she began to hunt the forests for young bears and cub wolves. She found several, and brought them home, making household friends of them. And still more did the Indians marvel. So the days went by then, as the days go by now, and White Doe grew into gorgeous, glowing girlhood.
Her ability to run, climb, shoot with bow and arrow, to see, to hear, to revel in Nature, gave her a lithe, strong, tall and beautiful form and an alert mind. Of her birth she knew nothing, save that she was descended from another race—a race of half-gods, the Indians said. White Doe believed it, and her pride of pedigree was supreme.
The other children, dark as smoked copper, stood around clothed in their black hair—and little else—hair as black as the raven's wing.