Abel thought it time to change the subject, and retreated, while Mercy’s attention became riveted upon the group before the house. The faces of all three were very grave, and Wahneenah, who had come across to nurse a sick child, paid no heed to its fretful calls for her. The Indian horseman tarried but a brief time, then wheeled about and rode westward over the prairie, avoiding the regular road and the mud where the Smiths had suffered such annoyance.
Wahneenah returned to her charge, and the Sun Maid disappeared in the direction of the Fort. Before Mercy could decide whether to follow or not, the girl reappeared, and her old friend viewed her with amazement. She had mounted the Snowbird, which looked no older than when Mercy had watched her gallop away across the prairie, and had slung the famous White Bow upon her saddle horn. About her floating hair she had wound a fillet of white beads and feathers, and fastened the White Necklace of Lahnowenah, the Giver, around her fair throat. She sat her horse as only one trained to the saddle from infancy could have done, and her commanding figure seemed perfect in every outline.
“To the land’s sake! Ain’t she splendid! I never saw such a sight. Never. Never. Abel! Abel! A-b-e-l!!”
“Yes, yes; what? Mercy, Mercy Smith, hold your tongue! Don’t you know folks can’t bawl in a settlement as they do in the backwoods? What ails you? I’m coming as fast as a man in reason can. Hey? Kitty? Well, why didn’t you say so? Where? Out front? My—land! Well, well, well! It ain’t—it can’t be—it is! Well, Kitty girl, you beat the Dutch!”
The young horsewoman rode up to the front door of her house, and paused to let her old friends admire her to their satisfaction. But their admiration aroused neither surprise nor vanity in her simple, straightforward mind. Years before, the old clergyman had said to her, upon their first meeting, that the Lord had been very good to her in giving her a beauty so remarkable and impressive; and under his wise instruction she had accepted the fact as she did all the others of her life. Only she had striven to keep her soul always worthy of the glorious form in which it was housed and to use all her gifts and graces for good. So she stood a while, letting the honest couple inspect and comment, and finally answering Abel’s curiosity, in honest modesty.
“Why am I so dressed up? Because I have a mission to perform, and I need to make myself as beautiful as possible.”
“Kit—ty Bris—coe! I’ve read in my red Bible that ‘favor is deceitful and beauty is vain.’ I’m amazed at you. Livin’ with a minister, too. Well, he can’t preach to me. I’d despise to set under him.”
Abel’s eyes twinkled, but the gravity of the Sun Maid’s face did not lessen. She explained gently, yet with unshaken decision, that her self-adornment was right, and gave her reasons.
“You will remember, dears, that I am a ‘Daughter of the Pottawatomies.’ They believe that I have supernatural gifts, and that I am a spirit living in a human form.”
“And you let ’em, Kit, you let ’em?”