This was the fresh grief of Wahneenah as she roamed from wigwam to wigwam, searching for her adopted daughter and imploring help to find her. For again the Sun Maid had disappeared, as suddenly and more completely than on the previous day though after much the same manner.
The child had been attending her injured squirrel and giving her bowls of orchids fresh drinks, upon the threshold mat of her new home, and her indulgent foster-mother had gone to fetch from the stream the water needed for the latter purpose. At the brook’s edge she had stopped, “just for a moment,” to discuss with the other squaws the news of the massacre that was fast coming to them by the straggling bands of returning braves.
But the brief absence was long enough to have worked the mischief. The small runaway had left her posies and her squirrel and departed, nobody could guess whither.
Till at last again came Osceolo, the mischievous, and remarked, indifferently:
“The Woman-Who-Mourns may save her steps. The White Papoose and the Snowbird are far over the prairie while the women search.”
“Osceolo! You are the son of the evil spirit! You bring distress in your hand as a gift! But take care what you say now. You know, as I know, that nobody can mount the White Snowbird and live. Or if one could succeed and pass beyond the village borders, it would be a ride to some far land whence there is no return. What is the mare, Snowbird, but a creature bewitched? or the home of the soul of a dead maiden, who would rather live thus with her people than without them as a spirit in the Great Beyond? You know all this, and yet you tell me——”
“That the Sun Maid is flying now on the Snowbird’s back toward the setting sun, who is her father.”
“How do you know this?”
“I saw it.”