Kitty would have objected and strongly; but there was something so unusually stern in the elder warrior’s face and so full of hatred in that of the younger that she was bewildered and wisely kept silence.
Having made a comfortable saddle out of the long blanket, they seated her again upon the white mare’s back, and each on either side, they led her slowly toward Muck-otey-pokee. But the little one had again fallen asleep long before they reached it, and now there could have been no gentler mount for so helpless a rider than this suddenly tamed White Snowbird.
At the entrance to the village Wahneenah met them. She had again put on her mourning garb, and her hair was unplaited, while the lines of her face had deepened perceptibly. She had lamented to Katasha:
“The Great Spirit sent me back my lost ones in the form of the Sun Maid, and because of my own carelessness and sternness He has recalled her. Now is our separation complete, and not even in the Unknown Land shall I find them again.”
But the One-Who-Knows had answered, impatiently:
“Leave be. Whatever is must happen. The child is safe. Nothing can harm her. Has she not the three gifts? The White Necklace from the shore of the Sea-without-end?[1] The White Bow from the eternal north? and the White Snowbird, into which entered the white soul of a blameless virgin? Have I not clothed her with the garb of our people? You are a fool, Wahneenah. Go hide in your wigwam, and keep silence.”
This was good advice, but Wahneenah couldn’t take it. She was too human, too motherly, and under all her superstition, too sure of the Sun Maid’s real flesh-and-blood existence to be easily comforted. So she went, instead, to the outskirts of the settlement to watch for what might be coming of good or ill. And so she came all the sooner to find her lost darling, and she vowed within herself that never again, so long as her own life should last, would she lose sight of that precious golden head.
“My Girl-Child! My White Papoose, Beloved! Found again! But how could you?”
“I did get runned away with myself this time, nice Other Mother. Don’t look at Kitty that way. Kitty is very hungry. Nice Black Partridge Feather-man did find me, riding and riding and riding. The pretty Snowbird had lots of wings, I guess, for she flew and flew and flew. But I didn’t see Osceolo. He couldn’t have come, could he? I thought he was coming, too, when he clapped his hands and shooed me off so fast. Where is he?”