With infinite patience and accuracy of touch, the woman parted the slender, interwoven branches so delicately that scarcely a leaf was bruised, and little by little opened a clear passage into a downward sloping tunnel. This tunnel ran directly under the river bed, and was so steep in places that one might easily have coasted over it.
“Why, how queer! It’s like the underground passage from the Fort to the river, where we children used to peep, but were never allowed to enter. What is it? Why is it?”
“Let your eyes ask and answer their own questions. They are safer than a tongue, my son. But fear nothing. Where Wahneenah leads the way for the children whom the Great Spirit has sent her they may safely follow.”
Then, without further speech, she went forward for what seemed a long distance, through the half light of the tunnel, until it opened into a wide chamber, across which trickled a clear stream and which was fanned by a strong current of air.
The children were silent from curiosity, not unmixed with dread; and their guide had also become very grave and silent. Memories were crowding upon her soul, and banishing the present; but she was roused at length by the wild clutch of the Sun Maid’s arms, as something winged swept by them in the twilight.
“Other Mother! Other Mother! I—I don’t like it! Take Kitty, quick!”
“Ah! I was dreaming. My dead walked here beside me, and I forgot. But is the Sun Maid ever afraid? I did not think that. Well, it’s over now. The gloomy passage, the big, dark room—See?”
Suddenly, at a turn westward out of the chamber and beyond it, they entered upon what might, indeed, have been fairyland. The exit was another passage, rising gently to a rock- and tree-sheltered nook in the heart of a tiny island. From any outward point this retreat was invisible, and when they had emerged upon it the Indian woman’s spirits rose again. She caught up the Sun Maid and tossed her lightly upon a bending branch, that seemed to have grown expressly for a child’s swing.
“My warrior trained that bough for our son’s pleasure, and from it he rocked and danced as a tiny papoose. Now—in you, he lives again. Hold, Dark-Eye! What are you seeking?”
“Oh, just nothing! I was poking around to see——”