Suddenly the curtain of the doorway was thrown back and the Thunder Maker bounded into the lodge. He was very angry. Streams of lightning flashed continuously from his eyes. Sheets of ill-smelling smoke, mingled with blue flame, rolled in waves from his body. Plover Call shut her eyes, nearly fainting at the dreadful sight, and her heart stood still from fear.
“What are you doing here?” he cried to the man calmly scraping his arrows. “What are you doing here in my lodge? Go at once, or I will kill you where you sit.”
“Do you go yourself,” the other replied, “or it will be the worse for you. This is my house, and this woman whom you deserted is my wife.”
Thunder Maker sprang into the air in fury, and more fearfully than ever the lightning flashed from his eyes. Raising his hand to strike, he stepped suddenly towards his enemy, but the man as quickly held up some soft, white, downy eagle feathers, and blew them from his hand, and a terrible cold, biting wind filled the lodge. Thunder Maker fell back. The [[139]]wind increased, and the lodge shook as if it would be blown away. Fine, sharp, stinging frost-flakes hissed in through the doorway and from under the edges of the lodge skins. Colder and colder it grew; and, trembling, quivering, his lips blue, his teeth chattering, Thunder Maker staggered to a bed and fell upon it.
“You have beaten me; your power is greater than mine,” he cried. “Oh, Cold Maker, have pity!”
For Plover Call’s new husband was Cold Maker, he who brings the fierce storms, the biting wind, and drifting, whirling snow from out the north. And now, as he saw his enemy gasping, shaking, and begging for mercy, as he lay on the bed, he laughed. “Will you promise never to return; never to trouble us again?” he asked. “I will go, I will go,” groaned the other. “You promise? Then go, and be sure you keep your word.”
The cold wind and the hazy frost ceased as suddenly as they had come. Thunder Maker staggered to his feet. He reeled out of the lodge. Lightning no longer flashed from his eyes. The blue flame and stifling smoke no longer [[140]]rolled from his person. He looked very poor and sick as he disappeared.
Now that Plover Call knew who her new husband really was, she was not at all afraid of him, although he was one of the deathless ones, who, for the time, had taken the form of man. They continued to live happily together, and when summer came he went with her and her parents, and joined the great camp of the Blackfeet.
Often Cold Maker said to her people that he could not remain with them always, but he never told them when he should go away. “After I have gone,” he said once, “I will try to warn you of the approach of a cold storm. When you see a raven flying about in the winter, and crying its loud notes, look out, for the cold storm will be near.”
After many years Plover Call died of old age, and Cold Maker mourned. “He will leave us now,” the people said. They were right. One day he disappeared and was seen no more. But his words were not forgotten. Since that time they have named the raven after him. Even to this day the raven comes to give warning of an approaching storm. [[141]]