“I heard a cry in the night while my man slept,” Mitiahwe answered, looking straight before her, “and it was like the cry of a bird—calling, calling, calling.”
“But he did not hear—he was asleep beside Mitiahwe. If he did not wake, surely it was good-luck. Thy breath upon his face kept him sleeping. Surely it was good-luck to Mitiahwe that he did not hear.”
She was smiling a little now, for she had thought of a thing which would, perhaps, keep the man here in this lodge in the wilderness; but the time to speak of it was not yet. She must wait and see.
Suddenly Mitiahwe got to her feet with a spring, and a light in her eyes. “Hai-yai!” she said with plaintive smiling, ran to a corner of the lodge, and from a leather bag drew forth a horseshoe and looked at it, murmuring to herself.
The old woman gazed at her wonderingly. “What is it, Mitiahwe?” she asked.
“It is good-luck. So my man has said. It is the way of his people. It is put over the door, and if a dream come it is a good dream; and if a bad thing come, it will not enter; and if the heart prays for a thing hid from all the world, then it brings good-luck. Hai-yai! I will put it over the door, and then—” All at once her hand dropped to her side, as though some terrible thought had come to her, and, sinking to the floor, she rocked her body backward and forward for a time, sobbing. But presently she got to her feet again, and, going to the door of the lodge, fastened the horseshoe above it with a great needle and a string of buckskin.
“O great Sun,” she prayed, “have pity on me and save me. I cannot live alone. I am only a Blackfoot wife; I am not blood of his blood. Give, O great One, blood of his blood, bone of his bone, soul of his soul, that he will say, ‘This is mine, body of my body,’ and he will hear the cry and will stay. O great Sun, pity me!”
The old woman’s heart beat faster as she listened. The same thought was in the mind of both. If there were but a child, bone of his bone, then perhaps he would not go; or, if he went, then surely he would return when he heard his papoose calling in the lodge in the wilderness.
As Mitiahwe turned to her, a strange burning light in her eyes, Swift Wing said: “It is good. The white man’s Medicine for a white man’s wife. But if there were the red man’s Medicine too—”
“What is the red man’s Medicine?” asked the young wife, as she smoothed her hair, put a string of bright beads around her neck, and wound a red sash round her waist.