"But only once with me it was, Summer Song," he persisted. Summer Song was his name for her.
"I saw it—saw it, every foot of the way," she insisted. "I thought hard, oh, hard as the soul thinks. And I saw it all." There was something singularly akin in the nature of the girl and the Indian. She spoke to him as she never spoke to any other.
"Too much seeing, it is death," he answered. "Men die with too much seeing. I have seen them die. To look hard through deerskin curtains, to see through the rock, to behold the water beneath the earth, and the rocks beneath the black waters, it is for man to see if he has a soul, but the seeing—behold, so those die who should live!"
"I live, Tekewani, though I saw the teeth of rocks beneath the black water," she urged gently.
"Yet the half-death came—"
"I fainted, but I was not to die—it was not my time."
He shook his head gloomily. "Once it may be, but the evil spirits tempt us to death. It matters not what comes to Tekewani; he is as the leaf that falls from the stem; but for Summer Song that has far to go, it is the madness from beyond the Hills of Life."
She took his hand. "I will not do it again, Tekewani."
"How!" he said, with hand upraised, as one who greets the great in this world.
"I don't know why I did it," she added meaningly. "It was selfish. I feel that now."