Then he ran into the forest laughing and singing.
The sun was going down when Sunrise presented himself joyously before the cave where She Wolf and Dawn lived. But when he called to them, they did not answer, and when he went into the cave, he found that She Wolf had been shot unto death, and that Dawn had vanished away.
Sunrise knelt by his mother and called her by name and felt of her. And presently by the coldness of her body he knew she had been dead a long time.
He went out of the cave and ran in a great circle. After a little he came upon the trail of Dawn and a man, and it pointed away from the caves of the tribe and was straight, like the flight of an arrow.
But Sunrise flung himself along the trail, and all night he ran like a wolf.
“They will not dare stop,” he said, “and it may be that I shall not be too late.”
With the first light he came to a flowery, grassy glade in the forest. But the grass was greatly trampled and many of the flowers were broken, for there had been a terrible struggle in that place. And Sunrise read the signs of it as we read printed words in a book.
“She fought against him,” he cried, “she fought against him!”
He smiled a little then and looked upward, but after that in his life he was to smile but once more.
He lay face downward, digging and tearing at the ground until the nails of his fingers were broken and bloody.