“If she had had food,” he said, “she might have reached that friendly tribe and they would have given her a cave to rest in and cool water to drink.”
As he spoke a young deer stepped into the brook with a clinking of hooves upon stones. Sunrise loosed an arrow, and the deer pierced thro the heart, fell shapelessly in the shallow water.
“She shall not go on this journey without food,” said Sunrise.
He cleaned the kill and then toiling till his back was like to break, he made a great excavation in the side of the gully, and therein he laid Dawn and the young deer.
Then he looked lovingly upon his faithful bow and his good arrows.
“It may be,” he said at length, “that the journey is very long and the deer will not suffice.”
And he opened Dawn’s left hand and clasped it about the grip of the bow and in her right hand he laid the arrows.
“It may be,” he said, “that one day I shall follow on your trail again.”
Then he began to close the grave. But twice that he might look once more on Dawn he desisted and undid what he had done. When the work was finished, he turned slowly away.