And now the buffalo-king, having secured the beautiful person of Aggo Dah Gauda's daughter, set to work to make her heart his own—a little ceremony which it would have been, perhaps, wiser for his majesty, the king of the buffalos, to have attended to before he carried her off, for he now worked to little purpose. Although he labored with great zeal to gain her affections, she sat pensive and disconsolate in the lodge among the other women. She scarcely ever spoke, nor did she take the least interest in the affairs of the king's household.
To the king himself she paid no heed, and although he breathed forth to her every soft and gentle word he could think of, she sat still and motionless, for all the world like one of the lowly bushes by the door of her father's lodge when the summer wind had died away.
The king enjoined it upon the others in the lodge as a special edict, on pain of instant death, to give to Aggo's daughter everything that she wanted, and to be careful not to displease her. They set before her the choicest food. They gave her the seat of honor in the lodge. The king himself went out hunting to obtain the most dainty meats, both of animals and wild fowl, to pleasure her palate; and he treated her every morning to a ride upon one of the royal buffalos, who was so gentle in his motions as not even to disturb a single one of the tresses of the beautiful hair of Aggo's daughter as she paced along.
And not content with these proofs of his attachment, the king would sometimes fast from all food, and having thus purified his spirit and cleared his voice, he would take his Indian flute, sit before the lodge, and give vent to his feelings in pensive echoes, something after this fashion:
My sweetheart,
My sweetheart,
Ah me!
When I think of you,
When I think of you,
Ah me!