But like the seeker after Eldorado, years passed, and Quetajaku did not come nearer to her spirit lover. But her soul kept up the conceit; every night when she curled herself up to sleep he was the vastness of the night.
On one occasion an Indian artist named Naganit, an undersized old wanderer appeared at the lonely woman’s home. For a living he decorated pottery, shells and bones, sometimes even painted war pictures on rocks. Quetajaku was so kind to him that he built himself a lean-to on the slope of the hill, intending to spend the winter.
On the long winter evenings the old woman confided to the wanderer the story of her unhappy life, of her inward consolation. She said that she had longed to meet an artist who could carry out a certain part of her dream which had a right to come true.
When she died she had arranged to be buried in a fissure of rocks which ran horizontally into one of the walls of the “watery” cave. On the opposite wall she would like painted in the most brilliant colors a portrait of a handsome young warrior, with arms outstretched, coming towards her.
Naganit said that he understood what she meant exactly, but suggested that the youth be mounted on a pony, a beast which was coming into use as a mount for warriors, of which he had lately seen a number in his travels on the Virginia coast, near Chincoteague.
This idea was pleasing to Quetajaku, who authorized the stranger to begin work at once. She had saved up a little property of various kinds; she promised to bestow all of this on Naganit, except what would be necessary to bury her, if the picture proved satisfactory.
The artist rigged up a dog-raft with a scaffold on it, and this he poled into the place where the fissure was located, the woman accompanying him the first time, so there would be no mistake. All winter long by torchlight, he labored away. He used only one color, an intensive brick-red made from mixing sumac berries, the pollen of the Turk’s Cap Lily, a small root and the bark of a tree, as being more permanent than that made from ochers and other ores of stained earth.
Marvelous and vital was the result of this early impressionist; the painting had all the action of life. The superb youth in war dress, with arms outstretched, on the agile war pony, rushing towards the foreground, almost in the act of leaping from the rocky panel into life, across the waters of the cave to the arms of his beloved.
It would make old Quetajaku happy to see it, she who had never known love or beauty. The youth in the mural typified what Naganit would have been himself were he the chosen, and what the “bachelor maid” would have possessed had nature favored her. It was the ideal for two disappointed souls.
Breathlessly the old artist ferried Quetajaku to the scene of his endeavors. When they reached the proper spot he held aloft his quavering torch. Quetajaku, in order to see more clearly, held her two hands above her eyes. She gave a little cry of exclamation, then turned and looked at Naganit intently. Then she dropped her eyes, beginning to cry to herself, a rare thing for an Indian to do!