As a great boulder is tipped into a stream, Kwasind tottered sideways from his canoe, struck the water with a sullen plunge that tossed the spray high in the air, and the waters closed above him with a mighty sob. Bottom upward his canoe drifted down the river, and nothing was seen or heard of Kwasind from that day to this. But his memory lived long among the Indians, who would tell their children of his great feats of strength, and show to them the boulder that Kwasind had pitched into the swift Pauwating River when he was little more than a boy.
When the gales of winter tossed the pine-trees and roared among the branches until they groaned and split with a terrible noise of rending wood, the Indians would say to one another, as they sat in their warm wigwams and listened to the wind shake the forest to its roots: "There goes Kwasind, gathering his firewood!" and in the country where he lived near the Big-Sea-Water there are still many marks of his great strength that will show, to any who care to see, what a mighty man this Kwasind was.
XIX
THE GHOSTS
THE vulture never drops from the heavens to seize his prey upon the desert but some other vulture views his plunge and follows swiftly. Other vultures see the second, and in a few minutes their victim finds a row of them before him and the air dark with their wings.
Just so do troubles come upon human beings, not one at a time but together, until the unhappy man or woman finds the air as black as midnight with their shadows, and in this way did troubles pursue the unfortunate Hiawatha. First Chibiabos died—murdered by the evil spirits. Then Kwasind was killed as he drifted down the stream asleep in his canoe; and then in the dark winter, when the ice had bound the rivers and the trees were naked in the bitter air, another sorrow came upon Hiawatha. But before it came he had a strange adventure, and from this he knew that he would be forced to undergo some mighty trial.
One black, wintry evening after the sun had set, Nokomis and Minnehaha were sitting together in their wigwam waiting for Hiawatha to return from the hunt, when they heard light and measured footsteps on the snow, and the curtain that hung in the doorway of their lodge was slowly lifted. Two shadowy figures entered—two women, who seemed strangers in the village; and, without a word, they took their seats in the darkest corner of the wigwam and crouched there silently and sadly, shivering with cold. Their faces were very white, their clothes were thin and torn, and they would not answer anything that Nokomis or Minnehaha said to them.
Was it the wind blowing down the smoke-flue, or was it the hooting of the owl that made both Minnehaha and Nokomis think that they heard a voice come out of the darkness and say to them: "These are dead people that sit before you and share your fire! They are ghosts from the Land of the Hereafter, who have come to haunt you!" At all events they thought that such a voice cried out to them, and they were very much afraid when Hiawatha entered, fresh from hunting, and laid the red deer he had been carrying at the feet of Minnehaha.