XX
THE FAMINE
OH, the cruel and bitter winter that followed! The ice on the rivers and lakes became thicker and harder than ever before; the snow on the fields and in the forests was so deep that the Indians could hardly force their way out of their buried wigwams. No game ran through the frozen thickets, no birds flew among the trees. In the level snow the starving hunters could not find a single track of deer or rabbit, and the corn in the village became less and less until it was all gone. Then the children began to cry with hunger, the women went about with faces pinched and drawn, and the men drew their belts tighter day by day. At night the stars in the heavens seemed to glare like the eyes of famished wolves, and the cold wind moaned among the trees as if the very air were suffering from want. It was an evil time.
When the famine was at its worst, two more strange guests came to the wigwam of Hiawatha; nor did they linger at the doorway and wait to be invited in. They entered without a word, and with sunken eyes they gazed at Minnehaha, and one of them said in a hollow voice: "Look on me! My name is Famine," and the other one cried out: "I am Fever!"
The lovely Minnehaha shivered when she saw them, and a great chill came over her. She lay down on her bed and hid her face, and as the wicked guests continued to gaze she felt first burning heat, then icy coldness dart like arrows through her body. Hiawatha rushed into the forest to find some food for Minnehaha and to drive away the awful visitors; but the forest was bleak and empty, and there was no food to be had. "Ah Great Manito!" cried out Hiawatha, "give me food for my dying Minnehaha, before the Fever and Famine tear her from me forever!" But the Great Manito did not answer, and the silent forest only murmured dully, echoing the words of Hiawatha. With his bow and arrows he strode for miles through the deserted woods where he had once led his young bride homeward from the land of the Dacotahs. But now no animals peeped at him from amid the tree trunks, and there was no cheerful fluttering and singing from the branches; everything was deathly silent, muffled in a mighty cloak of snow.
"SEVEN LONG DAYS AND NIGHTS HE SAT THERE"—[Page 293]
While he was searching in vain for food, the two dark figures in the wigwam drew closer and closer to Minnehaha, until they crouched at either side of her bed of branches, and one of them said in hollow tones: "My name is Famine," and the other cried out: "I am Fever!" and they leaned over the bed and fixed their sunken eyes on Minnehaha, and Nokomis could not frighten them away.
"Hark!" said Minnehaha as the Fever gazed upon her, "I hear a rushing and a roaring. I hear the falls of Minnehaha calling to me from the land of the Dacotahs!"
"No, my child," said Nokomis, "it is nothing but the wind of night that blows amid the pine trees."