The years passed merrily along, for happy hearts make the hardest life a merry one. The Little Bravo was a large boy now. Ten summers and winters had passed since he came to his proud father and mother. He had learned to row a canoe on the river, to fish, to set traps, and with bow and arrow to bring down the wild duck and the prairie chicken. Soon he would be a man, a—young brave indeed,—and go with his father to hunt the bison, or on the warpath.
How many daydreams his mother enjoyed over his future! She saw him in fancy a great chief, leading the tribe in war and in peace; she saw him returning from war with many scalps of the enemy; saw him in the home with wife and children, while his father and herself, grown old and gray, sat in the warmest corner of the tepee and told his children stories of their father’s brave deeds.
As she dreamed her daydreams, she busily worked on the fine clothing with which she adorned him and his father; for it was her delight that they outshone the rest of the men of the tribe in the splendor of their raiment,—hunting shirts and leggings of the finest tanned skins, adorned with fringes and gorgeous with crude embroidery, and moccasins of the yellow buckskin, trimmed with beads and porcupine quills.
The boy was a noble little fellow; brave, warm-hearted, and merry. But the Great Spirit saw that the doating love of father and mother was ruining the gift He had placed in their hands.
Little Bravo.
One summer night the heat hung heavy over the land. It seemed an effort to breathe. Black clouds hung sullen in the sky, and in the west the lightning was flashing and the thunder was rumbling. “There will be much wind and rain to-night. Where is our son?” said the father.
“Down on the river’s bank asleep,” answered his mother. “I sat long beside him, and brushed away the stinging insects that annoyed him. He has taken off his moccasins, the heat is so great, and his little feet are bare. He is very beautiful as he sleeps. I will lift him without waking him, and bear him into the storm cave.”
She hastened quickly down to the river, for the storm was rapidly approaching. Just as her hands reached down to clasp her boy, there came a vivid flash of lightning, and two strong hands (the hands of the spirit who lives in the water) reached up, and grasping the boy firmly, drew him down under the water.
Where, but a moment before, the rosy, dreaming boy was lying, was only the print of his body in the grass, and the two little yellow moccasins, shining like gold.