The mother gave a scream; the father came bounding to the spot; together they sprang into the water, and dived again and again, striving to find their son. The storm broke over the river in great fury, tearing off great limbs of trees, and dashing their tepee to the ground; but neither knew that it stormed. Finally, half dead, and heart-broken, they sought the bank. The mother sat down and gathered the little moccasins to her heart. “My son, my son! O spirit of the river, give him back to us!” she moaned.
The father arose and straightened himself, and, looking into the dark sky, he said: “It is the will of the Great Spirit. He gave him to us. He has taken him away again.” Turning, he walked away into the forest.
But the mother sat there beside the river many days, moaning, “My son, my son.” No food passed her lips, no sleep came to her eyes; and always she kissed and clasped to her heart the little moccasins.
One night, when the stars were flashing in splendor, she raised her eyes to the sky, and beheld that pathway made of star-dust, that leads to the spirit land. And while she gazed, longing to follow it, she felt the pressure of a small hand on her shoulder. She turned, to meet the loving, smiling gaze of her son.
“O Great Spirit, I thank thee! The dead is alive again! O my son, I grieved for thee! Why didst thou stay away so long?”
And the boy said, “Come, dear mother; we are to follow yonder path to-night,” pointing upward. “I have come for thee, because thy weeping grieves the happy ones.”
Then gladly the mother placed her hand in that small clasp; but first she said: “Stay, dear child; here are thy moccasins. Thou wilt need them; the way may be rough.”
The boy, laughing, held up to her gaze one of his feet, on which flashed and glowed a moccasin of shining yellow, like the color of a star, and he said, “Lay down the moccasins, dear, and thou shalt see how a mother’s love shall be remembered.”
She placed them on the ground, and at once a plant sprang up beneath them. It grew rapidly, and on its highest branches the moccasins were fastened. They shrank in size, and changed into flowers, keeping, however, their original shape and color. And the boy said, “These flowers shall bloom on forever beside this shining river; long after the red man is gone, they shall bloom.”
Then, wondering and happy, the mother followed her son along the star-strewn path to the spirit land; and not many moons later, the father, from the midst of battle, went to them.