“And the time came when the big swift arrows of the geese flew northward, spreading softness as of many camp fires in all the air; and the River wakened and shook itself, shouting with a hoarse voice into the south. The green things came, and there was a singing of frogs where the early rains made pools. The smell, which was Mignon, breathed up out of the earth; the sound, which was Mignon, lived in the trees and grasses.
“And then the time came when it is no longer the spring, and not yet quite the summer. One evening I sat before my lodge, smoking and thinking big thoughts. And the sun was low. A dust cloud grew far down the road that twisted like a yellow snake toward the village of the white men. It was a waggon coming. It grew bigger; a white man was driving it. It came near; there was a woman in it. I stared very hard; I rubbed my eyes, for what I saw was as though it had all grown up out of my pipe smoke.
“The woman was tall and not thick. Much hair she had—much hair that hung above her face like a black cloud upon a white sky in the evening. And in all the air about, there grew a smell sweeter than the earth-smell when the spring rains fall. I sat very still; I did not wish to frighten the dream away. And the woman came toward me with much rustling of garments, like the speaking of green leaves in the wind or the thin, small drumming of raindrops.
“Then, between the puffing of two smoke rings, the Spring had grown big—and was the Summer! It was Mignon! It was Mignon!”
Yellow Fox lifted his face to the full moon, and his voice was raised to a poignant cry as he uttered the word that was half sound, half smell. Then for some time he brooded with his chin resting in his hands, while the women-singers within filled the heavy air with wailings. At length he sat up and leisurely filled his pipe. His face had become a wrinkled mask again. He smoked awhile, then passing the pipe to me, he continued, and his voice was thick as though he still breathed smoke:
“After the snows have run away, the earth-smell rises and all things grow drunk with it. The he-wolf sniffs it; he forgets his last year’s mate; he takes another and forgets. The air and the earth and the water are full of new loves, and nothing is ashamed.
“It was so.
“When the next sunlight came I made ready for the trail. I rolled up my tepee. All the while my woman stared upon the woman who had come, with eyes made sharp with hate. I called in my ponies from the grazing places. I hitched a pony to the drag. I put upon the drag the tepee and the food and the little box that Mignon had brought with her—a box of many garments—garments that made songs when she walked, like the songs of rain in the leaves. I lifted Mignon upon the drag-pony’s back, and we rode away on the summer trail.
“I heard my woman wailing and crying out bitterly in my lodge, but a spirit led me on—the spirit that calls the green things out in the spring—the spirit that whispers into the ear of the sleeping River and makes it leap up and shout and tear the thongs that bind it—the spirit that makes the wolves cry out in the lonesome places that the mate may hear. That spirit went calling down the trail I followed.