I pointed west. The man slowly fastened the grub sack on his mule, mounted, gave me a look which I have never forgotten, and rode west.
I have never seen him since. As for me, I got into the next post that evening with a worn-out horse and a tale of calamity.
V
THE FADING OF SHADOW FLOWER
SHE was only a timid little Omaha maiden with a pair of pensive eyes, dark like the thunder clouds, and like them, fraught with a potential fire that seemed ever about to spend its fury in the weakness of tears. She passed her childhood hours beside the singing streams and in the lonesome places where the silence lingered. The sunrise and the sunset found her where the wild flowers clustered, or where the noises of the nesting birds disturbed the stillness of the thickets. For hers was a timorous soul, and the dumb kindness of the green things was sweet to her.
So, as she grew in this wise toward that mysterious time when the immaturity of the girl bursts into the magic of the woman, her people said: “She talks with the things that talk not; she plays with the wind that sleeps and moans in the shadowy place.” And that is why they named her Shadow Flower.
In the long, mysterious nights of the winter, Shadow Flower wept with fear at the mournful cry of the coyotes, and often through the droning days of the summer did the harsh warning of the startled rattlesnake send her trembling in terror to her mother’s breast. Yet, huddled close to the group about the evening fire, she loved to listen to the warriors’ tales of the strong arm and the fierce heart; and her eyes glowed with an unwonted light as her kinsmen recounted the wild swoop of the ambushed foe or the silent pursuit, swift and relentless.
All the glowing ideals of manly prowess that her maiden heart had conjured, were centred in the person of the fearless brave, Big Axe; for had he not the eagle glance that went to the heart of an enemy like an arrow? Was not his the shaggy head of the buffalo bull that strikes with fear the boldest hunter? The breath of his sinewy breast was like a whirlwind when the battle cry awakened in his throat! There was no arm in all the circled tepees that could hurl a tomahawk so straight and far; and none that could heave above the anger of the battle a war club more ponderous!