“Ah,” she would say to herself, while wandering alone with her musings, “Big Axe is so great a man!”
When a band of warriors rode out of the village, bent upon some petty conquest somewhere beyond the blue hills that undulated the horizon with their summits, Shadow Flower would become very lonely, and she would stand for long hours upon some larger hill, scanning the dim sky line for the returning warriors; for where the battle was, there was Big Axe. And when at last she would catch sight of the returning band, shouting with the great joy of a battle won, how proudly she stared, and with what a light in her eyes, at her graceful warrior astride his swift pony! How anxiously would she search the headdress of her brave for the fresh eagle feather that should speak of some late deed done by the strong arm—her strong arm!
Yet her timorous little soul alone knew of the great overflowing passion that she treasured for Big Axe; unless, perhaps, the birds and the green things understood her, for hers was a passion that little words could not carry.
Thus did the frail flower long for the golden kisses of the sun!
There was war between the Omaha and Ponca tribes. So it happened one morning, in the time when the deer tear the earth with their horns, that Shadow Flower, hunting late blossoms upon the sere hills where the young Dawn danced, heard below her the impatient stamp of ponies, and beheld the mounting of braves, for Big Axe was leading a party of a hundred warriors against the enemy.
The purple spikes of the ironweed and the yellow plumes of the golden-rod dropped from her fingers as she gazed upon the sight below her. What a sight! It was as the marshalling of the incarnate Winds from the circle of the heavens. Out of the dust cloud that arose from the dry earth where four hundred nervous hoofs fretted with impatience beneath the restraining thongs, she caught the dazzle of the sleek and vari-coloured hides of the ponies; some white with the brilliance of the summer sun when it glares upon the false lakes of alkali; some spotted and wiry as the wild cat; some tawny as the mountain lion; some black like the midnight when the storm clouds fly.
Their gaunt flanks were heaving with the joy of speed and power. Their nostrils were distent with the influx of prairie winds that know no restraining hand save that of the great invisible Master. They snorted and reared as if about to plunge in a wild heat down the winds. Their neighing was the shout of the tempest in the rocks, and their gusty manes were as clouds that tatter in the storm.
And amid this mêlée of dust and noise and dazzle trembled the gaudy headdresses of the warriors, bright with the painted wing feathers of the eagle and the hawk.
Now a shout drowns the neighing and the snorting. A hundred braves leap to the backs of the plunging ponies. The dust cloud thickens and sweeps down the valley like a whirlwind. A far glint of brandished weapons; a dying shout; the band swoops about the base of a hill. Then the sultry day drones and drowses on the prairie. The grasshopper breaks the slumber of the stillness with his snapping noise; a lone hawk skirts the ground with slow, circling flight. But Shadow Flower stands and stares beneath a shading hand into the brilliance where the warriors vanished. Her ears hear not the snarl and hum of the drowsy bugs, nor the shrill chatter of the sly gopher as it rears its striped body from the grass and peers about. She sees not the circling hawk and scarcely does the glitter of the yellow grass hurt her eyes. For her ears are filled with the shout that has died, and in her eyes a sinewy, masterful brave urges a black pony down the valley.
After a while her hand dropped from her eyes, and catching sight of the circling hawk, she cried: “O you who are so keen of eye, tell me, can you not see into the heart of Muzape Tunga [Big Axe]? O you who are so keen of thought, tell me, does he think of Pazha Hu [Shadow Flower]?”