The dawn came, and by the first light the Poncas beheld their enemies camped across the valley. Upon one side the bluff fell sheer to the river; upon the other lingered a cruel and patient foe. So it happened that after many days, moans of suffering arose from the lodges on the bluff; and the Omahas laughed in their tepees, for the sound of an enemy’s wailing is sweet. The sweltering suns of the prairie September beat upon the bare summit where the village pined, and the lips of the Poncas burned with thirst, while their eyes drank of the copious floods far below them.
So it chanced one day, when a cry went up through the village: “Our children are dying of thirst; let us beg mercy of our enemies!” that an unarmed brave passed out of the village and across the valley toward the camp of his foes. With tottering step he approached the tepee before which Big Axe waited. His lips were swollen and cracked; his eyes were bleared and sunken, yet they glared as the eyes of a wolf from the darkness of a cavern.
In a hoarse, inarticulate whisper he spoke to the chief: “Pity my people, for they are dying of thirst!”
There was lightning in the eyes of Muzape Tunga. “Badger!” he hissed; and he struck the suppliant down before him.
The sun burned down the glaring blue of the west. A continuous wail arose from the suffering village like the cry of pines in a gentle wind; while from the tepees of the besiegers came the sound of merry laughter that mocked like the babble of inaccessible waters.
But when the red sun touched the tops of the far hills, another form left the enclosure of the village and took its way down the hillside. As it came nearer, a hush of awe fell upon the Omahas. The form was that of a squaw! With an unfaltering movement she approached, seeming to hover through the mist that arose from the valley. Slowly she climbed the hillside. Not a sound passed the lips of the beholders. They seemed the figures of one dream gazing at the central idea of another. The form emerged from the mist and stood, swathed in the chromatic radiance of the evening before the motionless figure of Muzape Tunga. The eyes of the woman and the chief met in unwavering stare. Had the glance of the former become vocal, it would have been a song with the softness of the mother’s lullaby, but with a meaning terrible as the battle cry of a brave.
With a langorous movement the woman raised her arms, thus allowing the many-coloured skin that hung about her shoulders to slip to the ground, exposing all the dumb eloquence of her brown breasts. Out of the silence her voice broke like the voice of a sudden wind that rises in the night.
“Nunda Nu [Man-Heart] fears not Muzape Tunga!”
The chief saw the lithe young form, heard the soft, caressing voice and shivered with great passion.