There was a silence. The Ponca forgot his pipe; he puffed deliberately and at long intervals. The ascending smoke dwindled to a thin grey thread. With steadfast gaze the smoker looked before him into the darkness, for his thoughts were deep.
At length he laid the pipe upon the grass and arose to his feet, extending his hand to Big Axe. His voice was tremulous as he spoke.
“Muzape Tunga asks a great thing of his conquered brother; had he asked for a hundred ponies, with feet fleet as the winds in winter, his brother would have laughed at the little gift. Nunda Nu is my life; I give my life to my brother.”
Already the night had spread into the west and the darkness hid their parting.
Some days afterward at sunset, an Omaha maiden stood upon a hill near her village. With hand at brow she peered into the blue distance. Suddenly a cry of delight trembled on her lips. A cloud of dust had grown far away upon the verge of a hill to the northeast, slowly resolving itself into a long line of warriors approaching at a gallop. The column drew nearer. The face of the watching maiden grew darker with anxiety, as a brilliant cloud darkens when the twilight fails. She beheld the masterful form of Big Axe mounted upon a black pony, riding in advance of the band; yet her face darkened. Her brows lowered with the strain of her intense gaze. Was it a squaw that rode upon a pony white as a summer cloud beside her warrior?
A shout went up from the village below. The speed of the ponies was increased to a fast gallop; the band swept up the valley. A strange low cry fell from the lips of the maiden; a stifled cry like that of a sleeping brave who feels the knife of the treacherous foeman at his heart.
In the village was the sound of many glad voices; but in the darkness of the hill above, a frail form buried its face in the dry bunch grass and uttered a moan that no one heard.
The autumn passed: the cold winds came down from the north, shaking the snow from their black wings, and the people of the village began to look upon Shadow Flower with awe. For never a word had she spoken to anyone since the returning of the band in the fall. With a dull light in her eyes she wandered about muttering to herself: “It was summer when they left; now the prairie is so cold and white, so cold and white.”
Absent-mindedly she would dwell upon the bitter words, gazing beneath an arched hand into the cold, white glare of the horizon. Then her eyes, at times, would blaze with gladness. “Shonga saba! Shonga saba!” (a black pony) she would cry ecstatically; and for one intense moment her frail form would be erect and quivering with joy. Then the light in her eye would fade as the fires fade in a camp that is deserted; a cry of anguish would fall from her lips, her hand would drop lifelessly from her brow. “No,” she would sigh languidly; “no, it is only a cloud! O, the prairie is so cold and white, so cold and white!”