The Lonesome Trail

by John G. Neihardt

And the old people shook their heads and whispered to each other: “The soul of Pazha Hu has followed the summer, for her soul loved the flowers; can you not hear her body crying for her soul?”

When the warm winds came again and the hills were green, the crying of a young child was heard in the lodge of Muzape Tunga. The simple heart of the stern warrior throbbed with gladness as a cold seed throbs with the blowing of the south wind.

But the sound of the infant’s voice brought no summer to the heart of Nunda Nu. The touch of its little brown hands stung her breasts, and as she looked upon its face, placid or expressive as its dreams took form or slept, a cold shudder ran through her veins as when one gazes on a snake, for it was the child of an enemy.

All through the long winter a slow hate had sapped the kindness from the heart of the future mother; and when she felt the new life throbbing into form, her thoughts grew bitter. So now the unforgotten moaning of the children of her people, dying with thirst upon the barren summit, was loud enough to drown the prattle of her enemy’s child, which should have wrought enchantment in her blood.

One night a noiseless shadow passed among the tepees hushed in slumber beneath the moonlight. It crept up to the tepee of Muzape Tunga and crouched beside it in an attitude of listening. The bugs chirped and hummed, the frogs croaked, the wolves howled far away; save these and a sleeper’s heavy breathing, there was silence.

Suddenly there was a faint sound as of someone moving in the tepee; the shadow outside arose and the moonlight fell upon its haggard face, the face of Shadow Flower. She placed her eye to a small opening in the skins that covered the poles. Now she would gaze upon the child of Muzape Tunga!

Through the opening at the top of the tepee the moonlight entered with intense brilliance and fell upon three faces. One was the face of her once sweet dream and the face that trembled through the visions of her madness, Muzape Tunga’s. One was the beautiful, cruel face of her who came upon a pony white as a summer cloud that autumn evening when the sunlight left the prairie. One was a face that she had not seen before, yet her poor heart ached as she looked upon it. It was the face of his child, her child. Ah, it should have been the child of Shadow Flower, she thought, and her brain reeled with sudden madness.

As she looked, the woman in the tepee raised herself upon her elbow. She gazed upon the peaceful face of Big Axe. The moon lit up her features in clear relief. Her eyes were terrible with hate; the lids drawn closely about them until they had the small beady appearance of the snake’s. Her lips were drawn closely cross her white teeth in a cold grin. Her form trembled as with a chill, yet the night was warm. Then she arose, and with a noiseless step, sought for something that hung upon the side of the tepee. She returned clutching a tomahawk. The light caught her whole form, making it stand out, clear-cut like a statue, the statue of a prairie Judith.

Then she bent over the sleeping Muzape Tunga for one moment. There was a dull sound as the weapon entered the sleeper’s skull; but more than this there was no sound, no groan. And the one who stood like a shadow without the tepee was stricken dumb with fright.