The woman within turned to the sleeping child and raised the dripping tomahawk; but her arm seemed to freeze in act to strike, and the blow did not fall. A strange soft light crept over the face of the woman. She lowered her arm and laid the weapon aside. Then with the step of a wild-cat she crept to the entrance of the tepee and, gazing cautiously about for a moment, slipped silently into the haze of the moonlight, and was engulfed in the darkness of the valley.
As the dim outline of the fleeing squaw mixed itself with the uncertain haze and vanished, a great happiness leaped into the stagnant veins of Shadow Flower, and her blood rushed like a stream when the ice melts with the breath of the south wind.
Even the thought that Big Axe lay dead within the tepee did not quell her happiness, for she said to herself: “Now Pazha Hu shall have her warrior; he shall be all hers.”
She crept into the tepee and, kneeling, put her lips to the chilling lips of Big Axe. He did not breathe. She placed her arms about his body, her face against his breast, yet he did not move. He lay quietly with the intense moonlight upon his face. She did not sob, she was almost happy; for did she not at last possess that for which she had pined?
Her musings were broken by the crying of the child. She took it in her arms and held it to her breast, humming a low lullaby, half-persuaded that the child was her own. But the child was frightened by the strange voice and cried piteously. Then Shadow Flower thought, “It cries for its father, yet its father has gone.” “Hush!” she said to the child; “we will go and find the soul of Muzape Tunga; it cannot be far away.”
She wrapped a blanket about the infant, muffling its cries, and tied it about her shoulders. Then she went silently through the village and out into the open prairie, weird with the blue haze of the moon and the lonesome cries of the wolves.
A rabbit hopped past and stopped near her as if gazing at the maiden.
“O Rabbit!” cried Shadow Flower, “tell me, have you seen the soul of Muzape Tunga?”
The rabbit, awed by the strangeness of the voice, moved its long ears; then it hopped away into the shades. The maiden followed and was swallowed in the moonlit mist.
When the sun looked into the village, the women were stricken with terror and the men with anger. The wise people shook their heads by which to say: “Ah, yes; we thought such things of Nunda Nu.”