But the second stone was not cast, and Wa-choo-bay was left alone with the wolf upon the summit, kneeling and muttering words of kindness.
The day passed, and still he knelt upon the summit. But when the dark had fallen, he became aware of someone near him. He raised his head and saw in the starlight a woman lying upon her face before him, and she was moaning.
Wa-choo-bay lifted her and looked into her face. It was a face that he had known of old, only the winters had changed it.
“I am Umba, the Ponca woman,” she said. “Many summers ago I spoke to you. Do you remember?”
And Wa-choo-bay said: “I have not forgotten.”
Then said Umba, the Ponca woman: “Even now it is the same as then. I have come to take the hard trail with you, even the trail that leads to death, for in all these winters and summers I have taken no man.”
And she wiped the blood from his face with her blanket of buckskin.
There was an aching in the breast of Wa-choo-bay as he said these words, which the Ponca woman could not understand, though her tongue was one with his:
“From now through all the summers and winters that follow, your name shall be Mary.”