“Might it not be that this one whom we have spurned is stronger than we thought?”
But Wa-choo-bay sang no medicine-songs; he performed no mystic rites. With tender hands he nursed the sick. Also he knelt beside them and said soft words that were not the words of the prairie.
And it happened that the invisible arrows of the Terror fell thicker and thicker among the Poncas. The sickness spread, and the village was filled with the delirious shrieks of the dying.
So a great, angry wail went up against Wa-choo-bay.
“The sickness grows greater, not less,” said those who were still strong. “This Wa-choo-bay’s words are not true words. There is a black spirit in him.”
So it happened that arms that were still strong seized Wa-choo-bay and bound him with thongs of buckskin. Then he was led afar from the village to the bleak, cold summit of a hill.
There they planted a post and bound Wa-choo-bay to it.
And the woman, whose name was changed to Mary, begged for him, and the wolf, with its four feet huddled together in the snow, mourned with an upward thrusting of the snout.
But Wa-choo-bay said: