“Do not wail for me. This is the place where my trail ends. This is what was in the mist. Let these whom I love do as they will do.”
And when they had bound him to the post they whipped him with elkhorn whips.
“Where is your white Wakunda?” they cried, and it was a hate cry.
“Here beside us stands the white Wakunda and His Son!” said Wa-choo-bay; and his brow was wet with the sweat of agony. But the whippers did not see, and the whips fell harder.
And after some time Wa-choo-bay raised his head weakly to the darkening heavens, for the sun had fallen, and moaned soft words that were not prairie words.
Then his head fell forward upon his breast.
The whips fell no more. The whippers departed.
The sky was like a sheet of frosty metal and the stars were like broken ice.
Against the sky hung the thin figure of Wa-choo-bay lashed to the post, and beneath him in the shadow huddled two who sent trembling cries of sorrow into the empty spaces of the snow—a woman and a wolf.