The Lonesome Trail

by John G. Neihardt

And when the little singer would cease, the old woman Gunthai often forgot the unwoven basket with gazing into his big black eyes, for in them her hope could read great deeds that were to be done after many unborn moons had waned.

Then she would tell him tales of his father; tales that were loud with the snarl of war drums, the twang of bow thongs, the shriek of arrows, the beat of hoofs! But there was no responsive glitter in the eyes of the boy; his heart was not the warrior’s, and the old mother seeing this, sighed and fell to work with nervous haste.

And the days of sun and snow wove themselves into years, until Nu Zhinga had reached that time when boyhood begins to deepen into manhood; and yet as the mother looked upon her son, she found him scarcely taller than a weak man’s bow.

His legs were short and bowed, his hips narrow, and upon shoulders of abnormal breadth sat his monstrous, shaggy head. It was as if he were the visible body of a black spirit’s joke, save for his lustrous eyes, that were like two stars that burn big in the air of evening through a film of mist.

And thus it was that when Nu Zhinga passed through the village, those who were still foolish with youth jeered at the lad, calling his name in contempt; but the old men and women who had grown wise, only shook their heads and pitied Gunthai in silence.

But the boy would take no notice of his tormentors, walking on sullen and silent. He lived in a little world of his own, which was isolated from the great world by the unkindness of his people, like a range of frozen hills; and in this small world there were but three dwellers: Gunthai, a tame grey wolf, and one other. That other was a despised little cripple and her name was Tabea (Frog).

These three, and about them the chromatic glory of dreams like a sunrise that lingers—this was the world of Nu Zhinga. All day amid the quiet of the summer hills Nu Zhinga and Tabea played together; he telling of the great indefinite things that he would do in that big mysterious sometime when the days would be pregnant with wonders! For in his soul the pulse of uncertain but lofty resolve bounded, and as he peered into the future, lo! it was vast, yet dim with misty possibilities like a broad stretch of prairie expanding under the new moon! And she, with all of her crooked little body attentive, listened and believed even more than she heard; which is the way of those who love.

And then these two, after the manner of children, would play at life, building a tepee with willows from a convenient creek; and Tabea would groan as she bore the heavy burdens, thus showing how she would toil for him and suffer. Then when the tepee was built, she would go about droning a song, with her back bent as with the weight of an infant, thus showing how she would carry the child of Nu Zhinga in that big and sunlit sometime.

One day when the last white footstep of the winter had vanished from the coldest valley, the old woman Gunthai laid aside a finished basket and called her boy to her side.