The Lonesome Trail

by John G. Neihardt

There was a sigh in her voice as she spoke; a sigh like that of a wind that is heavy with rain: “There should have come a dream loud with the noises of battle and shrill with the flight of arrows! Thus did your father dream.”

So Nu Zhinga went a second and a third and a fourth time to the hill of dreams, and the last answer that his mother heard was like the first. And on the fifth day the heart of the old mother was sore with sorrow, and all that night she did not sleep, but wept and moaned: “How shall Gunthai be comforted when her eyes are dim and her fingers stiff? Her son shall not be mighty in the hunt and battle, for he has had no dream.”

The lad, awakened in the night by the moaning of his mother, knew in an indefinite way that he was the cause of so much grief; and in his breast grew a great pang of soul hunger that would not pass away. Even with the giant joy of the sunrise it did not pass away.

In the early light Nu Zhinga passed out of the village, for his heart was heavy. As he walked, lo everything was sad except the sun, and the light of its gladness deepened the shadow of his sorrow. The sound of the wind moving in the bunch grass of the hillside was like a faint cry of a great pain. At length he threw himself down and buried his face in the grass. The despair of those who dream daydreams was upon him. There was night in his heart; his small body shook with sobs. A long while he lay thus, nor did he hear the soft step that stopped beside him.

At length Nu Zhinga raised his head from the grass and saw Tabea sitting beside him with pity in her eyes and in the attitude of her crooked little body. Without a word they stared each into the face of the other; and as Nu Zhinga looked, the desolate grey of the world began to develop its wonted brilliance of colour, as though the union of their tears had produced a prism.

At length these two arose and walked among the hills, dreaming as was their wont, and again the sunlight entered the heart of Nu Zhinga. When the two outcasts entered the village, even though the youths trooped behind them shouting “Peazha!” (no good), yet the sunlight did not pass; for upon one hand walked the dreams of Nu Zhinga and upon the other, Tabea.

One day in the time of the gathering of the maize, when the brown hills shivered with the first frosts, the voice of a crier was heard through the village calling the braves to battle; for the big chief of the Omahas would lead a war party against the Sioux.

So the old woman Gunthai took down the weapons of her fallen brave from the side of the tepee where they had hung in idleness for many moons. She strung the long unbent bow with a thong of buckskin and retipped the arrows with the feathers of the hawk. Then she wept over them, and blessed them with weird songs; and calling Nu Zhinga to her side, placed them in his hands, and said: “Bring them back red with the blood of the Sioux!”

And the youth took them, wondering why it was so very great a thing to kill.