“Don't,” cried Jo; “you'll make us discontented with our New England apples!”
“We were chatting and eating peaches,” continued Bell, “when the gate opened, and an Indian girl with an old squaw came in and approached us, The girl could speak English, and told me her name was Eskaluna. I had heard about her, and knew that she was the beauty and belle of the tribe, and was going to marry the chief's son when the next moon came; for our Indian cook was as gossipy as a Yankee, and was forever telling us tales. She was the most beautiful creature I ever saw: lovely black hair, not so coarse as is usual with them, brilliant dark eyes, good features, and the prettiest slim hands and graceful arms. She was dressed gaily and handsomely in the fashion of her tribe, and on her lovely, bare, brown neck was this long string of Mexican pearls, which we noticed at once as being very valuable. She stayed there all the afternoon under the fruit-trees, and really grew quite confidential. Mother, meanwhile, had gone into ecstacies over her beautiful pearls, and had taken them from her neck to examine them. At sunset, when she went home to her wigwam, she slipped the necklace into mother's lap, saying, with her sweet trick of speech, 'I eatie your peachie, you takie my beads.' Of course, mother could not accept them, and Eskaluna departed in quite a disappointed mood. I remember being sorry that the pretty young thing was going to marry the disagreeable, ugly chief. He was just as jealous and ferocious as he could be—wouldn't let her talk to one of the warriors of the tribe, and had shot one man already because he fancied Eskaluna admired him.”
A chorus of “Oh's” and “Ah's” interrupted Bell, and Alice's eyes grew round with interest, for she was sixteen and had been called a “cruel coquette” by a young student at Wareham.
“In a few days our Indian cook came home at night from the mines, saying that he wanted a holiday the next morning to go to a funeral. We had heard that in some tribes they burn the bodies of the dead, and wondered whether his were one of them, so we asked him the particulars, of course, and were terribly shocked when we heard that it was the funeral of poor Eskaluna, who had visited us so lately, in all her dusky beauty. Nakawa told us the whole story in his broken English, and a sad one it was. Her lover, the chief, as I have said, was always jealous of her, and on the afternoon she came to our house, he had heard from some crafty villain or other (an enemy of Eskaluna's, of course), that she was false, and, instead of intending to marry him, loved a handsome young Indian of another tribe, and was planning to run away with him.
“This fired his hot blood, and he rushed off on the village road determined to kill her. He climbed a large sycamore tree on a lonely part of the way, and there waited until the shadows fell over the mountain sides, and the sun, dropping behind their peaks, left the San Jacinto valley in fast-growing darkness. At last he saw the gleam of her scarlet dress in the distance, and soon he heard her voice as she came singing along, little thinking of her dreadful fate. He took sure aim at the heart that was beating happily and carelessly under its cape of birds' feathers; shot, and so swift and unerring was his arrow that she fell in an instant, dead, upon the path. Then, leaving her with the helpless old squaw, he escaped into a canon near by.
“The next day we went over to the Indian encampment, and reached the place just after poor Eskaluna had been burned on the funeral pile. We went close to the spot and could hardly help crying when we thought of her beauty and sweetness, and her sad and undeserved death. Up near the head of the pile where that lovely brown neck of hers had rested,—the prettiest neck in the world,—lay this charred string of pearls she had worn in our garden. Mother asked for it as a remembrance, and the old squaw gave it to her. Eskaluna's brother is on the war-path after her murderer, I believe, to this day, if he hasn't killed him yet; for he was determined to avenge her. Now, isn't that romantic, and tragic at the same time, girls? Poor Eskaluna! I don't know that her fate would have been much easier if she had married the chief; but it is hard to think of her being so heartlessly murdered when she was so innocent and true; and that's the end of my story. Who comes next?”
“Not I, at this hour,” yawned Jo, “but it was a good tale!”