"'Where is the bundle now?' I asked her.
"'I hid it near our winter camp before we came into the mountains. But there was sickness in the mountains and Waba-mooin said that it also was my fault. So they drove me out with sticks and stones. That is why they would not take me back.'
"'Then,' I said, 'when Waba-mooin goes back to the winter camp, he will find the Medicine bundle.'
"'He will never find it,' she said, 'but he will be the only Shaman in the village and will have all the gifts. But listen, M'toulin, by now the people are back in their winter home. It is more than two days from here. If you go without me, they will give you food and shelter, but with me you will have only hard words and stones. Therefore, I leave you, M'toulin.' She stood up, made a sign of farewell.
"'You must show me the way to your village first,' I insisted.
"I saw that she meant what she said, and because I was too weak to run after her, I pretended. I thought that would hold her.
"We should have set out that moment, but a strange lightness came in my head. I do not know just what happened. I think the storm must have begun again early in the afternoon. There was a great roaring as of wind and the girl bending over me, wavering and growing thin like smoke. Twice I saw the great head of the moose thrust among the hemlock boughs, and heard Nukéwis urging and calling me. She lifted my hands and clasped them round the antlers of the moose; I could feel his warm breath.... He threw up his head, drawing me from my bed, wonderfully light upon my feet. We seemed to move through the storm. I could feel the hairy shoulder of the moose and across his antlers Nukéwis calling me. I felt myself carried along like a thin bubble of life in the storm that poured down from the Adirondack like Niagara. At last I slipped into darkness.
"I do not know how long this lasted, but presently I was aware of a light that began to grow and spread around me. It came from the face of the moose, and when I looked up out of my darkness it changed to the face of a great kind man. He had on the headdress of a chief priest, the tall headdress of eagle plumes and antlers. I had hold of one of them, and his arm was around and under me. But I knew very well who held me.
"'You have appeared to me at last,' I said to him.
"'I have appeared, my son.' His voice was kind as the sound of summer waters.