CHAPTER IV.
Wenona had not hoped in vain, for her lover was with her, and Wanska seemed to be forgotten. The warrior's flute would draw her out from her uncle's lodge while the moon rose o'er the cold waters. Wrapped in her blanket, she would hasten to meet him, and listen to his assurances of affection, wondering the while that she had ever feared he loved another.
She had been some months at the village of Markeda, and she went to meet her lover with a heavy heart. Her mother had noticed that her looks were sad and heavy, and Wenona knew that it would not be long ere she should be a happy wife, or a mark for the bitter scorn of her companions.
The Deer-killer had promised, day after day, that he would make her his wife, but he ever found a ready excuse; and now he was going on a long hunt, and she and her parents were to return to their village. His quiver was full of arrows, and his leggins were tightly girded upon him. Wenona's full heart was nigh bursting as she heard that the party were to leave to-morrow. Should he desert her, her parents would kill her for disgracing them; and her rival, Wanska, how would she triumph over her fall?
"You say that you love me," said she to the Deer-killer, "and yet you treat me cruelly. Why should you leave me without saying that I am your wife? Who would watch for your coming as I would? and you will disgrace me when I have loved you so truly. Stay—tell them you have made me your wife, and then will I wait for you at the door of my teepee."
The warrior could not stay from the chase, but he promised her that he would soon return to their village, and then she should be his wife.
Wenona wept when he left her; shadows had fallen upon her heart, and yet she hoped on. Turning her weary steps homeward, she arrived there when the maidens of the village were preparing to celebrate the Virgin's Feast.
There was no time to deliberate—should she absent herself, she would be suspected, and yet a little while ere the Deer-killer would return, and her anxious heart would be at rest.
The feast was prepared, and the crier called for all virgins to enter the sacred ring.
Wenona went forward with a beating heart; she was not a wife, and soon must be a mother. Wanska, the Merry Heart, was there, and many others who wondered at the pale looks of Wenona—she who had been on a journey, and who ought to have returned with color bright as the dying sun, whose light illumined earth, sky and water.