He waited but to get some powerful poison and prepare it, and then he stole softly back to the wigwam of Way-gee-mar-kin. All was silent, and he crept in without making the slightest noise. There lay the chief, with a young girl on each side of him.
They were all sound asleep, the chief lying on his back, with his mouth wide open. Before he was aware of it, the poison was down his throat, and Shee-shee-banze had retreated quietly to his own lodge.
The next morning the cry went through the village that Way-gee-mar-kin had been found dead in his bed. Of course it was attributed to over indulgence at the feast. All was grief and lamentation. “Let us go and tell poor Shee-shee-banze,” said one, “he was so fond of Way-gee-mar-kin.”
They found him sitting on a bank fishing. He had been up at peep of day, to make preparation for receiving intelligence.
He had caught two or three fish, and, extracting their bladders, had filled them with blood, and tied them under his arm. When the friends of Way-gee-mar-kin saw him, they called out to him,
“Oh! Shee-shee-banze, your friend. Way-gee-mar-kin, is dead!” With a gesture of despair, Shee-shee-banze drew his knife and plunged it, not into his heart, but into the bladders filled with blood that he had prepared. As he fell, apparently lifeless to the ground, the messengers began to reproach themselves: “Oh! why did we tell him so suddenly? We might have known he would not survive it. Poor Shee-shee-banze! he loved Way-gee-mar-kin so.”
To their great surprise, the day after the funeral, Shee-shee-banze came walking toward the wigwam of the dead chief. As he walked, he sang, or rather chanted to a monotonous strain[AV] the following:
Way-gee-mar-kin is dead, is dead,
I know who killed him.
I guess it was I—I guess it was I.
[AV] The Indians sing these words to an air peculiar to themselves.
All the village was aroused. Everybody flew in pursuit of the murderer, but he evaded them, and escaped to a place of safety.