“‘I would have the one I choose, as strong and brave as these,’ I answered proudly, ‘but something more. No one of these has touched my heart. They are all selfish and untrue. Something tells me to choose no one among them.’
“This I said truly; but more than spoken cause was the remembrance of my mother’s words, ‘Set your heart on him whose soul meets yours and at its best.’
“My father uttered only the grim ‘Ugh!’ which meant, I knew, a latent wrath; and for the first time I was touched with a vague uneasiness.
“Soon other suitors came and went. I grew at length anxious and unhappy. When would a lover come whose soul was true, whose heart moved mine? My father made me daily less his companion. At last, when a young chief from the most powerful of our neighboring tribes, offering his gifts in vain, turned wrathfully away, my father looked at me a moment in dark displeasure. Then he led me to the mighty oak which grew upon the outskirts of our camp. It was the Tree of Judgment, and underneath its spreading boughs had many a trembling victim heard his direful sentence.
“‘No maiden of our tribe has lived unwedded,’ he began. ‘You shall not disgrace me nor my people. Other maidens are given, without wish of their own, by chief or parent to whom these will. You are the daughter of a chief. To you I grant the gift of choosing; but choose you must. Though you were ten times worthy; though your beauty moved the gods above,—one from the mortals who seek your hand you still shall wed. Or, if you fail, in three moons you shall die.’
“He said, but his words fell upon a heart as proud as his; a will as strong as his to do or to endure. Yet I loved life, and longed, too, with all a maiden’s fervor, for a heart which should control my own. The days went on, and no one appeared whom I could love and trust. The warriors and maidens of our tribe perceived my father’s anger and held me in contempt. Those who had served me ceased to do my bidding. Old women turned hard faces toward me and muttered curses whenever I went near them. But my will was still unconquered and my pride unbent. Like a queen I moved among the petty beings whom once I had ruled. My father no longer looked upon me. My heart yearned for his love but I could not speak; I would not yield. No human being praised, nor gave me words of sympathy, save one alone.
UNDER SAN JACINTO
“The shadows of the mountain stood out in the clear moonlight.”
“One day as I walked near the stream, beside whose channel had flowed the good and evil of my life, a crippled youth, a white captive whom my father, moved by strange feeling, once had saved from death, suddenly appeared before me from behind a neighboring tree. Without the word of formal welcome wherewith he had been used to greet me, he said, and looked not at me as he spoke, but at the mountain rock which hung above our camp:
“‘Brave daughter of your mother’s people, you have done well. Endure. God—Manitou—will not forget.’