Well did our heroine know every bush and rock of the country around her. With easy, soundless motion she glided along like a flitting shadow until she gained the line of sentries who guarded the camp. Here, as on a former occasion, she sank into the grass, and advanced with extreme caution. If she had not possessed more than the average capacity of savages for stalking, it would have been quite impossible for her to have eluded the vigilance of the young warriors. As it was, she narrowly escaped discovery, for, just as she was crossing what may he termed the guarded line, one of the sentinels took it into his head to move in her direction. Of course she stopped and lay perfectly flat and still, but so near did the warrior come in passing that his foot absolutely grazed her head. But for the intense darkness of the night she would have inevitably been caught.
Creeping swiftly out of the sentinel’s way before he returned, she gained the centre of the camp, and in a few minutes was close to her father’s wigwam. Finding a little hole in the buffalo-skins of which it was chiefly composed, she peeped in.
To her great disappointment, Little Tim was not there, but Brighteyes was, and a youth whom she knew well as one who was about to join the ranks of the men, and go out on his first war-path on the first occasion that offered.
Although trained to observe the gravity and reticence of the Indian, this youth was gifted by nature with powers of loquacity which he found it difficult to suppress. Knowing this, Moonlight felt that she dared not trust him with her secret, and was much perplexed how to attract her mother’s attention without disturbing him. At last she crept round to the side of the tent where her mother was seated, opposite to the youth. Putting her lips to another small hole which she found there, she whispered “Mother,” so softly that Brighteyes did not hear, but went calmly on with her needlework, while the aspirant for Indian honours sent clouds of tobacco from his mouth and nose, and dreamed of awful deeds of daring, which were probably destined to end also in smoke.
“Mother!” whispered Moonlight again.
The whisper, though very slightly increased, was evidently heard, for the woman became suddenly motionless, and turned slightly pale, while her lustrous eyes gazed at the spot whence the sound had come.
“What does Brighteyes see?” asked the Indian youth, expelling a cloud from his lips and also gazing.
“I thought I heard—my Moonlight—whisper.”
A look of grave contempt settled on the youth’s visage as he replied—
“When love is strong, the eyes are blind and the ears too open. Brighteyes hears voices in the night air.”