So Thunder Feather found him, and barred his path. She said that Rain lay up yonder at the point of death. She must come down this trail to find Storm because he had failed her, in her extremity had failed her.
The words were echoed by clanging walls, with cap and crash of thundering calls and answers, far up the heights until the sound was lost in Silence.
And in the disorder of her grief the mother railed at Storm. "You think yourself a man," she cried, "a warrior!" The echoes crashed and thundered to every word. "Your woman bids you keep away from your lodge these three snows past, and you obey, you cur! What woman ever made could love or reverence a thing that obeys her like a dog at the lodge door!
"Three winters married and never seen your woman! O craven dog-face! The squaw is master in your lodge, and you whimpering outside, unfit, unworthy to enter, not man enough to go in, Betrayer of Manhood. He arms a tribe with guns to protect his woman's mountains, while he dare not guard her honor."
She leaned forward, and spat in his face.
"It's just as well," she said, "you were not there to meet that warrior, to spoil your woman's aim when she launched the arrow, or afterwards where she finished him.
"He lies outside the lodge writhing, moaning, there in his blood, craving for water. I sat unseen, invisible, beside him, making sure of his agony, drinking his anguish. Rain's vengeance has not failed, as yours fails, coward. Her vengeance is the one thing saved, the only thing which has not failed in our downfall, all that we have left. He will never have power to harm another woman.
"And so you think you'll climb this trail up to the Hunting Grounds among the blessed dead! You will, but it will be a land of strangers for such as you, who shirked."
Father and Uncle Joey stood behind her, and they also jeered.
In all Storm's life that was the moment of deepest humiliation, for while he knelt upon the ledge, broken with misery, Thunder Feather, his chief assailant, turned on these evil spirits like a tigress. She terrified them, driving them away.