The bow relaxed, the arrow dropped, she reached out her arms to him, her lips rendered thanksgiving; but now that the strain was ended, the wounded, starving woman swayed helplessly, the flush gone from her face, the light from her eyes. And she fell forward.
Storm dropped the torch. The tipi was all in darkness, and there was no sound save the steady pattering of rain on the taut skins overhead.
CHAPTER VII
THE HOLY LODGE
I
Europe has two groups of languages, the Aryan and the Basque, but the North Americans had ten, with hundreds of tribal dialects. Only the nations on the northwest coast had a trade jargon to unite their isolated villages.
The Indian of the hunting tribes made his whole life the exercise of a religion expressed in endless ceremonial, even the songs and dances being forms of prayer. The song was derived from the notes of birds and beasts, the ritual and the dance were a careful mimicry of the wild creatures, and the whole art of pantomine gave to the Indian extraordinary expressiveness, variety, and grace in gesture. So North America had what Europe lacked, the basis for a language of signs, in universal use, breaking down tribal barriers, welding all nations into one brotherhood. The population was so small, its tribes were so far apart, that war was informal, a hunting for trophies to please the girls, not a campaigning for conquest; but the sign talk made an immense telegraphy which carried news from hill to hill across the wilderness, scout's warning to the home camp, signal of tribe to tribe guiding the hunt, as well as an instrument in diplomacy, a vehicle for treaties.
So far back as they remembered their life, Rain had instructed Storm in the ways of her people, and they could spend hours together conversing in the hand talk without one spoken word. Their first earthly meeting occurred on a dark night when the fire was out; but when they had light to see by, they talked as deaf and dumb folk do among ourselves. Even when Storm learned Blackfoot, they would revert to the graceful, happy game, as one might turn for fun from prose to poetry.
Think, then, of Storm on his knees enjoying a bright fire, and the haggard priestess sitting up affronted because he had bedded No-man down on the other side of the tipi. "That thing, No-man," she sig- naled, "profanes my lodge. Chuck him out!" No-man! Such was the name which Thunder Feather had called the white man Hunt-the-girls, her daughter's enemy.
"Don't fuss," he answered, "here's your soup all steaming, and I'm Old Squaw who smacks the children to make them good inside. You shan't have any soup until you agree to be good."