“For whom?” repeated Lita, casting up her dark eyes, and fixing them on her mistress as if she would read her soul. The tone in which the exclamation was uttered, and the look by which it was accompanied, assured Prairie–bird that her conjectures were well founded.
When the heart is full, one overflowing drop tells the contents of the golden chalice; and from the two words spoken by her companion, Olitipa gathered her meaning as well as if she had replied, “Is there any other being on earth but one for whom I can be braiding them?”
The voice of Prairie–bird trembled with a conscious fellow–feeling as she said, “Lita,—I ask not to know your secret, but I pray to the Great Spirit so to direct the steps of him for whom those mocassins are made, that he may receive them at your hands, and wear them for your sake!”
On hearing these words, a deep blush came over the face and neck of the Comanche girl; a word of kindness had touched a spring which, in her wild and wayward nature, would have been unmoved by fear or by violence, and she threw herself into the arms of Prairie–bird, giving vent to long–concealed emotions in a flood of tears.
Scarcely had she regained her composure and resumed her braiding, when the quick ear of Prairie–bird caught the sound of a low chirrup, like that of a grasshopper, close at the back of the tent: she remembered to have heard that signal before; the blood fled from her cheek, and she held her breath in agitated silence: again the sound was repeated, and Prairie–bird stole to the corner of the tent whence it proceeded, and stooping her head, said, in English, “If Wingenund is there, let him speak.”
“My sister!” whispered the soft voice of the youth in reply.
“’Tis he! ’tis my dear young brother himself!”
“Is all quiet, Prairie–bird?”
“All is quiet.”
“Then Wingenund will pull out one of these tent–pegs, and creep in below the canvass,—he has much to say to his sister.”