"So the Sparrow-Hearted has come back?" she called, striding ahead of her more cautious tribeswomen, and coming almost within touching distance of the supposed phantom. "For three days already we have believed the Sparrow-Hearted drowned." And half tauntingly, and with an admonishing smile, she added: "It is not right to pretend to pass the great mountains of the dead."
"Oh, Yonyo, I did not pretend!" he pleaded. And then, as she came within arm's grasp and halted, he felt once more the full fury of his loneliness and of his longing for her.
"Are you not glad to see me back, Yonyo?" he cried. "Do you have no word of joy for me? Is it nothing to you that I have been saved from the wild beasts, and from men more savage than wolves? Oh, Yonyo, do you not care?"
One of her most taunting, tantalizing smiles overspread her face; and he could not be certain whether she intended to reassure him or to dash all hope from his heart.
But her reply, although trembling on her lips, was never to be spoken, for at that instant Zubu the Prattling-Brook came panting up to him; and, scarcely taking time to regain her breath, burst into a storm of questions.
"Ru, where have you been all these days? Have you not been drowned, as Kuff and Woonoo said? Have you not gone beyond the mountains of the sky, where those spirits live who can never come back? Or have you been there and escaped? Have you done that wonderful deed? Have you been dead, Ru, and walked down from the sky?"
"Yes, I have been dead, and walked down from the sky," he assured her, on an impulse that startled even himself. And as an awestricken light came into her eyes, he felt an audacious plan gathering form and power within him.
"I have been dead, and come back!" he repeated, with a boldness born of the effect his words had produced. "I am the only man who has ever escaped from the great wind-spirit that blows beyond the last mountains. Woonoo and Kuff spoke truth when they said they saw me drowned. For a whole day my body lay under the water, and I could not move nor speak; and in that day my spirit flew far, far away, and saw things that no man has ever seen before. But of all that I shall tell you later."
By this time two or three more women, observing that the apparition had not harmed Yonyo or Zubu, had approached and silently joined the group. They too gaped in wide-eyed wonder; but not a murmur of doubt or incredulity escaped their lips.
"Tell us more!" they begged, when Ru cut his recitation short. "Do not wait! Tell us more, Ru! We want to know what happened to you beyond the last mountains!"