The maidens turned round and ran after them; all but [page 465] the youngest sister, who did not want any one to be killed; and High-feather came out of the hole and turned himself into what he was, and caught her by the arm.
"Come home and marry me," he said, "and dance with the Indian maidens; and I will hunt for you, and my mother will cook for you, and you will be much happier than up in the sky."
Her sisters came rushing round her, and begged her to go back home to the sky with them; but she looked into the young man's eyes, and said she would go with him wherever he went. So the other maidens went weeping and wailing up into the sky, and High-feather took his Star-wife home to his tent on the bank of the Battle River.
High-feather's mother was glad to see them both; but she whispered in his ear: "You must never let her out of your sight if you want to keep her; you must take her with you everywhere you go."
And he did so. He took her with him every time he went hunting, and he made her a bow and arrows, but she would never use them; she would pick wild strawberries and gooseberries and raspberries as they went along, but she would never kill anything; and she would never eat anything that any one else had killed. She only ate berries and crushed corn.
One day, while the young man's wife was embroidering feather stars on a dancing-cloth, and his mother was gossiping in a tent at the end of the village, a little yellow bird flew in and perched on High-feather's shoulder, and whispered in his ear:
"There is a great flock of wild red swans just over on Loon Lake. If you come quickly and quietly you can catch them before they fly away; but do not tell your wife, for red swans cannot bear the sight of a woman, and they can tell if one comes within a mile of them."
High-feather had never seen or heard of a red swan before; all the red feathers he wore he had had to paint. He looked at his wife, and as she was sewing busily and looking down at her star embroidering he thought he could slip away and get back before she knew he had gone. But as soon as he was out of sight the little yellow bird flew in and perched on her shoulder, [page 466] and sang her such a beautiful song about her sisters in the sky that she forgot everything else and slipped out and ran like the wind, and got to the dancing ring just as her sisters came down in their basket. Then they all gathered round her, and begged her to go home with them.
But she only said, "High-feather is a brave man, and he is very good to me, and I will never leave him."
When they saw they could not make her leave her husband, the eldest sister said: "If you must stay, you must. But just come up for an hour, to let your father see you, because he has been mourning for you ever since you went away."