The Star-wife did not wish to go, but she wanted to see her father once more, so she got into the basket and it sailed away up into the sky. Her father was very glad to see her, and she was very glad to see him, and they talked and they talked till the blue sky was getting gray. Then she remembered that she ought to have gone home long before.
"Now I must go back to my husband," she said.
"That you shall never do!" said her father.
And he shut her up in a white cloud and said she should stay there till she promised never to go back to the prairie. She begged to be let out, but it was no use.
Then she began to weep; and she wept so much that the cloud began to weep too, and it was weeping itself quite away. So her father saw she would go down to the earth in rain if he kept her in the cloud any longer, and he let her out.
"What must I do for you," he said, "to make you stay with us here and be happy?"
"I will not stay here," she said, "unless my husband comes and lives here too."
"I will send for him at once," said her father. So he sent the basket down empty, and it rested in the middle of the dancing ring.
Now when High-feather reached Loon Lake he found it covered with red swans. He shot two with one arrow, and then all the rest flew away. He picked up the two swans and hurried back to his tent, and there lay the dancing-cloth with the feather stars on it half finished, but no wife could he see. [page 467] He called her, but she did not answer. He rushed out, with the two red swans still slung round his neck and hanging down his back, and ran to the dancing ring, but nobody was there.
"I will wait till she comes back," he said to himself, "if I have to wait till the world ends." So he threw himself down on the grass and lay looking up at the stars till he went to sleep.