As the season advanced, Weetano manifested an anxiety with regard to their return, and evidently dreaded her father’s orders to depart—for she had learned a little of the tastes and habits of her white friends, and they seemed more congenial to her now delicate frame than the ruder customs of her tribe. There seemed, moreover, some secret care weighing down her spirits; and although she, Indian-like, buried it for a time in her own bosom, and Anna forbore questioning, it at length found voice in words. They were sitting by the lake-side one morning, and Anna plucked a pretty blue flower just opening there, and gave it to Red-Bird.
“ ’Tis the first herald of autumn,” said Weetano. “The gentian opens for the corn-dance, and Oliwibatuc will soon go to his tribe. Would that Red-Bird might stay in the lodge with Pale-Lily until the feast of the braves is over! She cannot dress the lodge of the chief—Weetano is weary;” and the Indian girl burst into tears.
“You are sick, darling Red-Bird,” said Anna, taking her hand in a caressing manner. “Tell me what is the matter, and I will nurse you, for you are all the sister I have here in this distant home. You are not afraid to trust me, Weetano?”
“No! Weetano love the pale face! Listen, she will whisper all! Next moon the Mohawk chief will spread the corn-feast, and the Huron warriors will come with their braves to smoke the pipe with our tribe, and bury the bloody tomahawk! ’Tis a hundred moons since our fathers took it up, but the young chief of the Hurons sent presents to the Mohawk’s wigwam, and comes to seek his daughter; Oliwibatuc has sent back the belt of friendship, and Weetano must go to the lodge of Owanaw, to make sure the bonds of the warriors. She had sooner die, for the shadow of her pale brother will go with her to the land of spirits; but it will not follow her to a warrior’s wigwam—for he loves not the bow and tomahawk.”
“But your father will not force you to go, Weetano; why do you speak so mournfully?”
“His word was pledged more than twenty moons ago. A warrior breaks not his word! Weetano was a gay child then, and loved the feast and the dance of the braves. But she has learned another life now—her new brother has awakened it, and she reads it in Pale-Lily’s book; but Oliwibatuc will shut his ears and be angry, and Weetano must go. She is the last of his race, and must wed a warrior.”
There was a mournful look of despair depicted on the countenance of the Indian maiden as she uttered these last words, that went to the heart of Anna—and she sought to divert her from the unwelcome theme, by telling her stories of her first home over the blue waters. After exhausting many a topic, she told her of the beautiful peasant-boy who had been her companion for years, and the story of his persecuted people, and of his little sister, whose fate he had so often bewailed in her childish ears. She then told her she would sing her a song he had learnt her of his own wild hills; but before she had proceeded far, Weetano stopped her with an exclamation of delight.
“My pale brother sings the Lily’s song at the silence of nightfall in the lodge of Oliwibatuc! He, too, came over the great waters, but he speaks the words of the French.”
A sudden thought flashed through the mind of Anna, flushing her cheek with crimson at first, and then leaving it paler than before. “Could it be possible!” she thought; “but no, the idea was preposterous! The Canadians were all French—many of them would, doubtless, sing the songs of their own mountain peasantry!” The object of her young imaginings had probably gone back to his native valley, if, indeed, he had escaped the hands of the new Stuart: and so the thought was dismissed with a sigh.
Weetano was right in her conjecture that Oliwibatuc would soon return to his tribe, as his directions next morning proved; but the old chief read plainly in his daughter’s countenance a reluctance to comply, which he attributed to the parting from her white friend. “Red-Bird is the daughter of warriors;” said the old chief, reprovingly! “Doth she carry a faint heart in her breast?”