“Oh, the posies! the posies! Nice Feather-man did bring them.”
“Ugh! Black Partridge, the Truth-Teller. I have come to take my leave. Also to ask you, my sister, shall I carry away the Sun Maid to her own people? Or shall she abide with you?”
“Take her away, my brother? Do you not guess, then, who she is?”
“Why should I guess when I know. I saw her father die, and I stood beside her mother’s grave. The white papoose has neither tribe nor kinsman.”
“There for once the Truth-Teller speaks unwisely. The Sun Maid, whom you found asleep on the path, is my own flesh and blood.”
In surprise Black Partridge stared at the woman, whose face glowed with delight. Then he reflected that it would be as well to leave her undisturbed in her strange notion. The helpless little one would be the better cared for, under such circumstances, and the time might speedily come when she would need all the protection possible for anybody to give.
“It is well – as you believe; yet then you are no longer the Woman-Who-Mourns, but again Wahneenah, the Happy.”
For a moment they silently regarded the child who had thrown herself face downward upon the great heap of orchids that Black Partridge had brought, and which he had risen very early to gather. They were of the same sort that the little one had grieved over on the night before, only much larger and fairer, and of far greater number. Talking to the blossoms and caressing them as if they were human playmates, the Sun Maid forgot that she was hungry, until Wahneenah had brought a second bowl of porridge and, gently lifting her charge to a place upon the mat, had bidden her eat.
“Oh, yes! My breakfast. I did forget it, didn’t I? Oh, the darling posies! Oh! the pretty Feather-man, that couldn’t tell a naughty story. I know ’bout him. We all know ’bout him to our Fort. My Captain says he is the bestest Feather-man in all the – everywhere.”
“Ugh! Ugh!”
The low grunt of assent seemed to come from every side the big wigwam. At all times there were many idle Indians at Muck-otey-pokee, but of late their number had been largely increased by bands of visiting Pottawatomies. These had come to tarry with their tribesmen in the village till the distribution of goods should be made from Fort Dearborn, as had been ordered by General Hull; or until the hour was ripe for their treacherous assault upon the little garrison.
The Man-Who-Kills was in the very centre of the group which had squatted in a semi-circle as near as it dared before the tepee of their chief’s sister, and the low grunts came from this band of spectators.
“We will sit and watch. So will we learn what the Black Partridge means,” and when Spotted Rabbit so advised his brothers, they had come in the darkness and arranged themselves as has been described.
The chief had found them there when, before dawn, he came with his offering of flowers, and Wahneenah had seen them when she raised the curtain of her tent and looked out to learn what manner of day was coming. But neither had noticed them any more than they did the birds rustling in the cottonwood beside the wigwam, or the wild creatures skurrying across the path for their early drink at the stream below.
Neither had the Sun Maid paid them any attention, for she had always been accustomed to meeting the savages both at the Fort and on her rides abroad with any of her garrison friends; so she deliberately sipped her breakfast, pausing now and then to arrange the pouch-like petals of some favored blossoms and to converse with them in her fantastic fashion, quite believing that they heard and understood.
“Did the nice Feather-man bring you all softly, little posies? Aren’t you glad you’ve come to live with Kitty? Other Mother will give you all some breakfast, too, of coldest water in the brook. Then you will sit up straight and hold your heads high. That’s the way the children do when my Captain takes the book with the green cover and makes them spell things out of it. Oscar doesn’t like the green book. It makes him wriggle his nose – so; but Margaret is as fond of it as I am of you. Oh, dear! Some day, all my mothers say, I, too, will have to sit and look on the printing and spell words. I can, though, even now. Listen, posies. D-o-g – that’s – that’s – I guess it’s ‘cat.’ Isn’t it, posies? But you don’t have to spell things, do you? I needn’t either. Not to-day, and maybe not to-morrow day. Because, you see, I runned away. Oh, how I did run! So fast, so far, before I found your little sisters, posies, dear. Then I guess I went to sleep, without ever saying my ‘Now I lay me,’ and the black Feather-man came, and – that’s all.”
Wahneenah had gone back to her household duties, for she had many things on hand that day. Not the least, to make her neglected tepee a brighter, fitter home for this stray sunbeam which the Great Spirit had sent to her out of the sky, and into which He had breathed the soul of her lost one. Indistinctly, she heard the murmuring of the babyish voice at the threshold and occasionally caught some of the words it uttered. These served but to establish her in her belief that the child had more than mortal senses; else how should she fancy that the blossoms would hear and understand her prattle?
“Listen. She talks to the weeds as the white men talk to us. She is a witch,” said the Man-Who-Kills to his neighbor in the circle, the White Pelican.
“She is only a child of the pale-faces. The Black Partridge has set her among us to move our hearts to pity.”
“The White Pelican was ever a coward,” snorted the Man-Who-Kills.
But the younger warrior merely turned his head and smiled contemptuously. Then he critically scrutinized the ill-proportioned figure of the ugly-tempered brave. The fellow’s crooked back, abnormally long arms and short legs were an anomaly in that race of stalwart Indians, and the soul of the savage corresponded to his outward development. For his very name had been given him in derision; because, though he always threatened and always sneaked after his prey, he had never been known to slay an enemy in open combat.
“That is as the tomahawks prove. The scalps hang close on the pole of my wigwam,” finally remarked the Pelican.
“Ugh! But there was never such a scalp as that of the papoose yonder. It shall hang above all others in my tepee. I have said it.”
“Having said it, you may unsay it. That is no human fleece upon that small head. She is sacred.”
“How? Is the White Pelican a man of dreams?”
The elder brave also used a tone of contempt, though not with marked success. His thought reverted to the night before, when the chief had stood beside the council fire holding the sleeping child in his arms. Her wonderful yellow hair, fine as spun cobwebs and almost as light, had blown over the breast of Black Partridge like a cloud, and it had glistened and shimmered in the firelight as if possessed of restless life. The little figure was clothed in white, as the Fort mothers had fancied best suited their charge’s fairness, even though the fabric must of necessity be coarse; and this garment likewise caught the glow of the dancing flames till it seemed luminous in itself.
As an idle rumor spreads and grows among better cultured people so superstition held in power these watchful Indians. Said one:
“The father of his tribe has met a spirit on the prairie and brought it to our village. Is the deed for good or evil?”
This was what the men in the semi-circle had come to find out. So they relapsed again into silence, but kept a fixed gaze upon the indifferent child before them. She continued her playing and feeding as unconsciously as if she, the flowers, and the sunshine, were quite alone. Some even fancied that they could hear the orchids whispering in return; and it was due to that morning’s incident that, thereafter, few among the Pottawatomies would lightly bruise or break a blossom which they then learned to believe was gifted with a sensate life.
But presently a sibilant “Hst!” ran the length of the squatting line, and warriors who feared not death for themselves felt their muscles stiffen under a tension of dread as they saw the slow, sinuous approach of a poisonous reptile to the child on the mat; and the thought of each watcher was the same:
“Now, indeed, the test – spirit or mortal?”
The