THE QUEST OF THE FEATHERS
Jumping Wolf stumbled around the margin of the lake, felt the touch of
a guiding hand on his arm, and saw, suddenly, the glowing windows of
the magic lodge. Next moment, as the thing would happen in a dream, he
stood within the bright room, staring at the living pictures on the
walls and the lamps that burned so steadily and yet exhaled no smoke.
He uttered an exclamation of wonder, happiness. Surely he had entered
the lodge of the gods! Then he felt a light touch against his knee, and
looking down beheld Run-all-day’s littlest baby smiling up at him.
“What is the message, friend, that you bring from the honest
Run-all-day?” inquired the magician, who stood close at his elbow.
“I had forgotten it,” whispered the youth. “It seems a small matter,
a thing to snap one’s fingers over, in this beautiful place,” and
straightway his eyes began to wander along the walls again and up at
the starlit roof.
“You have come a long journey,” said Wise-as-a-she-wolf, gently.
The young man sighed and withdrew his gaze from the picture of a battle.
“The red feathers are gone from the chief’s lodge, O mighty one,” he
said. “They were stolen in the night, from the robes of the chief’s
couch, by a stranger named Spotted Seal. We gave chase to the thief,
for a matter of several miles, but he flew like a hawk. And Run-all-day
could not leave the village, so he trusted me to bring you the word,
mighty chief.”
The magician looked thoughtful, but not greatly disturbed. With Bright
Robe reduced to harmlessness, he did not foresee any serious difficulty
in recovering possession of the feathers.
“In which direction did Spotted Seal fly?” he asked.
“He started southward, master,” replied the youth.
“It is well that you arrived to-night,” said the magician, “for I
intended to set out on a journey early in the morning.”
Jumping Wolf thought of how nearly he had given himself to slumber one
noontime, and of how a few hours’ rest then would have delayed him so
that he would not have reached the pine wood until after the magician’s
departure, and so would not have found the magic lodge at all. But he
said nothing of this.
“You go on a journey? Then what of the child?” he said.
“He will be safe and happy,” replied Wise-as-a-she-wolf. “Everything
that he may require is at his hand, and he will not know that I am gone
from him. But he will know well when I return, and will be glad of it.”
“I can believe that readily, great chief, for I myself could spend
an hundred years in the contemplation of these wonderful pictures,”
replied the young man.
“And yet,” said the other, thoughtfully, “this lodge was never so
wonderful to me as it has become since I brought the baby to it. Now
I find it hard to cross the threshold and go about my business in the
world.”
But this was all lost upon Jumping Wolf, who was again intent on the
contemplation of the pictures of life. There was a girl that reminded
him of Singing Bird; and at last he caught sight of the newest picture,
and beheld, with pride and wonder, himself on the sodden ice-cake, and
the big canoe paddled by Run-all-day, and Singing Bird in the bow,
slim and glowing as in her living flesh. Before that picture he stood
fascinated, forgetful of the magician and his surroundings.
“Nowhere in the whole world is there such another as little Singing
Bird,” he cried, very low, but with a quaver in his voice.
“And nowhere, north, east, south, or west, is there so great a magician
as Youth,” said Wise-as-a-she-wolf, smiling somewhat pathetically.
The other looked at him swiftly; and though he did not understand, he
felt a vague stirring of pity for the mighty one.
Early in the morning, the magician guided Jumping Wolf out of the
forest of pines and faced him on his way. He gave him a store of food
to last him three days.
“Tell the mother that all is well with the littlest warrior,” he said,
“and say to the chief that I do not hold the loss of the feathers
against him; but that, with the knowledge of them abroad among the
people, I must keep them myself should I win them back, until such time
as the child is ready to use them. Be guarded in your talk about this
lodge of mine, and the way to it,” he added.
“May I not speak of its wonders to any one?” asked the young man.
“You need not sit with a silent tongue before the maid,” replied
Wise-as-a-she-wolf. “I have been young, also,” he added, and turned
upon the other a face as boyish as the warrior’s own.
Then they parted, one going southward and one eastward, and the silence
of the wilderness fell again upon wood and barren. The magician walked
like any common traveller, for a mile or more, pondering deeply. His
thoughts were not of the red feathers, but of the little child playing
by itself in the magic house. “Wonderful! Wonderful!” he murmured.
“How he grows, day by day. And he loves me. My eyes require no magic
keenness to see that he loves me.” He sat down on a mossy stone, and
his mind was not on his affairs as the guardian of a nation. He thought
of the child whom he had taken into his care; and he thought how happy
a man might be, a chief of a little village, or even a fisher of cod,
with a woman and children in his lodge. “I must not lead him too far in
the knowledge of hidden things,” he reflected, “or else, in his power,
he will miss the happiness that is his birthright.”
At last he got to his feet. “I must find those red feathers,” he said.
“I must hasten in the search of Spotted Seal; and perhaps I can return
to the littlest warrior before night.”
Then he hid himself in his magic and sprang into the air on the
moccasins of the wind.
Wise-as-a-she-wolf flew fast and far, scanning the woods and hills
and open places beneath his feet. He flashed, invisible, southward,
eastward, and westward, and descended into many camps and villages, to
look closely at their unsuspecting inhabitants. But nowhere did he find
a man answering to Jumping Wolf’s description of Spotted Seal. Just
before the time of sunset, he turned his face toward home, and flew
with more eagerness than he had as yet exhibited during the day. He
would continue his search for Spotted Seal in the morning; but now it
was time for him to tell the story of one or other of the pictures to
the littlest warrior. He felt no great anxiety concerning the feathers.
He was sure to find them in a day or two, before the thief could
accomplish much harm with them, even if he were so minded.
Wise-as-a-she-wolf spent the next day in a fruitless search for the red
feathers. He sought far and wide, and made inquiries for Spotted Seal
at several widely separated villages; but all this without any success.
It was not until the fifth day of his search that an old fisherman, who
lived on the coast of the Narrow Sea, told of how days before, he had
been amazed to see a man running in the air, high above the salt water,
running westward toward the hazy line of that distant shore.
The magician crossed the water without delay, flying unseen from under
the very eyes of the astonished fisherman. He descended to the ground
and took on his visible form, near the camp of a party of Mountain
People. He walked into the camp, a modest, undersized youth, and in
a second a dozen great wolf-dogs had sprung toward him, followed by
several warriors. The dogs were huge beasts, more savage and fearless
than their brothers, the timber wolves, and as strong of jaw and limb.
But under the mild regard of the stranger’s clear eyes, they halted
in their rush, turned and slunk away. The warriors were also savage
in appearance, and long of limb and hair. They were dark of skin, and
black of eye, like Spotted Seal. The truth is, Spotted Seal had the
blood of these Mountain People strong in his veins; but how this thing
had come about is apart from our story. The warriors, more courageous
than the dogs, continued their advance upon the helpless-looking
stranger.
“I would speak with Black Eagle,” said the magician, for these people
were well known to him. At that they halted, eyeing him distrustfully.
“Black Eagle is our chief,” said one, an angular fellow, with sinister
eyes, a scar on his chin, and a spear in his hand. He seemed to be
watching, hungrily, for something to serve as an excuse for an attack
on the visitor.
“Yes, he is your chief. I want to speak with him,” said the stranger,
quietly.
“He is a mighty chief,” said the fellow with the scar on his chin. “He
does not come to every one’s bidding. I will call an old woman to take
your message.”
“Tell him that Wise-as-a-she-wolf is waiting to talk to him,” said the
magician.
At that name the warriors were visibly disturbed, and several of them
slunk away in much the same manner as the dogs had done a few minutes
before.
But he of the scarred chin was of tougher courage. “It is not a
difficult thing to mention a great name,” he said, sneering and alert.
“I must teach you caution,” said the magician, who, despite the
goodness of his heart, could not bring himself to love these dark and
bloodthirsty people. So, in a flash, he vanished from their sight. They
uttered a shout of consternation, and the warrior with the sinister
eyes and disfigured chin hurled his spear at the place where the
stranger had stood. In the same instant of time he received a buffet on
the head that laid him flat on the moss.
Black Eagle was soon brought to the magician, who now stood quietly, in
his mild and visible form, calm as if nothing unusual had taken place.
The chief greeted his visitor respectfully, for he knew him of old.
“Have you seen a man running on the air, as if he had the moccasins of
the wind on his feet?” asked Wise-as-a-she-wolf.
“I saw such an one but two days ago. He was flying northward and
westward, toward the Land of Giants,” replied the chief of the
mountaineers.
Wise-as-a-she-wolf continued his journey immediately, and soon came to
the borders of that desolate region known as the Land of Giants. Its
inhabitants were people of tremendous stature and physical strength.
They were stupidly savage, and so dull of wit that no argument,
save that of heavier clubs than their own, could move them. And as
they had never met with heavier clubs than their own, no man could
remember that their darkened opinions had ever been changed by outside
influence. The biggest and strongest man was always their chief; and he
remained their chief for just so long as he continued to be bigger and
stronger than any of his people. When illness or old age weakened him
then his chieftainship ended, and perhaps his life, into the bargain.
Wise-as-a-she-wolf knew these people well, though not favourably; so he
paused in his flight and descended to the ground at some distance from
the first of the great lodges. Still invisible, he advanced cautiously
on foot toward the untidy and tremendous structure of tree-trunks in
which dwelt the giant who had been chief of the people at the time of
his last visit to the country. He had not gone more than a dozen paces
before he was halted by the sight of a human body, a lifeless body,
lying face-downward on the moss and stones. At first he thought it was
the body of one of the Mountain People; but, upon drawing nearer, he
saw that the garments of dressed leather, blood-stained and wrinkled
on that stiffened form, were of the pattern common among the warriors
of his own country beyond the Narrow Sea. The feet were bare, but one
of the moccasins lay close by. Very gently he turned the body over; and
the face of the dead man was that of Spotted Seal, as Jumping Wolf had
described it to him.
Wise-as-a-she-wolf turned away from the pitiful thing and went on in
the direction of the great lodge, the shapeless roof of which loomed
above a grove of spruces on the summit of a hill. At last he issued
from the grove and stood in front of, and at a safe distance away from,
the entrance to the giant’s abode. This entrance was nearly half the
height of the structure and wide in proportion. It looked more like the
mouth of a den than the doorway of a human retreat. Bones of caribou
and moose lay white on the trampled ground; but there was no sign of a
cooking-fire to be seen. The giants ate their meat raw, and were never
known to use fire even in winter, for the sake of its warmth. In the
dusky interior, Wise-as-a-she-wolf detected the outline of a bulky
figure.