THE WHITE BOW.
Wahneenah had lived so entirely within the seclusion of her own lodge
that she had become almost a stranger in the village. It was long
since she had travelled so far as the isolated hut into which the
youth, Osceolo, had seen the Sun Maid disappear, and as she approached
it her womanly heart smote her with pain and self-reproach, while she
reflected thus:
"Has it come to this? Spotted Adder, the Mighty, whose wigwam was once
the richest of all my father's tribe. I remember that its curtains of
fine skins were painted by the Man-Of-Visions himself, and told the
history of the Pottawatomies since the beginning of the world. Many a
heap of furs and peltries went in payment for their adornment,
but--where are they now! While I have sat in darkness with my sorrow
new things have become old. Yet he is accursed. Else the trouble would
not have befallen him. I have heard the women talking, through my
dreams. He has lain down and cannot again arise. And the White Papoose
is with him! Will she be accursed, too? Fool! Why do I fear? Is she
not a child of the sky, and forever safe, as Katasha said? But the
touch of her arms was warm, like the clasp of the son I bore, and----"
The mother's reverie ended in a very human distress. There was a rumor
among her people that whoever came near the Spotted Adder would
instantly be infected by whatever was the dread disease from which he
suffered. That the Sun Maid's wonderful loveliness should receive a
blemish seemed a thing intolerable and, in another instant, regardless
of her own danger, Wahneenah had crept beneath the broken flap of
bark, into a scene of squalor indescribable. Even this squaw, who knew
quite well how wretched the tepees of her poorer tribesmen often were,
was appalled now; and though the torn skins and strips of bark which
covered the hut admitted plenty of light and air, she gasped for
breath before she could speak.
"My Girl-Child! My Sun Maid! Come away. Wrong, wrong to have entered
here, to have made me so anxious. Come."
"No, no, Other Mother! Kitty cannot come. Kitty must stay. See the
poor gray squirrel? It has broked its leg. It went so--hoppety-pat,
hoppety-pat, as fast as fast. I thought it was playing and just
running away. So Kitty runned too. Kitty always runs away when Kitty
can."
"Ugh! I believe you. Come."
"No, Kitty must stay. Poor sick man needs Kitty. I did give him a nice
drink. Berries, too. Kitty putted them in his mouth all the time. Poor
man!"
Wahneenah's anger rose. Was she, a chief's daughter, to be thus
flouted by a baby, a pale-face at that? Surely, there was nothing
whatever spiritual now about this self-willed, spoiled creature, whom
an unkind fate had imposed upon her. She stooped to lift the little
one and compel obedience, but was met by a smile so fearless and happy
that her arms fell to her sides.
"That's a good Other Mother. Poor sick man has wanted to turn him
over, and he couldn't. Kitty tried and tried, and Kitty couldn't. Now
my Other Mother's come. She can. She is so beau'ful strong and kind!"
There was a grunt, which might have been a groan, from the corner of
the hut where the Spotted Adder lay; and a convulsive movement of the
contorted limbs as he vainly strove to change his uncomfortable
position. Wahneenah watched him, with the contempt which the women of
her race feel for any masculine weakness, and did not offer to assist.
His poverty she pitied, and would have relieved, though his physical
infirmity was repugnant to her. She would not touch him.
But the Sun Maid was on her feet at once, tenderly laying upon the
ground the wounded squirrel which she had held upon her lap. The wild
thing had, apparently, lost all its timidity and now fully trusted the
child who had caressed its fur and murmured soft, pitying sounds, in
that low voice of hers, which the Fort people had sometimes felt was
an unknown language. Certainly, she had had a strange power, always,
over any animal that came near her and this case was no exception. Her
white friends would not have been surprised by the incident, but
Wahneenah was, and it brought back her belief that this was a child of
supernatural gifts. She even began to feel ashamed of her treatment of
Spotted Adder, though she waited to see what his small nurse would do.
"Poor sick Feather-man! Is you hurted now? Does your face ache you to
make it screw itself all this way?" and she made a comical grimace,
imitative of the sufferer's expression.
"Ugh! Ugh!"
"Yes; Kitty hears. Other Mother, that is all the word he says. All the
time it is just 'Ugh! Ugh!' I wish he would talk Kitty's talk. Make
him do it, Other Mother. Please!"
"That I cannot do. He knows it not. But he has a speech I understand.
What need you, Spotted Adder?" she concluded, in his own dialect.
"Ugh! It is the voice of Wahneenah, the Happy. What does she here, in
the lodge of the outcast? It is many a moon since the footfall of a
woman sounded on my floor. Why does one come now?"
"In pursuit of this child, the adopted daughter of our tribe, whom the
Black Partridge himself has given me. It was ill of you, accursed, to
wile her hither with your unholy spells."
"I wiled her not. It was the gray squirrel. Broken in his life, as am
I, the once Mighty. Many wounded creatures seek shelter here. It is a
sanctuary. They alone fear not the miserable one."
"Does not the tribe see to it that you have food and drink set within
your wigwam, once during each journey of the sun? I have so heard."
"Ugh! Food and drink. Sometimes I cannot reach them. They are not even
pushed beyond the door flap, or what is left of it. They are all
afraid. All. Yet they are fools. That which has befallen me may happen
to each when his time comes. It is the sickness of the bones. There is
no contagion in it. But it twists the straight limbs into torturing
curves and it rends the body with agony. One would be glad to die, but
death--like friendship--holds itself aloof. Ugh! The drink! The
drink!"
The Sun Maid could understand the language of the eyes, if not the
lips, and she followed their wistful gaze toward the clay bowl from
which she had before given him the water. But it was empty now, and
seizing it with all her strength, for it was heavy and awkward in
shape, she sped out of the wigwam toward a spring she had discovered.
"Four, ten, lots of times Kitty has broughted the nice water, and
every time the poor, sick Feather-man has drinked it up. He must be
terrible thirsty, and so is Kitty. I guess I will drink first, this
time."
Filling the utensil, she struggled to lift it to her own lips, but it
was rudely pushed away.
"Papoose! Would you drink to your own death? The thing is accursed, I
tell you!"
"Why, Other Mother! It is just as clean as clean. Kitty did wash and
wash it long ago. It was all dirty, worse than my new necklace, but it
is clean now. Do you want a drink, Other Mother? Is you thirsty, too,
like the sick one and Kitty?"
"If I were, it would be long before I touched my lips to that cup."
"Would it? Now I will fill it again. Then you must take it, Other
Mother, and quick, quick, back to that raggedy house. Kitty is tired,
she has come here and there so many, many times."
"Is it here you have spent this long day, papoose?"
"I did come here when the gray squirrel runned away. I did stay ever
since."
Wahneenah's heart sank. But to her credit it was that, for the time
being, she forgot the stories she had heard, and remembered only that
there was suffering which she must relieve. It might be that already
the soul of Spotted Adder was winged for its long flight, and could
carry for her to that wide Unknown, where her own dead tarried, some
message from her, the bereft. As this thought flashed through her
brain she seized the bowl and hastened with it to the lodge.
This time, also, she forgot everything but the possibility that had
come to her, and kneeling beside the old Indian she held the dish to
his mouth.
"It is the fever, the fever! A little while and the awful chill will
come again. The racking pain, the thirst! Ugh! Wahneenah, the Happy,
is braver than her sisters. Her courage shall prove her blessing. The
lips of the dying speak truth."
"And the ears of the dying? Can they still hear and remember? Will the
Spotted Adder take my message to the men I have lost? Sire and son,
there was no Pottawatomie ever born so brave as they. Tell them I have
been faithful. I have been the Woman-Who-Mourns. I have kept to my
darkened wigwam and remembered only them, till she came, this child
you have seen. She is a gift from the sky. She has come to comfort
and sustain. She was born a pale-face, but she has a red man's heart.
She is all brave and true and dauntless. None fear her, and she fears
none. I believe that they have sent her to me. I believe that in her
they both live. Ask them if this is so."
"There is no need to ask, Wahneenah, the Happy. Happy, indeed, who has
been blessed with a gift so gracious. She is the Merciful. The
Unafraid. She will pass in safety through many perils. All day she has
sat beside me whom all others shun. She has moistened my lips, she has
kept the gnats from stinging, she has sung in her unknown tongue of
that land whither I go, and soon,--the land of the sky from whence she
came. The light of the morning is on her hair and the dusk of evening
in her eyes. As she has ministered to me, the deserted, the solitary,
so she will minister unto multitudes. I can see them crowding,
crowding; the generations yet unborn. The vision of the dying is
true."
On the floor beside them the Sun Maid sat, caressing the wounded
squirrel. Through the torn curtains the waning sunlight slanted and
lighted the bleak interior. It seemed to rest most brilliantly upon
the child, and in the eyes of the Spotted Adder she was like a lamp
set to illumine his path through the dark valley, an unexpected
messenger from the Great Father, showing him beforehand a glimpse of
the beauty and tenderness of the Land Beyond. Yet even if a spirit,
she wore a human shape, and she would have human needs. She would be
often in danger against which she must be guarded.
"Wahneenah, fetch me the bow and quiver."
"Which?" she asked, in surprise, though in reality she knew.
"Is there one that should be named with mine? The White Bow from the
land of eternal snow; the arrows winged with feathers from the white
eagle's wing,--light as thistle down, strong as love, invincible as
death."
The Spotted Adder had been the orator of his tribe. Men had listened
to his words in admiration, wondering whence he obtained the eloquence
which moved them; and at that moment it was as if all the power of his
earlier manhood had returned.
The White Bow was well known among all the Pottawatomie tribes. Even
the Sacs and Foxes had heard of it and feared it. It was older than
the Giver's historic necklace, and tradition said that it had been
hurled to earth on the breath of a mighty snowstorm. It had fallen
before the wigwam of the Spotted Adder's ancestor and had been handed
down from father to son, as fair and sound as on the day of its first
bestowal. None knew the wood of which it was fashioned, which many
could bend and twist but none could break. The string which first
bound it had never worn nor wasted, and not a feather had ever fallen
from the arrows in the quiver, nor had their number ever diminished,
no matter how often sped. It was the one possession left to the
neglected warrior and had been protected by its own reputed origin.
There were daring thieves in many a tribe, but never a thief so bold
he would risk his soul in the seizure of the White Bow.
Wahneenah felt no choice but to comply with the Indian's command. She
took the bow and its accoutrements from the sheltered niche in the
tepee where it hung; the only spot, it seemed, that had not been
subjected to the destruction of the elements. She had never held it in
her hand before, and she wondered at its lightness as she carried it
to its owner, and placed it in the gnarled fingers which would never
string it again.
"Good! Call the child to stand here."
With awe, Wahneenah motioned the little one within the red man's
reach. The last vestige of fear or repulsion had vanished from her own
mind before the majesty of this hour.
"Does the poor, sick Feather-man want another drink? Shall Kitty fetch
it now?"
"Hush, papoose!"
He would have opened the small white hand and clasped it about the
bow, which reached full three times the height of the child, and along
whose beautiful length she gazed in wonder, but he could not.
"Take it, Girl-Child. It is a gift. It is more magical than the
necklace. Take it, hold it tight--that will please him--and say what
is in your heart."
"Oh, the beau'ful bow! Is it for Kitty? To keep, forever and ever?
Why, it is bigger than that one of the Sauganash, and far prettier
than Winnemeg's. It cannot be for Kitty, just little Kitty girl."
"Yes; it is."
Then the Sun Maid laid it reverently down, and catching hold her scant
tunic made the old-fashioned curtsey which her Fort friends had taught
her.
"Thank you, poor Feather-man. I will take care of it very nice. I
won't break it, not once."
"Ugh!" grunted the Indian, with satisfaction. Then he closed his eyes
as if he would sleep.
"Good-night, Spotted Adder, the Mighty. I thank you, also, on the
child's behalf. It is the second gift this day of talismans that must
protect. Surely, she will be clothed in safety. Hearken to me. I must
go home. The Sun Maid must be fed and put to sleep. But I will return.
I am no longer afraid. You were my father's friend. All that a woman's
hand can now do for your comfort shall be done."
[Illustration: THE GIFT OF THE WHITE BOW. _Page 48._]
But the Spotted Adder made no sign, and whether he did or did not hear
her, Wahneenah never knew. She walked swiftly homeward, bearing the
White Papoose upon one strong arm and the White Bow upon the other.
Yet she noticed, with a smile, that the child still clung tenderly to
her own burden of the injured squirrel, and that she was infinitely
more careful of it and its suffering than of the wonderful gift she
had received.
Long before her own tepee was reached the Sun Maid was fast asleep;
and as the small head rested more and more heavily upon Wahneenah's
shoulder, and the soft breath of childhood fanned her throat, the
woman again doubted the spiritual origin of the foundling, and felt
fresh gratitude for its simple humanity.
"Well, whoever and whatever she is, she is already thrice protected.
By her Indian dress, by her White Bow, and by Lahnowenah's White
Necklace. She is quite safe from every enemy now."
"Not quite," said a voice at Wahneenah's elbow.
But it was only Osceolo, the Simple. Nobody minded him or his words.