"Hear the trees cry for help--all the birds of the prairie--but they cry for naught. My father hears them cry. The cry is sweet to his ears. He is waiting for me. We are all about to die. When the wheat-fields blaze and the stacks take fire, and the houses crackle, then we shall all die. So says Waubeno." He listened again. "Hear the earth cry--all the animals. My father hears--his soul hears. This is the day that I have carried in my soul. My spirit is in the fire." He listened again. The prairie roared with the hot air, the flames, and the clouds of smoke. There fell another rain of fire, and women shrieked for mercy, and children cried on their mothers' breasts. "Hear the people cry! I have waited for that cry for a hundred moons. I have paid my vow. We have kindled the fire of the anger of the heavens--it is coming. I will die with you like the son of a warrior. The souls of the warriors are gathering to see me die. I am Waubeno." The people pressed upon him, and glared at him. "He set the fire!" they cried. "The Indian fiend!" "I set the fire," he said; "I and Black Hawk's men. _They_ have escaped. I have done my work, and I want to die." Jasper lifted his hat, and with bared head stood forth in the view of the Indian. "Waubeno, do you want to see _me_ die?" He started with a cry of pain. His eyes burned. "My father--I did not know that you were here. Heaven pity Waubeno now!" "Waubeno, this is cruel!" "Cruel? This country was once called the Red Man's Paradise. Cruel? The white man made the red man drunk with fire-water, and made him sign a false treaty, and then drove him away. Cruel? Think of the women the whites shot in the river for coming back to their own corn-fields starving to gather their own corn. Cruel? Why is the Red Man's Paradise no longer ours? Cruel? The Rock River flows for us no more; the spring brings the flowers to these prairies for us no more; the bluff rises in the summer sky, but the red man may no longer sit upon it. Cruel? Think how your people murdered my father. Is it more cruel for the Indian to do these things than for the white man to do them? You have emptied the Red Man's Paradise, and Waubeno has fulfilled the vow that he made to his father. The clouds are on fire. I would have saved you had I known, but you must perish with your people. I shall die with you. I am Waubeno. I am proud to be Waubeno. I am the avenger of my race. "But, white brother, listen. I tried to prevent it. I remembered your teaching, and I tried to prevent it by our council-fires over the Mississippi. Main-Pogue tried to prevent it. I thought of the man who saved him in the war, and I wondered who he was, and tried to prevent it for _his_ sake. "Then said they to me: 'We go to avenge the loss of our country, the Red Man's Paradise. The grass is feathers. We go to burn. Waubeno, remember your father's death. You are the son of Alknomook!'