Then he took his victorious way up the trail, while the old chief
walked with slow and springless step down into the canyon.
The next morning the chief's daughter was loitering along the heights,
listening to the singing river, and sometimes leaning over the
precipice to watch its curling eddies and dancing waterfalls. Suddenly
she heard a slight rustle, as though some passing bird's wing had dipt
the air. Then at her feet there fell a slender, delicately shaped
arrow. It fell with spent force, and her Indian woodcraft told her it
had been shot to her, not at her. She started like a wild animal.
Then her quick eye caught the outline of a handsome, erect figure that
stood on the heights across the river. She did not know him as her
father's enemy. She only saw him to be young, stalwart and of
extraordinary, manly beauty. The spirit of youth and of a certain
savage coquetry awoke within her. Quickly she fitted one of her own
dainty arrows to the bow string and sent it winging across the narrow
canyon; it fell, spent, at his feet, and he knew she had shot it to
him, not at him.
Next morning, woman-like, she crept noiselessly to the brink of the
heights. Would she see him again--that handsome brave? Would he speed
another arrow to her? She had not yet emerged from the tangle of
forest before it fell, its faint-winged flight heralding its coming.
Near the feathered end was tied a tassel of beautiful ermine tails.
She took from her wrist a string of shell beads, fastened it to one of
her little arrows and winged it across the canyon, as yesterday.
The following morning before leaving the lodge she fastened the tassel
of ermine tails in her straight, black hair. Would he see them? But
no arrow fell at her feet that day, but a dearer message was there on
the brink of the precipice. He himself awaited her coming--he who had
never left her thoughts since that first arrow came to her from his
bow-string. His eyes burned with warm fires, as she approached, but
his lips said simply: "I have crossed the Tulameen River." Together
they stood, side by side, and looked down at the depths before them,
watching in silence the little torrent rollicking and roystering over
its boulders and crags.
"That is my country," he said, looking across the river. "This is the
country of your father, and of your brothers; they are my enemies. I
return to my own shore tonight. Will you come with me?"
She looked up into his handsome young face. So this was her father's
foe--the dreaded Tulameen!
"Will you come?" he repeated.
"I will come," she whispered.
It was in the dark of the moon and through the kindly night he led her
far up the rocky shores to the narrow belt of quiet waters, where they
crossed in silence into his own country. A week, a month, a long
golden summer, slipped by, but the insulted old chief and his enraged
sons failed to find her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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