Gift books; Indians of North America -- Literary collections
That dark, stern face was softened, it is true: but it was from
the contemplation of her attractive features; pride was changed to
satisfaction: but it was because he knew that the graceful figure which
clung to her mother for protection would soon lean only on him. She
sighed and turned away her face; she trembled and sank upon the mat
with weakness; no hope--all her bright visions changed: darkness and
gloom had come where day had presided in all her brightness.
A short time saw Fiery Man lead to his wigwam his sad young wife,
wearied to death with her long journey. Could love have consoled her,
she had been happy: for she was as dear as life to the heart of the
passionate, overbearing man. As he led her into the wigwam, he pointed
to its present occupant. He said she was his sister, but the first
glance did the same. There was the tall, gaunt figure; the fierce,
flashing eye; the passionate, commanding countenance; but far more
repelling in her than in him. White Moon read her own fate; she was to
endure hatred as well as love. She could see no shelter from the storm
that was settling over her head.
CHAPTER III.
The sister of Fiery Man stood unnoticed, we have said, in the lodge
where White Moon sat with her dead child. On her back she carried a
large bundle of wood. As she threw it to the ground, the noise roused
White Moon from her dreams. She rose from her mat, clasping the child
yet more closely to her breast. Giving one look towards her sister, in
which was concentrated all the passion and all the harshness of which
she was capable, she left the lodge. The crimson flush soon died away
from her face, and she was calm and pale as before.
Assisted by several of the women, she proceeded to place her child upon
its last resting-place. It was at some distance from the lodge, yet in
sight. She returned, and carried to the place of burial the cradle and
some little trinkets belonging to the child, and hung them in reach of
the infant's hand, on the scaffolding.
All day she sat on the ground near it. She wept there, as only a mother
can weep, for her first and only child. She refused the food the women
offered her; she had not eaten since its death.
Even when night came, she was still there, through its long watches
giving vent to her violent grief. The breaking of the morn found
her sleeping for a short interval on the ground; on awakening, she
remembered there were duties that still claimed her care. Her new
buffalo-skin lodge was still unfinished, and she had promised her
husband she would be in it on her return. The one they were living in
was her sister's; it was an old one, torn, and admitting the rain, so
that it was not comfortable. Some of the women had assisted her in
making it, and she had still to finish and set it up before the evening.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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