In the long, mysterious nights of the winter, Shadow Flower wept with fear at the mournful cry of the coyotes, and often through the droning days of the summer did the harsh warning of the startled rattlesnake send her trembling in terror to her mother’s breast. Yet, huddled close to the group about the evening fire, she loved to listen to the warriors’ tales of the strong arm and the fierce heart; and her eyes glowed with an unwonted light as her kinsmen recounted the wild swoop of the ambushed foe or the silent pursuit, swift and relentless. All the glowing ideals of manly prowess that her maiden heart had conjured, were centred in the person of the fearless brave, Big Axe; for had he not the eagle glance that went to the heart of an enemy like an arrow? Was not his the shaggy head of the buffalo bull that strikes with fear the boldest hunter? The breath of his sinewy breast was like a whirlwind when the battle cry awakened in his throat! There was no arm in all the circled tepees that could hurl a tomahawk so straight and far; and none that could heave above the anger of the battle a war club more ponderous! “Ah,” she would say to herself, while wandering alone with her musings, “Big Axe is so great a man!” When a band of warriors rode out of the village, bent upon some petty conquest somewhere beyond the blue hills that undulated the horizon with their summits, Shadow Flower would become very lonely, and she would stand for long hours upon some larger hill, scanning the dim sky line for the returning warriors; for where the battle was, there was Big Axe. And when at last she would catch sight of the returning band, shouting with the great joy of a battle won, how proudly she stared, and with what a light in her eyes, at her graceful warrior astride his swift pony! How anxiously would she search the headdress of her brave for the fresh eagle feather that should speak of some late deed done by the strong arm—her strong arm! Yet her timorous little soul alone knew of the great overflowing passion that she treasured for Big Axe; unless, perhaps, the birds and the green things understood her, for hers was a passion that little words could not carry. Thus did the frail flower long for the golden kisses of the sun! There was war between the Omaha and Ponca tribes. So it happened one morning, in the time when the deer tear the earth with their horns, that Shadow Flower, hunting late blossoms upon the sere hills where the young Dawn danced, heard below her the impatient stamp of ponies, and beheld the mounting of braves, for Big Axe was leading a party of a hundred warriors against the enemy.