Through the opening at the top of the tepee the moonlight entered with
intense brilliance and fell upon three faces. One was the face of her
once sweet dream and the face that trembled through the visions of her
madness, Muzape Tunga’s. One was the beautiful, cruel face of her who
came upon a pony white as a summer cloud that autumn evening when the
sunlight left the prairie. One was a face that she had not seen before,
yet her poor heart ached as she looked upon it. It was the face of his
child, her child. Ah, it should have been the child of Shadow Flower,
she thought, and her brain reeled with sudden madness.
As she looked, the woman in the tepee raised herself upon her elbow.
She gazed upon the peaceful face of Big Axe. The moon lit up her
features in clear relief. Her eyes were terrible with hate; the lids
drawn closely about them until they had the small beady appearance of
the snake’s. Her lips were drawn closely cross her white teeth in a
cold grin. Her form trembled as with a chill, yet the night was warm.
Then she arose, and with a noiseless step, sought for something that
hung upon the side of the tepee. She returned clutching a tomahawk. The
light caught her whole form, making it stand out, clear-cut like a
statue, the statue of a prairie Judith.
Then she bent over the sleeping Muzape Tunga for one moment. There was
a dull sound as the weapon entered the sleeper’s skull; but more than
this there was no sound, no groan. And the one who stood like a shadow
without the tepee was stricken dumb with fright.
The woman within turned to the sleeping child and raised the dripping
tomahawk; but her arm seemed to freeze in act to strike, and the blow
did not fall. A strange soft light crept over the face of the woman.
She lowered her arm and laid the weapon aside. Then with the step of a
wild-cat she crept to the entrance of the tepee and, gazing cautiously
about for a moment, slipped silently into the haze of the moonlight,
and was engulfed in the darkness of the valley.
As the dim outline of the fleeing squaw mixed itself with the uncertain
haze and vanished, a great happiness leaped into the stagnant veins of
Shadow Flower, and her blood rushed like a stream when the ice melts
with the breath of the south wind.
Even the thought that Big Axe lay dead within the tepee did not quell
her happiness, for she said to herself: “Now Pazha Hu shall have her
warrior; he shall be all hers.”
She crept into the tepee and, kneeling, put her lips to the chilling
lips of Big Axe. He did not breathe. She placed her arms about his
body, her face against his breast, yet he did not move. He lay quietly
with the intense moonlight upon his face. She did not sob, she was
almost happy; for did she not at last possess that for which she had
pined?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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