Her musings were broken by the crying of the child. She took it in her arms and held it to her breast, humming a low lullaby, half-persuaded that the child was her own. But the child was frightened by the strange voice and cried piteously. Then Shadow Flower thought, “It cries for its father, yet its father has gone.” “Hush!” she said to the child; “we will go and find the soul of Muzape Tunga; it cannot be far away.” She wrapped a blanket about the infant, muffling its cries, and tied it about her shoulders. Then she went silently through the village and out into the open prairie, weird with the blue haze of the moon and the lonesome cries of the wolves. A rabbit hopped past and stopped near her as if gazing at the maiden. “O Rabbit!” cried Shadow Flower, “tell me, have you seen the soul of Muzape Tunga?” The rabbit, awed by the strangeness of the voice, moved its long ears; then it hopped away into the shades. The maiden followed and was swallowed in the moonlit mist. * * * * * When the sun looked into the village, the women were stricken with terror and the men with anger. The wise people shook their heads by which to say: “Ah, yes; we thought such things of Nunda Nu.” The days passed; the moons came and went; yet Shadow Flower did not return. There was a common thought concerning her disappearance which was never spoken aloud; but when the fires burned low and the night grew late, it was often whispered with awe: “She has gone in search of her soul; it fled last year with the summer.” VI THE ART OF HATE MANY tales have been told of noble sacrifice for love, and I have seen such in my time; but I have in mind an instance in which a man reached a sublime height through the least exalted of human passions—hate. There are some who argue that love is born at first sight. However that be, I am certain that it is often thus with hate. I have seen men in my time the first sight of whom was an insult to me—sudden, stinging like a slap on the cheek. It is a strange thing, and I have never heard it explained satisfactorily. Sometimes in my own case I have attributed it to even so slight a thing as a certain turn of the nose, a curve of the lip, a droop of the eye. And again I have felt that it was due to nothing visible about the man, but rather to some subtle emanation from the very soul of him, that maddened me as though I had inhaled the fumes of some devilish drug. Have you ever felt this? Well, I am telling you about Zephyr Recontre. He was a little, wiry half-breed, with a French father and a woman of the Blackfeet tribe for a mother. Quite a promising combination, if you think it over! I came across him ’way up at Fort Union in the early ’30’s, when I was in charge of a keel boat of the American Fur Company. He was employed at the Fort as interpreter, being a fluent speaker of several Indian tongues as well as English and French.