The child had been attending her injured squirrel and giving her bowls of orchids fresh drinks, upon the threshold mat of her new home, and her indulgent foster-mother had gone to fetch from the stream the water needed for the latter purpose. At the brook's edge she had stopped, "just for a moment," to discuss with the other squaws the news of the massacre that was fast coming to them by the straggling bands of returning braves. But the brief absence was long enough to have worked the mischief. The small runaway had left her posies and her squirrel and departed, nobody could guess whither. Till at last again came Osceolo, the mischievous, and remarked, indifferently: "The Woman-Who-Mourns may save her steps. The White Papoose and the Snowbird are far over the prairie while the women search." "Osceolo! You are the son of the evil spirit! You bring distress in your hand as a gift! But take care what you say now. You know, as I know, that nobody can mount the White Snowbird and live. Or if one could succeed and pass beyond the village borders, it would be a ride to some far land whence there is no return. What is the mare, Snowbird, but a creature bewitched? or the home of the soul of a dead maiden, who would rather live thus with her people than without them as a spirit in the Great Beyond? You know all this, and yet you tell me----" "That the Sun Maid is flying now on the Snowbird's back toward the setting sun, who is her father." "How do you know this?" "I saw it." "Who took her to the Snowbird's corral? Who? Osceolo, torment of our tribe, it was you! It was you! Boy, do you know what you have done? Do you know that out there, on the prairie where you have sent her, the spirit of murder is abroad? Not a pale-face shall escape. She was safe here, where your own chief, the Black Partridge, placed her. Hear me. If harm befalls her, if by moonrise she is not restored to me, you shall bear the punishment. You----" By a gesture he stopped her. Now thoroughly frightened, the mischievous boy put up his arms as if to ward off the coming threat. Half credulous, and half doubtful that the Sun Maid was more than mortal, he had made a test for himself. He had remembered the Snowbird, fretting its high spirit out within the closed paddock, and a daring notion had seized him. It was this: "While the Woman-Who-Mourns gossips with her neighbors, I'll catch up the papoose and carry her there. She'll come fast enough. She ran away yesterday, and she played with me before the Spotted Adder's hut. She trusts everybody. I'll have some fun, even if my father didn't let me go with him to the camp yonder."