American Museum of Natural History -- Fiction; Indians of North America -- Fiction; Nature stories, American; Western stories
"Ongyatasse, dripping as he was, pushed us aside and went over to White
Quiver, who was stooping over, fastening his snowshoes. It seemed to
give him a great deal of trouble, but at last he raised his head.
"'This day I take my life at your hands,' said Ongyatasse.
"'Does Young-Man-Who-Never-Turns-Back take so much from a Crop-Head?'
said the Lenni-Lenape in good Tallegewi, which shows how much they knew
of us already and how they began to hate us.
"But when he was touched, Ongyatasse had no equal for highness.
"'Along with my life I would take friendship too, if it were offered,'
he said, and smiled, shivering as he was, in a way we knew so well who
had never resisted it. We could see the smile working on White Quiver
like a spell. Ongyatasse put an arm over the Lenape's shoulders.
"'Where the life is, the heart is also,' he said, 'and if the feet of
Ongyatasse do not turn back from the trail they have taken, neither does
his heart.' From his neck he slipped off his amulet of white deer's horn
which brought him his luck in hunting, and threw it around the
other's neck.
"'Ongyatasse, you have given away your luck!' cried Tiakens, whose head
was a little light with the blow the ice-cake had given him.
"'Both the luck and the life of Young-Man-Who-Never-Turns-Back are safe
in the hands of a Lenni-Lenape,' said White Quiver, as high as one of
his own fir trees, but he loosed a little smile at the corner of his
mouth as he turned to Tiakens, chattering like a squirrel. 'Unless you
find a fire soon, Young-Man-Who-Never-Turns-Back will have need of
another friend,' he said; and picking up his shoeing-pole, he was off in
the wood again like a weasel darting to cover. We heard the swish of the
boughs, heavy with new snow, and then silence.
"But if we had not been able to forget him after the first meeting, you
can guess how often we talked of him in the little time that was left
us. It was not long. Tiakens nearly died of the chill he got, and the
elders were stirred up at last to break up our band before it led to
more serious folly. Ongyatasse was hurried off with a hunting-party to
Maumee, and I was sent to my mother's brother at Flint Ridge to learn
stone-working.
"Not that I objected," said the Tallega. "I have the arrow-maker's
hand." He showed the children his thumb set close to the wrist, the long
fingers and the deep-cupped palm with the callus running down the
middle. "All my family were clever craftsmen," said the Tallega. "You
could tell my uncle's points anywhere you found them by the fine, even
flaking, and my mother was the best feather-worker in Three Towns,"--he
ran his hands under the folds of his mantle and held it out for the
children to admire the pattern. "Uncle gave me this banner stone as the
wage of my summer's work with him, and I thought myself overpaid at
the time."
"But what did you do?" asked both children at once.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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