American Museum of Natural History -- Fiction; Indians of North America -- Fiction; Nature stories, American; Western stories
"They were two foes who loved one another, and though their tribes fell
into long and bloody war, between these two there was highness and, at
the end, most wonderful kindness. The first time that we got Ongyatasse
to his feet and he found that his knee, though feeble, was as good as
ever, he said to White Quiver, leaning on his shoulder,--
"'Concerning the call to Council, there was more to it than was written
on the scroll, the meaning of which was hidden from me who carried it.'
"'Which is no news to me,' said the Lenni-Lenape; 'also,' he said, 'the
message was arranged beforehand, for it required no answer.'
"I asked him how he knew that, and he mocked at me.
"'Any time these five days you could have gone forward with the answer
had it been important for you to get back to Cool Waters!'
"That was true. I could have left Ongyatasse and gone on alone, but
nothing that had happened so far had made us think that we must get back
quickly. White Quiver asked us one day what reason Well-Praised had
given for requiring that the Lenni-Lenape should pass through the
country with not more than twenty fighting men in the party. To save the
game, we told him, which seemed to us reasonable; though I think from
that hour we began to feel that the Tallegewi, with all their walled
towns and monuments, had been put somehow in the wrong by the wild
tribes of Shinaki.
"We stayed on in the ravine, waiting on Ongyatasse's knee, until we saw
the new rim of the Halting Moon curled up like a feather. The leaves of
the buckeye turned clear yellow and the first flock of wild geese went
over. We waited one more day for White Quiver to show us a short cut to
the Maumee Trail, and just when we had given him up, we were aware of a
strange Lenape in warpaint moving among the shadows. He stood off from
us with his arms folded and his face was as bleak as a winter-bitten wood.
"'Wash the lie from your mouth,' he said, 'and follow.'
"Without a word he turned and began to move from us through the smoky
light with which the wood was filling. His head was cropped for
war--that was why we did not know him--and along the shoulder he turned
toward us was the long scrape of a spear-point. That was why we
followed, saying nothing. Toward daylight the lame knee began to give
trouble. White Quiver came back and put his shoulder under Ongyatasse's,
so we moved forward, wordlessly. Birds awoke in the woods, and hoarfrost
lay white on the crisped grasses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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