Let him go. He is no man. It is
four years, and still there are but two in your lodge. How!"
He swung on his heel with a chuckle in his throat, for he thought he had
said a good thing, and that in truth he was worth twenty white men. His
quick ear caught a movement behind him, however, and he saw the girl
spring from the lodge door, something flashing from her belt. But now
the mother's arms were round her, with cries of protest, and Breaking
Rock, with another laugh, slipped away swiftly toward the river.
"That is good," he muttered. "She will kill him perhaps, when she goes
to him. She will go, but he will not stay. I have heard."
As he disappeared among the trees Mitiahwe disengaged herself from her
mother's arms, went slowly back into the lodge, and sat down on the great
couch where, for so many moons, she had lain with her man beside her.
Her mother watched her closely, though she moved about doing little
things. She was trying to think what she would have done if such a thing
had happened to her, if her man had been going to leave her. She assumed
that Dingan would leave Mitiahwe, for he would hear the voices of his
people calling far away, even as the red man who went East into the great
cities heard the prairies and the mountains and the rivers and his own
people calling, and came back, and put off the clothes of civilisation,
and donned his buckskins again, and sat in the Medicine Man's tent, and
heard the spirits speak to him through the mist and smoke of the sacred
fire.
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