When Swift Wing first gave her daughter to the white man she
foresaw the danger now at hand, but this was the tribute of the lower
race to the higher, and--who could tell! White men had left their Indian
wives, but had come back again, and for ever renounced the life of their
own nations, and become great chiefs, teaching useful things to their
adopted people, bringing up their children as tribesmen--bringing up
their children! There it was, the thing which called them back, the
bright-eyed children with the colour of the brown prairie in their faces,
and their brains so sharp and strong. But here was no child to call
Dingan back, only the eloquent, brave, sweet face of Mitiahwe. . . .
If he went! Would he go? Was he going? And now that Mitiahwe had been
told that he would go, what would she do? In her belt was--but, no, that
would be worse than all, and she would lose Mitiahwe, her last child, as
she had lost so many others. What would she herself do if she were in
Mitiahwe's place? Ah, she would make him stay somehow--by truth or by
falsehood; by the whispered story in the long night, by her head upon his
knee before the lodge-fire, and her eyes fixed on his, luring him, as the
Dream lures the dreamer into the far trail, to find the Sun's hunting-
ground where the plains are filled with the deer and the buffalo and the
wild horse; by the smell of the cooking-pot and the favourite spiced
drink in the morning; by the child that ran to him with his bow and
arrows and the cry of the hunter--but there was no child; she had
forgotten.
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