Northern Lights | Page 5

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. She was always
recalling her own happy early life with her man, and the clean-faced
papooses that crowded round his knee--one wife and many children,
and the old Harvester of the Years reaping them so fast, till the children
stood up as tall as their father and chief. That was long ago, and she had
had her share--twenty-five years of happiness; but Mitiahwe had had

only four. She looked at Mitiahwe, standing still for a moment like one
rapt, then suddenly she gave a little cry. Something had come into her
mind, some solution of the problem, and she ran and stooped over the
girl and put both hands on her head.
"Mitiahwe, heart's blood of mine," she said, "the birds go south, but
they return. What matter if they go so soon, if they return soon. If the
Sun wills that the winter be dark, and he sends the Coldmaker to close
the rivers and drive the wild ones far from the arrow and the gun, yet he
may be sorry, and send a second summer--has it not been so, and
Coldmaker has hurried away--away! The birds go south, but they will
return, Mitiahwe."
"I heard a cry in the night while my man slept," Mitiahwe answered,
looking straight before her, "and it was like the cry of a bird-calling,
calling, calling."
"But he did not hear--he was asleep beside Mitiahwe. If he did not
wake, surely it was good luck. Thy breath upon his face kept him
sleeping. Surely it was good luck to Mitiahwe that he did not hear."
She was smiling a little now, for she had thought of a thing which
would, perhaps, keep the man here in this lodge in the wilderness; but
the time to speak of it was not yet. She must wait and see.
Suddenly Mitiahwe got to her feet with a spring, and a light in her eyes.
"Hai-yai!" she said with plaintive smiling, ran to a corner of the lodge,
and from a leather bag drew forth a horse-shoe and looked at it,
murmuring to herself.
The old woman gazed at her wonderingly. "What is it, Mitiahwe?" she
asked.
"It is good-luck. So my man has said. It is the way of his people. It is
put over the door, and if a dream come it is a good dream; and if a bad
thing come, it will not enter; and if the heart prays for a thing hid from
all the world, then it brings good-luck. Hai-yai! I will put it over the
door, and then--"All at once her hand dropped to her side, as though
some terrible thought had come to her, and, sinking to the floor, she
rocked her body backward and forward for a time, sobbing. But
presently she got to her feet again, and, going to the door of the lodge,
fastened the horseshoe above it with a great needle and a string of
buckskin.
"Oh great Sun," she prayed, "have pity on me and save me! I cannot

live alone. I am only a Blackfoot wife; I am not blood of his blood.
Give, O great one, blood of his blood, bone of his bone, soul of his soul,
that he will say, This is mine, body of my body, and he will hear the
cry and will stay. O great Sun, pity me!" The