Northern Lights | Page 6

old woman's heart beat
faster as she listened. The same thought was in the mind of both. If
there were but a child, bone of his bone, then perhaps he would not go;
or, if he went, then surely he would return, when he heard his papoose
calling in the lodge in the wilderness.
As Mitiahwe turned to her, a strange burning light in her eyes, Swift
Wing said: "It is good. The white man's Medicine for a white man's
wife. But if there were the red man's Medicine too--"
"What is the red man's Medicine?" asked the young wife, as she
smoothed her hair, put a string of bright beads around her neck, and
wound a red sash round her waist.
The old woman shook her head, a curious half-mystic light in her eyes,
her body drawn up to its full height, as though waiting for something.
"It is an old Medicine. It is of winters ago as many as the hairs of the
head. I have forgotten almost, but it was a great Medicine when there
were no white men in the land. And so it was that to every woman's
breast there hung a papoose, and every woman had her man, and the
red men were like leaves in the forest--but it was a winter of winters
ago, and the Medicine Men have forgotten; and thou hast no child!
When Long Hand comes, what will Mitiahwe say to him?"
Mitiahwe's eyes were determined, her face was set, she flushed deeply,
then the colour fled. "What my mother would say, I will say. Shall the
white man's Medicine fail? If I wish it, then it will be so: and I will say
so."
"But if the white man's Medicine fail?"--Swift Wing made a gesture
toward the door where the horse-shoe hung. "It is Medicine for a white
man, will it be Medicine for an Indian?"
"Am I not a white man's wife?"
"But if there were the Sun Medicine also, the Medicine of the days long
ago?"
"Tell me. If you remember--Kai! but you do remember--I see it in your
face. Tell me, and I will make that Medicine also, my mother."
"To-morrow, if I remember it--I will think, and if I remember it,
to-morrow I will tell you, my heart's blood. Maybe my dream will

come to me and tell me. Then, even after all these years, a papoose--"
"But the boat will go at dawn to-morrow, and if he go also--"
"Mitiahwe is young, her body is warm, her eyes are bright, the songs
she sings, her tongue--if these keep him not, and the Voice calls him
still to go, then still Mitiahwe shall whisper, and tell him--"
"Hai-yo-hush," said the girl, and trembled a little, and put both hands
on her mother's mouth.
For a moment she stood so, then with an exclamation suddenly turned
and ran through the doorway, and sped toward the river, and into the
path which would take her to the post, where her man traded with the
Indians and had made much money during the past six years, so that he
could have had a thousand horses and ten lodges like that she had just
left. The distance between the lodge and the post was no more than a
mile, but Mitiahwe made a detour, and approached it from behind,
where she could not be seen. Darkness was gathering now, and she
could see the glimmer of the light of lamps through the windows, and
as the doors opened and shut. No one had seen her approach, and she
stole through a door which was open at the rear of the warehousing
room, and went quickly to another door leading into the shop. There
was a crack through which she could see, and she could hear all that
was said. As she came she had seen Indians gliding through the woods
with their purchases, and now the shop was clearing fast, in response to
the urging of Dingan and his partner, a Scotch half-breed. It was
evident that Dingan was at once abstracted and excited.
Presently only two visitors were left, a French halfbreed call Lablache,
a swaggering, vicious fellow, and the captain of the steamer, Ste. Anne,
which was to make its last trip south in the morning--even now it
would have to break its way through the young ice. Dingan's partner
dropped a bar across the door of the shop, and the four men gathered
about the fire. For a time no one spoke. At last the captain of the Ste.
Anne said: "It's a great chance, Dingan. You'll be in civilisation again,
and in a rising town of white people--Groise 'll be a city in five years,
and you can grow up and grow rich with the place.