"You, too, surely; and we can never thank you enough," my mother answered, turning to him.
"Yes, and we shall treasure your memory as long as we live, for we owe you our lives, and shall be ever grateful for it," my father again spoke up.
"Speak not to me of gratitude, for it has no meaning in the mouths of such as you. The voice of your race is ever thus soft-spoken, but only that it may the better hide its treachery," the chief answered, but absently and without passion, as if addressing an invisible spirit.
"Now and here, and to those we love and to whom we owe our lives, it is true and as we say," my father answered, surprised out of himself at what the other said.
"It is ever the same, and has no spark of life in it, more than the mist above yonder troubled waters," the other answered, without lowering his gaze. "It was with such speech that your race crept into my country, and like a tide that rises in the night overcame and destroyed my people, while they yet trusted and believed, and so it has always been."
"Surely that cannot be laid to us, for we have never injured your people in any way. Tell us who you are, your name only, if you will, so that we may treasure it as long as we live, and our children afterward," my father cried in desperation, as if determined not to be thus put off.
"I have no name nor place in life," the chief answered, sorrowfully, raising his eyes to the clouds that flew across the darkened sky. "In my youth I trusted your race, and thought to live with it in peace, dreaming of great and noble things for my people. In the end I have done nothing, and dying shall leave no trace, more than the wind that sweeps the tops of yonder trees, or the leaves that fall bitten by the winter's frost. As soon seek to follow the flight of the bird that has been snared or the path of the fish in the tumbling waters, for I have done nothing, and have no home nor place among men. A king and the son of kings, I dare not whisper my name lest the air betray it to my enemies and I suffer unjustly! Coming among us, your race divided my children, as the clouds are parted or the lightning cleaves the towering cottonwood. Scattered, where are they? Ask the Great Spirit, for only he can tell! Living in concord, you brought division; loving their king, you sowed distrust; loyal, you planted treason; sober, you made them drunk that you might buy their lands for a song. Now driven from their birthplace, they seek in a strange land the home of those who have no country; and I, coming back like a thief to visit the forests and streams of my youth, dare not speak my name aloud. Thank me not, for it is the act of the doe, the gentle-hearted La Reine, not I."