“Fly! Fly!” echoed the whole band, delirious with fear. “Kill the squaws!” they shouted; for in their flight they could not be burdened with their spoils, and they would not leave them to their enemies.
There was the sound of the shrieks of women; then the galloping of hoofs; then silence.
Two days afterward the Omahas, having returned to their stricken village, made the trail of the fleeing Otoes thunderous with pursuing hoofs. Suddenly topping the hill that overlooked the deserted camp of their enemies, they beheld the bodies of the slain women strewn amid the tepees. Over one of these a grey wolf stood.
There was a shout from the foremost of the Omaha warriors, and a dozen arrows sang in the air and quivered in the body of the wolf. It rolled upon its side with a cry half human!
A group of braves, riding up to the corpse of the woman, pulled the blanket from its face.
With a savage kick one turned the still quivering body of the wolf upon its back. The grey hide fell from an emaciated brown face, twitching with the agony of death.
RAIN WALKER lay upon the brown grass without the circle of the village; and it was the time when the maize is gathered—the brown, drear time. He lay with ear pressed to the earth.
“What are you doing?” asked one who walked there.
“I?” said Rain Walker; and his eyes and face were not good to see as he raised his head. The dying time seemed also in his face. “The growers are coming up, and I am listening to their breathing,” he said.
And the questioner walked on with a strange smile; for it was not the time of the coming of the growers.
Rain Walker stood in the centre of the village and held his face to the sky.
“What are you doing?” said one who walked there.
“I?” and there was twilight in Rain Walker’s eyes as he looked upon the questioner. “I shot an arrow into the air. It did not come back, so I am always looking for it.”
And the questioner smiled and went on walking; for no arrow rises that does not fall. A child knows that.
And the people said: “It is all because Mad Buffalo, the Ponca, took his squaw. He took her, and she went. It was after the summer’s feasting and talking together that she went. Rain Walker is not forgetting.”
And Rain Walker sat much alone; he sat much alone making strange songs not pleasant to hear. And as he made songs he made weapons. He fashioned him a _man-de-hi_, which is a long spear, tipped with sharp flint; and he sang. He wrought a _za-zi-man-di_, which is a great bow; and sang all the time. They were hate songs that he sang; they snarled.