The autumn passed: the cold winds came down from the north, shaking the snow from their black wings, and the people of the village began to look upon Shadow Flower with awe. For never a word had she spoken to anyone since the returning of the band in the fall. With a dull light in her eyes she wandered about muttering to herself: “It was summer when they left; now the prairie is so cold and white, so cold and white.”
Absent-mindedly she would dwell upon the bitter words, gazing beneath an arched hand into the cold, white glare of the horizon. Then her eyes, at times, would blaze with gladness. “Shonga saba! Shonga saba!” (a black pony) she would cry ecstatically; and for one intense moment her frail form would be erect and quivering with joy. Then the light in her eye would fade as the fires fade in a camp that is deserted; a cry of anguish would fall from her lips, her hand would drop lifelessly from her brow. “No,” she would sigh languidly; “no, it is only a cloud! O, the prairie is so cold and white, so cold and white!”
And the old people shook their heads and whispered to each other: “The soul of Pazha Hu has followed the summer, for her soul loved the flowers; can you not hear her body crying for her soul?”
When the warm winds came again and the hills were green, the crying of a young child was heard in the lodge of Muzape Tunga. The simple heart of the stern warrior throbbed with gladness as a cold seed throbs with the blowing of the south wind.
But the sound of the infant’s voice brought no summer to the heart of Nunda Nu. The touch of its little brown hands stung her breasts, and as she looked upon its face, placid or expressive as its dreams took form or slept, a cold shudder ran through her veins as when one gazes on a snake, for it was the child of an enemy.
All through the long winter a slow hate had sapped the kindness from the heart of the future mother; and when she felt the new life throbbing into form, her thoughts grew bitter. So now the unforgotten moaning of the children of her people, dying with thirst upon the barren summit, was loud enough to drown the prattle of her enemy’s child, which should have wrought enchantment in her blood.
One night a noiseless shadow passed among the tepees hushed in slumber beneath the moonlight. It crept up to the tepee of Muzape Tunga and crouched beside it in an attitude of listening. The bugs chirped and hummed, the frogs croaked, the wolves howled far away; save these and a sleeper’s heavy breathing, there was silence.
