"That the Sun Maid is flying now on the Snowbird's back toward the setting sun, who is her father."
"Who took her to the Snowbird's corral? Who? Osceolo, torment of our tribe, it was you! It was you! Boy, do you know what you have done? Do you know that out there, on the prairie where you have sent her, the spirit of murder is abroad? Not a pale-face shall escape. She was safe here, where your own chief, the Black Partridge, placed her. Hear me. If harm befalls her, if by moonrise she is not restored to me, you shall bear the punishment. You----"
By a gesture he stopped her. Now thoroughly frightened, the mischievous boy put up his arms as if to ward off the coming threat. Half credulous, and half doubtful that the Sun Maid was more than mortal, he had made a test for himself. He had remembered the Snowbird, fretting its high spirit out within the closed paddock, and a daring notion had seized him. It was this:
"While the Woman-Who-Mourns gossips with her neighbors, I'll catch up the papoose and carry her there. She'll come fast enough. She ran away yesterday, and she played with me before the Spotted Adder's hut. She trusts everybody. I'll have some fun, even if my father didn't let me go with him to the camp yonder."
Among all nations boyhood is the same--plays the same wild pranks, with equal disregard of consequences; and Osceolo would far rather have had a good time than a good supper. He thought he was having a perfectly fascinating good time when he bound a long blanket over the Snowbird's back and then fastened Kitty Briscoe in the folds of the blanket. He had laughed gayly as he clapped his hands and set the mare free, and the little one riding her had laughed and clapped also. He had watched them out of sight over the prairie, and had felt quite proud of himself.
"If she is a spirit she'll come back safe; and if she's nothing but a white man's baby--why, that's all she is. Only a squaw child at that, though the silly women have made such ado. I wonder--will I ever see her again? Well, I'll go around by Wahneenah's tepee, after a while, and enjoy the worry. It's the smartest thing I've done yet; and she did look cunning, too. She wasn't a bit afraid--she isn't afraid of anything--which makes her better than most girl papooses, and she was laughing as hard as I was when she went away."