There was lamentation in the lodges of Sunmaker’s people, for the white soldiers had taken away the guns of Hawk’s young warriors, and now they were to be sent away into lands of captivity. Huddled in big wagons, the young men sat, downcast and sullen, ashamed to weep, yet choking with grief and despair.
“Had I known this,” said Hawk to the captain of the escort, “I would have died fighting,” and this defiant word he uttered in the harsh, booming tone of a village crier. It was heard by everyone in the camp, and the old women broke forth into wailing war songs, which made the fingers of sedate old sages clinch.
But the blue-coated soldiers, ranked and ready, stood with loaded guns in their hands, calmly observant, and the colonel sat his horse, not far away, ready to give the signal for departure.
Hawk, young, handsome, and reckless, for some ruffianism put upon him by a band of cattlemen, had organized a raid of retaliation, and for this outbreak the government was sending him and his band to Florida—a hot, strange land, far in the South. He, as its unconquered leader, sat bound and helpless in one of the head wagons, his feet chained to a rod, his hands ironed, and working like the talons of an eagle.
It was hard to sit thus in the face of his father and mother, but it was harder yet to know that Nistina, the daughter of Sunmaker, with her blanket over her face, sat weeping at the door of her father’s lodge. All the girls were moaning, and no one knew that Nistina loved Hawk—no one but her inseparable friend, Macosa, the daughter of Crane.
Hawk knew it, for they had often met at the river’s edge of a morning, when she came for water.
Now they were to part without one word of love, with no touch of hands, never to see each other again, for it was well known that those who went into that far country never returned—the breath of the great salt water poisoned them.
At last the colonel uttered a word of command. A bugle rang out. The piercing cries of the bereaved women broke forth again, wild and heart-breaking: the whips cracked like pistol shots, the mules set their shoulders to the collars, and the blue chariots and their hopeless captives moved slowly out across the prairie.
Hawk turned his head and caught one last glance from Nistina as she lifted her face to him, flung her robe over her head, and fell face downward on the earth, crushed, broken, and despairing.
With teeth set like those of a grizzly bear, the young chief strained at his cords, eager to fight and die in the face of his tribe, but the white man’s cruel chains were too strong. He fell back exhausted, too numb with despair to heed the taunt of the white soldier riding beside the wheel, cynical, profane, and derisive.
And while the young prisoner sat thus, with bowed head and low-hanging, lax hands, the little village of his people was lost to view—hidden by the willows on the river’s bank.
In the months which followed, the camp of Sunmaker resumed its accustomed round of duties and pleasure. The babes rollicked on the grass, the old men smoked placidly in their council lodges, and planned their next buffalo hunt; the children went reluctantly to the agency school of a morning, and came home with flying feet at night. All seemed as placid as a pool into which a suicide has sunk; but no word came to Nistina, from whose face the shadow never lifted. She had never been a merry girl like Macosa. She had been shy and silent and wistful even as a child, and as the months passed without a message from Hawk, she moved to her duties as silent as a shadow. Macosa, when the spring came again, took another lover, and laughed and said, “They have forgotten us, that Elk and Hawk.”
Nistina had many suitors, for was she not Sunmaker’s daughter, and tall and handsome besides? Mischievous Macosa, even after her marriage, kept her friend’s secret, but she could not forbear to tease her when they were alone together. “Hawk is a bad young man,” she said. “He has found another girl by this time. Why don’t you listen to Kias?” To such questions Nistina made no answer.
At the end of a year even Sunmaker, introspective as he was, could not fail to remark upon her loneliness. “My daughter, why do you seem so sad? There are many young men singing sweet songs for you to hear, yet you will not listen. It is time you took thought of these things.”
“I do not wish to marry,” she replied.
Then the old father became sorrowful, for he feared his loved one had placed her heart on some white soldier, and one day he called her to him and said: “My daughter, the Great Spirit decreed that there should be people of many colors on the earth. He called each good in his place, but it is not good that they mate one with the other. If a white man comes to speak soft words into your ears, turn away. He will work evil, and not good. Why do you not take a husband among your own people, as others do, and be content? You are of the age when girls marry.”
To this she replied: “My heart is not set on any white man, and I do not wish to marry. Let me stay with you and help to keep your lodge.”
The old man’s voice trembled as he said: “My daughter, since my son is gone, you are my staff. It is good to see you in our lodge, but I do not like to see you sad.”
Then she pretended to laugh, and said, “I am not sad,” and ran away.
When she was gone Sunmaker called Vetcora and told her what had happened. She smoked the pipe he handed to her and listened patiently. When he had finished speaking, she said:
“She will come round all right. All girls are not alike. By and by the true one will come, and then you’ll see her change her song. She will be keeping her own lodge soon.”
But Sunmaker was troubled by his daughter’s frequent visits to the agency across the river, and by her intimacy with Neeta, the daughter of Hahko, who had been away to school, and who had returned much changed, being neither white woman nor red.
She was living alone in a small hut on the river bank, and was not a good woman for Nistina to visit.
He could not know that his daughter went there because Neeta could read the white man’s papers, and would know if anything had happened to Hawk. No one knew, either, that Nistina slyly asked about learning to read. She laughed when she asked these questions, as though the matter were of no consequence. “How long did it take you to learn to read? Is it very hard to learn to write?”
“Oh no; it is very easy,” Neeta replied, boastingly, and when Nistina went away her eyes were very thoughtful.
Again and again she called before she could bring herself to the point of asking Neeta to go with her to the head of the school.
Neeta laughed. “Ho! Are you going to school? You will need to hump low over your toes, for you will go among the smallest girls.”
Nistina did not waver. “Come, go with me.”
With a smile on her face Neeta led the way to the office of the superintendent. “Professor Morten, I bring you a new scholar.”
Morten, a tall, grave-faced man, looked up from his desk, and said: “Why, it’s Nistina! Good morning, Nistina.”
“Mornin’,” said she, as well as she could.
“She wants to go to school, eh? Well, better late than never,” he added, with a smile.
“Tell him I want to work and earn money,” said Nistina.
When Neeta interpreted this, the teacher exclaimed: “Well, well! This is most astonishing! Why, I thought she hated the white man’s ways!”
“I think she want to marry white man,” remarked Neeta.
Mr. Morten looked at her coldly. “I hope not. You’re a mighty smart girl, Neeta, but I don’t like the way you carry on.”
Neeta smiled broadly, quite unabashed. “I’m all settled down now—no more skylarking round. I’m keeping house.”
“Well, see that you keep settled. I don’t understand this change in Nistina, but you tell her I’ll put her in charge of Mrs. Morten, and we’ll do the best we can for her. But tell her to send all these white men away; tell her not to listen to them.”
To Nistina Neeta said, “He says he will let you help his squaw, and she will teach you how to read and write.”
Nistina’s heart failed her when she heard this, for she had seen Mrs. Morten many times, and had heard many disturbing stories of her harshness. She was a tall, broad-shouldered woman, with keen gray eyes and a loud voice.
At last Mr. Morten turned, and said: “Nistina, you may come this afternoon after four o’clock, and we will arrange the whole matter. I am glad you are going to forsake Indian ways, which are very bad. Be a good girl, and you will be happy.”
When Neeta had explained what he said Nistina burst into a low cry, and, covering her face with her blanket, rushed away.
“That’s the last you’ll see of her,” said Neeta, maliciously. “She likes the Indian ways best.”
But Nistina was moved by a deeper impulse than fickle-hearted Neeta could comprehend. A sick boy had returned from Florida a few days before—a poor dying lad—and to Nistina he had brought word from young Hawk. “I am studying so that I can send words on paper, like the white man,” the message ran. “By and by I will send a white word to you.”
This message instantly sank deep, although Nistina gave no sign. She had more than the usual shyness of the maidens of her tribe, and it was painful to her to have even this vague message transmitted by another.
The girl thought long. She wished to send a message to her lover, but for some days could not bring herself to confide in Neeta. Days went by, and her resolution remained unformed. Nearly every evening she had been going to see Neeta, but always her courage had failed her, and then came the thought: “I, too, will learn to write and to read, and then I can tell him how much I love him, and that I will wait till I am old and I will love no one else.”
There was a great deal of gossip among the red women. “She is going to marry a white soldier, that Nistina,” they said. “She is working for money to buy fine beads and cloth.”
“It may be,” said her stepmother. “She does not open her heart to me. She talks no more than an owl.”
The teachers marveled at ’Tina’s dullness in arithmetic and her amazing progress in writing. In an incredibly short time she was able to scrawl a note to her lover. It was a queer little letter, written with painful exactness, in imitation of the copybooks:
I heard you words what you sent. They was good words. It made my heart glad that words Black Fox which he brought. I am wait all time for you. No one else is in my thoughts. This letter I am written me myself all lone—no one is help me. No one knows that I put it in puss-tofis. I send mogasuns.Nistina.
I heard you words what you sent. They was good words. It made my heart glad that words Black Fox which he brought. I am wait all time for you. No one else is in my thoughts. This letter I am written me myself all lone—no one is help me. No one knows that I put it in puss-tofis. I send mogasuns.
Nistina.
With this letter all stamped and directed, and the packages of moccasins, she hurried with beating heart to the store in which the post-office occupied a corner. There she hovered like a mother partridge about its nest, coming and going, till a favorable moment offered. She knew just what to do. She had rehearsed it all in her mind a hundred times, and when she had slipped the letter into the slit she laid the package on the window, and flew away to watch and to wait for a word from the far-away land.
Weeks passed, and her heart grew sad and heavy. She dared not ask for a letter, but lingered at the store till the clerks grew jocose and at last familiar, and her heart was bitter toward all white men.
In her extremity she went to Macosa, who was now a matronly wife, mother of a sturdy son, and asked her to go to the post-office and inquire for a letter.
“A letter!” exclaimed she. “Who is going to write you a letter?”
After much persuasion she consented to go, but returned empty handed. She had only half regarded Nistina’s request, but as the tears came to her friend’s eyes, she believed, and all of the goodness of her heart arose, and she said:
“Don’t cry. I will go every day and ask, if you wish me to.”
It is hard to wait for a letter when the letter is the one thing in life worth waiting for, and Nistina was very silent and very sad all the time, and her mistress wondered at this; but her questions brought no reply from the girl, who kept at her writing diligently, steadily refusing to confuse her mind with other things. She did not seem to wish to talk—only to write at every spare moment, and each day her writing grew in beauty of line till it was almost as beautiful as the printed copy.
At last she composed another letter:
Hawk.My friend. I not hearing from you. If you are sick you don’t write. My heart is now very sad. May be you die by this time. Long time I am here waiting. Listening for your words I am standing each day. No one my loving but you. Come home you get away quick, for I all time waiting.Nistina.
Hawk.My friend. I not hearing from you. If you are sick you don’t write. My heart is now very sad. May be you die by this time. Long time I am here waiting. Listening for your words I am standing each day. No one my loving but you. Come home you get away quick, for I all time waiting.
Nistina.
After she had mailed this Nistina suddenly lost all interest in her studies, and went back to the lodge of her father. In her heart she said: “If he does not answer me I will go out on the hill and cry till I die. I do not care to live if he is not coming to me.”
She took her place in her father’s lodge as before, giving no explanation of her going nor the reason for her return. The kindly old chief smoked and gazed upon her sadly, and at last said, gently:
“My daughter, you are sad and silent. Once you laughed and sang at your sewing. What has happened to you? My child has a dark face.”
“I am older. I am no longer a child,” she said, unsmilingly.
And at last, in the middle of the third winter, when the white people were giving presents to each other, a letter and a little package came for Nistina, and Macosa came running with them.
“Here is your talking leaf,” she said. “Now I think you will laugh once more. Read it, for I am very curious.”
But Nistina snatched the precious package and ran into her lodge, to be alone with her joy.
It was a marvelous thing. There was the letter—a blue one—with her name spelled on it in big letters,Nistina, but she opened the package first. It contained a shining pouch, and in the pouch was a necklace of wondrous beads such as she had never seen, and a picture of her lover in white man’s dress. How strange he looked with his hair cut short! She hardly knew him.
Her heart beat strong and loud as she opened the letter, and read the first words, “Nistina, I am loving you.” After that she was confused, for Hawk could not write as well as she, and she read with great trouble, but the end she understood—“I am coming home.”
She rose and walked to her father’s lodge, where Macosa sat. She entered proudly, the letter in her hand. Her head was lifted, her eyes shone with pride.
“My letter is from Hawk,” she said, quietly. “He is coming home.”
And at this message Macosa and Vetcora covered their mouths in sign of inexpressible astonishment.
Sunmaker smoked on with placid face till he began to understand it all; then he said: “My daughter, you warm my heart. Sit beside me and tell me of this wonderful thing.”
Then she spoke, and her story was to him a sweet relief from care. “It is good,” he said. “Surely the white people are wonder-working beings.”