Page:The-knickerbocker-gallery-(knickerbockergal00clarrich).djvu/107

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GENTLE DOVE.
77

affection, and not the stain of blood. I have not made your house desolate, nor your child motherless."

The chieftain struck his javelin in the earth. "My child" he shrieked in a voice which made the woods ring again, a combination of ecstasy and agony and surprise—"my child?"

"Your child!" replied the Gray-Eagle.

"Whither gone?" said Omaltit-si-ar-nah.

"You ask too much of me," answered the Gray-Eagle. "If I did not take away their lives, could I keep them from dying! A man can kill, but the Great Spirit keeps alive, and He only. I know not where they are."

"Enough," said Omainit-si-ar-nah. "All will be well Gray-Eagle sours aloft and stoops not low." With the end of his spear he described a circle on the ground, and, placing the end of it in the centre, he drew many radii. "Tonight," he said, "we sleep as if the sleep of death. When the sun dawns, each man, yea, every woman of the tribe, will start from here, and travel toward the rising and the setting sun, and every point, until she is found whom my soul loveth."

"Stay!" said Gray-Eagle, "you will go too early in the search. Punish traitors first before you haste to seek for the betrayed. Your Faithful Friend is at the bottom of this mischief Que-la-wah strove to win the Gentle Dove. She drove him off with fierce rebuke, and hence he vowed revenge."

Omaint-si-ar-nah grasped the hand of the Gray-Eagle, and while a fierce vindictive look flashed over him, he said, "To-morrow! yes, to-morrow!" then pressed the lock of hair unto his lips, wrapped his blanket round him, and sank upon the ground, even on the very spot where he had stood and slept.

Soon as the first beams of day appeared, the chief went forth alone to punish a man who had betrayed his trust. He found Que-la-wah gathering sticks to make his morning meal. "Base villain," he exclaimed, "thou shalt die." And with that he beat him to the earth, and left his body for the crows and vultures of the air to prey upon. Thus did the spirit of implacable revenge find place in the same heart which was just opening anew to the genial influences of affection.