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Her head had drooped upon her breast, but, once again, she looked upon him, and then, with one slow, hesitant, backward glance about her, stepped forward, her little, moccasined feet flitting from rock to rock across the murmuring shallows until she stood before him. Then he spoke, but she only shook her head and let it droop again, her hands passively clasping.
They stood in the angle formed by the bodies of their steeds, whose noses were together. The young hero was completely enveloped in his handsome robe with a rainbow of bead-work acros the middle, and his small moccasined feet projected from beneath the lower border. Red Eagle held up an eagle-wing fan, partially concealing his face, and both gazed intently toward the center of the maidens' circle.
Tightly holding the saddle horn, he placed a moccasined foot carefully into the stirrup and pulled himself up awkwardly into the saddle, muttering to himself, "Alas, I can no more leap into my saddle. I now must crawl about in my helplessness." He was past eighty years of age, and no longer agile. He set upon his ten-mile trip to the only post office for hundreds of miles around.
In rolling over the edge of the rock, his moccasined feet had come into contact with a slight projection where his toes had caught, and by means of which, Holden, as well as himself, was relieved in part of the weight of his person.
The minutes passed, and I was just beginning to hope that the Indians had already got enough, when I caught the faint shuffle of moccasined feet on the porch, and again the door was struck a terrific blow, which made it groan on its hinges. I fired out into the darkness as fast as I could lay down one gun and pick up another, and again the uproar ceased as suddenly as it had begun.
The zest increased. The faces wearing an habitual frown displayed a budding smile. The natural smiler grinned broadly. All warmed to the evening's amusement. Now came the festive barn dance. The moccasined feet pounded the filthy floor, and the dust gathered thick round the gums of the hard-breathing dancers. The noise of coarse laughter and ribald shoutings increased.
The priests raged against them, the chiefs called forth their fighting men, and stone clashed with steel; but to little purpose. Like water seeping from some mighty reservoir, they trickled through the dark forests and mountain passes, threading the highways in bark canoes, or with their moccasined feet breaking trail for the wolf-dogs.
And then, turning to leave him, 'An' will ye say a mass if the luck is against me? But the priest smiled, thrust his moccasined feet to the fore, and went out upon the white breast of the silent river. A packed trail, the width of a sixteen-inch sled, led out to the waterhole. On either side lay the deep, soft snow.
The redwoods, burying their moccasined feet in the red soil, stood in Indian file along the track, trailing an uncouth benediction from their bending boughs upon the passing bier. A hare, surprised into helpless inactivity, sat upright and pulsating in the ferns by the roadside as the cortege went by.
"I own myself wrong," she said that night to her husband; "she careth naught for the Captain. I wept all day last Michaelmas when my old dog died." But Mistress Lettice did not hear the door unlatched that night, nor the moccasined feet of Pocahontas as they sped through the street down to a quiet spot on the river bank whither she often went.
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