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Updated: May 13, 2025
Twenty-five or thirty times did they have to make portages around the dangerous falls and rapids. The joy of Astumastao on reaching the place where she had spent that eventful year, so long ago, was very great indeed. Absorbed in bringing up the memories of the past she seemed at times like one in a dream.
Is it surprising that, as he hurried along, he forgot much of his sorrow, and was filled with pleasurable excitement at the prospect of meeting Astumastao again? True, he would check himself and say he was acting or thinking foolishly, for Astumastao might be married or the bride selected, by her uncle, for some one else, for all he knew. Why, then, should he so think about her?
When the long, cold winter set in again, Astumastao applied herself very diligently to the work of trapping and snaring rabbits and some of the smaller fur-bearing animals. In her hunting excursions she followed her plans of the preceding winters, and often plunged farther into the dense forest to set her traps and snares beyond those of any other woman hunter.
So absorbed was he in scanning those in front that the noiseless moccasined feet of others coming in behind him were unheeded. For a moment Astumastao watched his wistful, eager looks, and well divining the meaning, with flushed and radiant face she advanced toward him and cordially exclaimed: "My brave Oowikapun!"
Oowikapun said that, when he left Astumastao after that last interview in which he so completely failed to divert her from her determination to undertake, with the other women, the long, dangerous journey, and in which she had shown him how little he was to be depended upon, he went back to the wigwam of his friends feeling very uncomfortable.
With starring vividness they came before him, and above all the brave words of the maiden Astumastao seemed to ring in his ears.
To suffer, but to show no sign, is the proverb of the true Indian. And yet Astumastao would not admit even to herself that she was deeply in love with Oowikapun.
Only once after the arrival of Oowikapun and Astumastao did he have sufficient strength to go with them to the house of God. Every Indian within twenty miles of the sanctuary was there that bright Sabbath morning.
He had opened to Memotas his heart, and had told him of his feeble efforts to live the better life, and of his complete failure. He told him of Astumastao, and made the heart of Memotas and others glad, who remembered the little black-eyed maiden from the far North who had dwelt a year in the village.
One day, while Oowikapun was pondering over the words of Astumastao, and thinking of the risks she and her companions were about to run, and the dangers they would have to encounter in their great undertaking, and contrasting it with the listless, aimless life he had lately been leading, suddenly there came to him, as a revelation, a noble resolve which took such possession of him and so inspired him that he appeared and acted like another man.
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