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Updated: June 10, 2025
If ever woman was made for one knightly love which would set her in high places, she was that woman. Yet here she stood, her very name lost, no man so humble as to do her reverence. "Paul has come," Eagle told Katarina and Marie. Holding their hands, she walked between them toward me, and bade them notice my height. "I am his Cloud-Mother," she said.
Especially, unless you have that cloud-mother, that dim, filmy, nebulous mass that has its root in the higher regions of the air, and is the source and backing of all storms, your rain will be light indeed. I fear my reader's jacket is not thoroughly soaked yet. I must give him a final dash, a "clear-up" shower.
"But what did I say?" she insisted. "You thought you were a Cloud-Mother." "A Cloud-Mother!" She was astonished and asked, "What is a Cloud-Mother?" "You thought I was Paul, and you were my Cloud-Mother." "Did I say such a foolish thing as that?" "Don't call it foolish, madame." "I hope you will forget it." "I don't want to forget it." "But why are you in Illinois Territory, sire?"
My Cloud-Mother asked me to tell her the stories she used to tell me. She had forgotten them. "I am the child now," she would say. "Tell me the stories." I repeated mythical tribe legends, gathered from Skenedonk on our long rides, making them as eloquent as I could. She listened, holding her breath, or sighing with contentment.
"How droll it is that parents grow down little, while their children grow up big!" Madame Ursule shook her head pitifully. But the girls really saw the droll side and laughed with my Cloud-Mother. Separated from me by an impassable barrier, she touched me more deeply than when I sued her most. The undulating ripple which was her peculiar expression of joy was more than I could bear.
It was my daily effort to fall in with her happiness, for if she saw any anxiety she was quick to plead: "Don't you like me any more, Paul? Are you tired of me, because I am a Cloud-Mother?" "No," I would answer. "Lazarre will never be tired of you." "Do you think I am growing smaller? Will you love me if I shrink to a baby?" "I will love you."
Eagle smoothed my arm, nested her hand in my neck. "My little boy! He has grown to be a man while his mother has grown down to be a child! Do you know what I am now, Paul?" I choked a sob in my throat and told her I did not. "I am your Cloud-Mother. I live in a cloud. Do you love me while I am in the cloud?" I told her I loved her with all my strength, in the cloud or out of it.
I could not humiliate my Cloud-Mother by placing her before them in the act of tracking me like a dog. I could not tell any one about it, but asked for Skenedonk. The Indian had been out on the river in a canoe. He came silently, and stood near me. The book was between us. I had it in the breast of my coat, and he had it on his conscience. "Bring out your horse and get me a fresh one," I said.
I drew my breath with an audible sound in the throat. Her dress stirred. She leaned around the edge of the settle. Eagle de Ferrier, not my Cloud-Mother, looked at me. Her features were pinched from exposure, but flooded themselves instantly with a blush. She snatched her shoes from the hearth and drew them on. I was taken with such a trembling that I held to a gallery post.
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